First off, how awful for this to have happened to you! It's hard enough building a house with the "right" products but if you get handed a curve ball like this......... In our present house we have the white finish on the windows but stained trim around them. They look fine. I have also seen a photograph of a very high end home that had stained windows but cream color painted trim. It looked very nice. If I understand this correctly, all of the windows in the family room are the same. That is good--at least they all match. Only the slider has the wood. I think that as long as all the window and door trim are the same it will be okay. The baseboard finish should also be a strong factor as to how the windows and doors are to be finished. Are they painted or stained? Also, think about what type of window coverings you will go with-- blinds would hide much of the white sash and you would mostly notice the trim. If you end up doing the stained trim, wood blinds would hide the white windows somewhat and give more presence to the trim. If you're doing drapes then the top and bottom would be seen--if you really want to cover up the windows you can go with drapes plus sheers. Once you get furniture into the room the trim won't be such a focal point. You could cross post in the decorating forum, as there are lots of people with helpful information over there. I hope you get more ideas and find a solution to your dilemma.

Here are the steps I took; so far it's worked well for me. 1. Go to bar in local neighborhood--a bar that's owned by your best friend's husband. 2. Sit at bar with glass of merlot. 3. Make goo-goo eyes at cute contractor across the bar. 4. Date said cute contractor for 11 months. Accept marriage proposal and marry 11 months after that. 5. 22 months later, enjoy free labor for frames, etc! Disclaimer: Results not typical. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. :)

I may cross-post this in the stained glass forum, I'm not sure which is best. We have an older wooden 'feature window' and a friend made us a stained-glass insert to fit inside (there's a rebate there so the edges of the window press up against it, and it's currently held in place with screws) - so the existing double glass is there, then a 3" gap or so, then the stained glass. There has been quite a lot of condensation between the original window (double glazed, about 20 years old but in good condition) and the stained glass insert. Insert doesn't fit very tightly, I am wondering if I should try and make it LESS tight fitting, so there's possibly more airflow, or should I try to seal it with weather stripping so it's totally airtight? I could put silica gel sachets in the bottom, wouldn't look great but would be somewhat disguised by the border, or I could turn off the humidifier for a couple of days before I seal it up - we are in a very dry climate and without the humidifier the % RH often drops below 35%. What is best, does anyone have any ideas?

Wow - it is sort of nice to see that I am not the only one wondering about this sort of thing. I am guessing jdstudio isn't going to say why he has stain grade jambs, but since I am in a very similar situation, I'll answer and hopefully I can get some feedback on our situation. We are looking at 2 Anderson 400 double hungs with a picture window or possibly even a set of 4 double hungs for our living room. We want the Andersons because they have a traditional look with nice mullions and they are going to be very prominent in our living room. As far as I can see, they all come with the stain grade wood, but you can have it painted white at the factory. In addition to the fact that it seems a crime to paint the wood, I think the spacers between the glass look better/more realistic with the stained mullions and the stained mullions won't take away from the view as much as the white ones would. We are also going to be putting in a french door which will be in the adjacent dining room and visible from the living room. I would really hate to paint the french door, but that is also a similar situation. We have a fairly open floor plan, so if I start replacing the painted trim, I am going to have to do almost the whole first floor because there aren't any/many good places to make a transition. We have wood floors and a lot of antique wood (stained) furniture, so I think staining all of the woodwork would be just too much. Plus, the fireplace mantle is painted and we like it the way it is now. What we are thinking is that we could leave the sashes and the permanently attached mullions stained, but paint all of the trim around the perimeter of the window. We would also have to leave the sills stained as well, but the painted trim would be underneath of them. The french doors would be done in a similar fashion. Has anyone seen anything like this? We like things relatively plain and traditional, so I am probably going end up wanting to paint them if it comes out looking goofy. Needless to say, getting paint on them at the factory is going to be a lot better than trying to paint over stain. Greg