I have aluminum builder grade windows in my house. 25 of them. Some don't stay open and others are very hard to open. They are 23 years old. So, we thought we would get quotes for replacement windows.

We have had 2 quotes for Vinyl windows. One brand we don't know what it was or price per window. The second was Clarity Windows and they don't break down the price per window either. They just give you a total price after the rep goes out and measures. Their pricing is not by the window by by the inch. Clarity was 6K more than our Marvin quote, which includes two different product lines.

There in lies my dilemma.

On the front exterior of our home, we have 4 windows that have quarter round tops. Two windows are on the garage and two others are on a bedroom. The other three front windows are rectangle.

The windows on the left are the garage and the two windows to the right of the doorway are a bedroom. There is a single hung single window to the right of these, which is another bedroom.

Our first quote, the Marvin rep made the two garage quarter round windows stationary (no panes or dividers-just a solid piece of glass) (though currently they are single hung) as well as the two quarter round windows on the bedroom. These were in the Infinity product line of Windows. The other 21 windows were in the Essential product line.

After we discovered that he had made the bedroom windows a soldif fixed window, which is against code to allow for egress, he got back to us and said that they could not do a quarter round window in the infinity product line. We asked him to get back with us with what options we had for working quarter round bedroom windows.

These 4 quarter round windows were the most expensive windows on the whole house and two of them were on the garage! At fixed windows, the garage would be $1402 each and on the bedroom $1593 each.

After several weeks, we contacted our rep and went unanswered. We then contacted 3 more times, 5 days apart. When they went unanswered, I called a different showroom of this same company in another city. I told the receptionist our issue and we wanted a new salesman. Within 15 minutes, the owner of both showrooms called me and would handle the account himself.

The owner informs us, after we tell him the issue with the quarter round windows, that only the Ultimate line of windows would work for us. We had him gives us a quote. It came ack at $2838 per window. He also told us that the Ultimate profile is also going to be 2" larger than the Essential profile. Well, that isn't going to look right.

We didn't think having Essential profile on 5 windows on the front of the house and 2 windows with the 2" thicker Ultimate would look good. Especially, that the matching shaped windows would have a thinner profile.

So, we had him quote us what it would cost to do the whole front of the house in the Ultimate profile, so it is all uniform. It took him a month to revise the quote for the 5 windows and he forgot to include the two quarter round windows on garage!!

He totally reconfigured our dining room, which is two single hung side by side windows (which was 2 32x72 Essential Single Hung Windows @ $533 ea) and made it one huge window that is now 65x72 fixed for $2,078. This is the current dining room. In the Essentials, it would look basically the same. In the Ultimate, he made one large, non functioning window.

The other bedroom window to the right of the quarter rounds went from a single hung Essential profile at $637 to the Ultimate and changed to double hung for $1263.

The two bedroom quarter round windows in Ultimate profile he changed to casement windows (from fixed). I guess he made them casement so that they would more match the fixed garage quarter round windows? Not really crazy about casement windows right here (the quarter round) as we typically have shrubs here but we lost just about everything in Snowmagedon back in February and we are waiting until November to replant.

Now, I am feeling like it is still just a modge podge of this and that window, some fixed, some single hung and some casement that look fixed. And really expensive.

All of the other windows are the Essential profile and will not show from the street. But from the interior, I will have the Ultimate in the dining room, which will be directly across from the ones in the living room that will have the Essential interior profile, as it is one big room. There are also three transoms above the living room windows that will also be Essential profile.

It all starting to look like a mess and an expensive one at that and I am just ready to say "forget about it". It has also taken 4 months just to get to here and the quote is still missing things. If its this bad at this stage, what is the installation going to be like?

I guess what I am asking is should I scrap this whole mess of using the different profiles on the exterior and interior? I am also getting sick to my stomach about paying an additional $1500 per window for the garage. They were already crazy high but for the bedroom we were going to suck it up in the Essential. We started this whole thing with an 18K quote and now it's up to 22K and growing.

We live in the DFW metroplex. We have had two vinyl window quotes. One was a bust and just wrote 25 vinyl windows and price. No breakdown per window, no samples, brand, etc. The other was Clarity vinyl windows. They came in at 26K for all 25 windows. No breakdown of price per window separate from installation. They price by the total inch, not by the window. They also were not going to use tempered glass on the master bathroom 48" square window next to the claw foot tub, until we asked and it was extra.

Is there a recommended vinyl window company/brand in our area or other window company/brand we should be looking at? So many of the vinyl windows seem to take up so much glass area that they just haven't wow'ed us.