Retrofit and Full Frame Installation

Two Ways In, and They Are Not Interchangeable

Once the glass package is settled, the remaining question is how the window gets into the wall. There are two methods. Contractors have preferences, but the wall usually decides.

Retrofit, or Flush Fin

The old aluminum frame stays in the opening. The glass and moving parts come out, the frame is trimmed back, and a new vinyl window with a flat fin around its perimeter is set over the top and sealed to the stucco face.

The appeal is obvious. The stucco is never opened, so there is no patching, no texture matching and no repainting the elevation. On a typical Riverside slab-on-grade tract house from the sixties or later, with square aluminum frames that are dry and sound, this is the right method and the one we use most.

The cost is a small loss of glass area. The new frame sits inside the old one, so each opening gets modestly smaller. On a large picture window nobody notices. On a small bathroom window it is more visible.

Full Frame

Everything comes out down to the rough framing. New flashing goes in, lapped into the building paper in the correct order so water that gets behind the stucco runs down and out rather than into the sill. The window is nailed to the framing, the stucco is patched, and the texture is matched back into the existing wall.

It is more work, it costs more, and it is the only correct answer in several situations.

When the Wall Forces Full Frame

Dry rot at the sill is the clearest one. Press a screwdriver into the bottom corner of the existing frame and into the framing below it. If it goes in, no retrofit window will fix what is happening behind the stucco, it will only hide it.

Water staining on the interior wall below the window is the second. Something is getting past the flashing. Sealing a new fin over the outside of a leaking assembly traps the problem.

Original frames that were never square are the third. Older houses on the Wood Streets and around Victoria Avenue often have openings that have moved with the ground under them. A retrofit window set into an out of square opening either does not seal or does not operate smoothly.

And if you want to keep the full glass area, full frame is the only way to do it.

Stucco Flashing, Which Is Where Jobs Fail

The flashing sequence on a stucco wall is not decorative and it is not optional. Head flashing over the top of the window has to sit under the building paper above it. The paper at the sides has to lap over the nailing fin. Done in the wrong order it looks identical from the street on the day and leaks in the first real winter storm.

Riverside gets few of those storms, which is exactly why sloppy flashing survives here for years before anyone finds it. We do it in the right order because the one storm that matters will come.

Texture Matching

A stucco patch that is structurally perfect and visually obvious is still a bad patch. Riverside walls carry a lot of different finishes, and matching sand float or a dash texture takes trial panels rather than confidence.

We patch, let it cure, and match the texture before anyone paints. Call (951) 556-6455 and we will look at the wall before quoting a method.