Lake Oswego. Founded in 1847 and named by Albert Alonzo Durham after Oswego, New York, was incorporated in 1910.

It was the hub of Oregon’s brief iron industry in the late 19th century and is today an affluent suburb of Portland.

We do a lot of work in Lake Oswego, as with many other surrounding Portland & Vancouver communities.

Such as this solarium reglaze & glass replacement.

We are experts at handling glass. We are what is known as glazers.
A Glazier is a construction professional who selects, cuts, installs, replaces, and removes residential, commercial, and artistic glass.

Glaziers also install aluminum storefront frames and entrances, glass handrails and balustrades, shower enclosures, curtain wall framing and glass and mirror walls.

We also know a considerable amount about the differing types of glass.

Not to mention the differing window & door products in which glass is used.

Isn’t it fun to be good at something?

Another thankful client.

A Mt. Tabor area neighborhood and a client for whom we’ve now done a number of projects.

Although we offered to repair his leaky skylight, he was convinced it needed replacement.

Fortunately, finding a replacement that would work with the original custom flashing that was made for use with the standing seam steel roofing did not prove to be difficult.

And that was because the original skylight was also a Velux brand skylight.

You might be amazed how many skylight, window and door companies seemingly do not want their names on their products. What does that tell you?

Velux is easily the best known residential brand of skylight, due in large part to the companies successful marketing and also their quality control department.

But there are many brands that you can run into when repairing skylights is what you do for a living.

Supreme Skylights, Wasco Skylights, Solar Innovations, Sunptics, Domel Inc., Birdview Skylights, Artistic Skylight Domes Ltd., just to name a few.

We do lots of failed glass replacement on Skylights of just about every stripe. We have been known to track down and fix leaks, improperly applied flashing, failed glazing, rotten sash or jamb components, water damaged ceiling and/or structural truse components and drywall repair.

We were, for example, called upon to repair the drywall on this opening that was the result of a leak that was fixed when we replaced the skylight.

Two leaky, fogged up skylights.

Non-Operable, Curb-Mount Skylights.

The Glazing had failed long ago.

Two new ones received at our warehouse in Tigard. I was not able to make it to the job-site to get some installation shots.

It’s somewhat difficult to see it from the street, but the value of this Lake Oswego home is significantly derived…

…from the view on the back side. This photo does not do the view any justice, but the view does help explain…

…the existence of this modest solarium structure & a number of other window structures on the backside

…of this home. Built in the 1980s, this solarium is constructed of your basic aluminum window…

…components and is glazed by means of aluminum snap-bead. It’s amazing that it hasn’t leaked before.

Several insulated glass units had failed (fogged-up) and our client chose to have us up-grade all the insulated glass to the latest 366 Low-E glass to help manage the heat…

…generation and the material fading properties of ultraviolet rays. We did this job in late December in the midst of some cold rain and even more daunting,…

…brisk wind gusts, which as you may be able to imagine, presents more than a little challenge for our crew to wrestle such large insulated glass units up onto a roof…

…without injury to self or damage to the glass. Projects like this in weather like this, tend to remind us of the years and years of cumulative experience and expertise…

…that we’ve garnered. Our crew is quite practiced at dealing with just about any weather contingencies. Even if it involves opening up a roof in the rain.

Solarium: Similar to a Sunroom, a room built largely of glass to afford exposure to the sun.

Solariums have glass roofs unlike sunrooms. Solariums are designed for warmth,…

…whereas sunrooms are designed for scenic view. — Wikipedia

And sometimes you achieve the benefits of both! Not a bad view for a master bedroom, is it…

Failed, foggy glass, water-intrusion and unmanageable heat generation created the motivation for this upgrade.

Low-E Glass means low emissivity, as it relates to the radiant energy (ultraviolet rays) of our sun.

It simultaneously filters out varying degrees of the heat generating & material damaging characteristics of this radiant energy…

…while also helping to keep the warm or cool air created by furnaces and air conditioners to the interior of the building, where & when you want it.

We’ve yet to meet a Solarium or a Sunroom that we couldn’t repair and substantially improve upon.

At the risk of sounding like we’re tooting our own horn, you will likely find that employing our services is a decision that will reflect well upon your judgment for years to come.

A STEEL framed solarium that is somewhat unique.
You may be saying to yourself that this is not a solarium INSTALLATION, and yet it is listed under the installation catagory of our portfolio.

The reason for this is two fold. We didn’t originally install this solarium structure, but as we often do, we disassembled and then reassembled a considerable amount of the various components. And we almost always are called upon to not only reinstall the most critical aspects of these structures, but also to redesign it. We’re speaking of those components that keep the weather out.

It seems obvious to us that if you have the problem-solving skills to disassemble, repair and then reassemble the myriad varying types of solariums and sunroom structures that exist, that installing new products would be a slam-dunk.

For years we’ve been correcting the design, installation and flashing mistakes of others on these structures.

If this doesn’t give someone an upper hand in their expertise and skillset, we simply don’t know what would.

You may note that we have also listed these projects under the REPAIR portion of the RESIDENTIAL WINDOWS catagory of our portfolio.

And so it is that you may notice many of these same projects listed under window repair. This was a marketing decision to get the word out regarding the type of work we do. We are always hearing clients tell us how they wished they had known that someone did this type of work years before they found us.

Our technitian Nate showing off his deglazing skills here.

After applying a liberal amount of double-sided glazing tape over the top of these unusal STEEL framed solarium components, the new insulated 366-Low-E glass in hoisted into position with great skill, care & fineese.

The upgrade from single-pane to double-pane in this assembly that sits over the kitchen area will greatly diminish the propensity for the glass to condensate all that warm moisture generated from the culinary arts.

This particular skylight installation in Lake Oswego had both fortuitous and difficult elements.

The fortuitous elements where the vaulted ceiling and the horizontal structural beams that made accessing the opening somewhat ideal from the interior.

The difficult elements pertained to the relatively steep slope of the roof and the fact that there were three layers of roofing.

As you can see in this photo, as well as the second of these photos, the first layer of roofing was cedar shake. If you click on the photo, you may be able to see it in a little more detail.

This can make the flashing portion of the installation a bit challenging. But challenges are what sharpen our skills and makes a completed job like this quite satisfying.

Even though this particular project involved new Vinyl Windows as the scaffold towers suggest, we were also called upon to replace some failed insulated glass in a skylight.

Although replacing failed glass is the most common skylight repair we find our company performing, we also do flashing repairs and glazing-repairs.

We also replace crank-mechanisms or remote control hardware replacement and repairs as well. You might be surprised if you knew how many different manufacturers make skylights.

Many of which have gone out of business, and many of which have changed how they are manufactured. The point being that almost every one of them are fabricated and assembled differently.

Commercial buildings account for a substantial percentage of our work.
Yes, this is a residential-category, but I thought we’d keep all the solarium projects together, since we don’t get called upon to do that many commercial solariums.

We install and repair Solariums, Skylights, Windows, Doors, Storefronts, Failed Glass, Aluminum-Glass Doors and Hollow-Metal Steel Doors…

…not to mention adjusting, repairing or replacing all the brands and types of commercial Hardware known to modern man.

I believe the problem here was that the property management company was growing tired of sending folks out to slather on another layer of caulking every time a leak developed.

So they hired us to remove the glass, clean off 20 years or so of caulking from the glass and the frame components and then reglaze the glass back into the jambs.

Another Revamped Solarium.

A stately, well-appointed, low-frills home in Lake Oswego.

O.K., the remodeled family room behind the garage, with the vaulted ceiling and the four skylights to offset some of the darkness of living amongst so much foliage might be considered by some to be a bit of a frill.

The two center non-operable skylights are showing obvious water-damage.

If you enlarge the photo above by clicking on it, you may be able to see the light reflecting upon the water that was eking out of the crevasses the day we were there inspecting the damage…

…as it had been raining the night before. These Velux skylights are top notch skylights. No doubt considered by most in the business, including us, as being among the best that money can buy.

So one obvious question might be to ask “what went wrong?” And the answer is that any glass in any window, door, solarium or skylight that is exposed to frequent moisture in climates such as ours, should be re-glazed every five years or so.

There is much that could be said about this, but we won’t go into that here and now. You might note that although it looked as though only the two center skylights had water damage, once we removed the adjoining, interconnecting flashing…

…it was quickly discovered that the two flanking, operable skylights had also sustained some water damage. It just couldn’t be seen until some disassembly had been accomplished.

So two more skylights were ordered as we finished up this first phase. Our client said that they had never opened the two operable skylights, and thus instructed us to order “non-operable” versions for the replacements.

And so it was that we returned at a later date and replaced the other two as well.