Montana window & door repair
Big Sky Doors & Windows
We repair windows and doors, and we drive a long way to do it. We do not sell replacements — which is the only reason our advice about repairing yours is worth anything.
- Main service
- Window repair
- Coverage
- All 56 counties
- Product list
- One item: repairs
- Estimate
- Free, fixed in writing
The drive is the job
In Montana, most of what you pay for is the trip
That is not a complaint, it is arithmetic. This is the fourth largest state in the country with about a million people in it. A call from Billings out to Glendive, or Missoula down to Dillon, is most of a day before anybody picks up a screwdriver.
Which has one useful consequence, and the whole of this site is built around it: the marginal cost of the second repair is small. The window you called about and the five things you have been ignoring cost far less done together than they would in separate visits, and the difference is not modest.
So every page here tells you what rides on the truck, what to walk round and check before we set off, and how to turn one long drive into a finished list rather than a return trip.
Services
Nine services, one trade
Windows and doors are the whole business — houses, cabins, ranch buildings, manufactured homes and commercial frontages. All of it can go on the same visit.
01
Window repair
Sash cords and balances, locks, seals and crank operators. Most faults are one part in a window that is otherwise sound.
02
Broken window & glass
Cleared and secured on the first trip, glazed on the second. In deep cold, closing the building is the actual service.
03
Hail & wind damage repair
Whole elevation assessed
Glass, screens, frames and the seals that took a hit without the pane breaking. That last one is the part people miss.
04
Foggy window & seal repair
Failed sealed units replaced inside your existing sash, with altitude taken into account at the point of order.
05
Door repair
Sticking and sagging doors, thresholds and sweeps — and log settlement, which is behind more Montana door faults than hardware is.
06
Sliding glass door repair
Rollers, tracks, panel height and drainage. Most bent tracks here were bent by ice, then by somebody forcing the panel.
07
Mobile home window & door repair
Work others turn down
Manufactured-home sliders, awning windows and out-swing doors, in non-standard sizes made to fit.
08
Commercial glass & storefronts
Closers, pivots, locks, vestibules and glazing. Closers need a seasonal adjustment here that almost nobody makes.
09
Window screen repair
Rescreening and frame rebuilds. Cheapest thing we do, and best added to a visit that is already happening.
Make the trip count
Walk round before you ring
Five minutes with a notepad. Everything you add to the list costs a fraction of what it would as its own call-out.
Try every window, not just the bad one
Open, close and lock each one. In a building of the same age with the same hardware, the fault you noticed is usually present in three or four others at an earlier stage.
Paper test the exterior doors and windows
Close each one on a strip of paper. Where it pulls out freely, the seal is not being compressed — that is both the rattle and the draught, and it is quick to put right.
Press the sills and jamb bottoms
Soft or dark timber is the one fault that is actively getting worse while everything else waits. It also changes what we bring.
Count the screens, all of them
Including the ones in the garage. They are the cheapest work we do and by far the best value added to a visit that is already happening.
Include the outbuildings
Shop, barn, cabin, garage. They take the worst weather and get the least attention, and they are already on the trip.
What Montana does to it
Five forces acting on every opening in this state
Not weather in general. Five specific mechanisms, and each one does something different.
Chinook swings
Montana holds the national record for the largest temperature change inside twenty-four hours, and the mechanism behind it — a chinook wind coming down off the Rockies — is an ordinary part of winter along the Front. Materials that move that fast do not move evenly, and hardware set for one extreme binds at the other.
Wind, sustained and gusting
Great Falls and the Livingston corridor are among the windiest places in the country, with gusts that most states only see in storms. Sustained pressure finds every seal that has stopped compressing and works fasteners loose over years.
Cold that changes materials
Montana goes seriously cold. Polymer balance shoes, tilt latches and crank housings lose flexibility and snap rather than flex. Most hardware failures are reported in the week after a cold snap, several at once.
Ultraviolet at elevation
Thinner air and high sun exposure mean stronger ultraviolet than most of the country gets. It degrades weatherstrip, embrittles vinyl and makes screen mesh split rather than stretch, well inside the lifespans those products were sold with.
Altitude and pressure
A sealed glass unit is assembled and sealed at one elevation. Install it several thousand feet higher and the trapped air is permanently trying to expand. Across Montana's elevation range that is a genuine factor in how long a unit lasts, and it is why capillary tubes exist.
By building
Four kinds of building, four different jobs
Montana puts a wider range of buildings in front of us than most states, and the window in each one wants something different.
Log and timber homes
Log walls settle vertically for years after they go up, and the openings in them need slip space above the frame to allow for it. Where that space was never left, or has been filled with trim and foam over the years, the wall slowly comes down onto the window or door. Several doors binding at once in a log home is almost always the building rather than the hardware — and it is the single most misdiagnosed fault we see in this state.
Ranch and outbuildings
Shops, barns, bunkhouses and equipment buildings, with hardware that has to work in weather and gets no attention until it stops. Usually simple, usually repairable, and usually a long way from anybody who would come out for them.
In-town housing
Billings, Missoula, Butte, Helena and Great Falls hold a great deal of early-century stock — weight-and-pulley sash, putty glazing, original storm windows — plus post-war and modern suburbs where balances and sealed units fail together.
Manufactured homes
Common across rural Montana. Lightweight frames, out-swing doors and sizes that match nothing in a store. We have a separate page for these, because the parts and the advice are genuinely different and most companies will not quote them at all.
Coverage
Where we go, and roughly when
We plan routes rather than pricing distance into the job. If you are outside a metro, it is worth asking when we are next heading your way.
South central
Billings, Laurel, Red Lodge, Hardin, Miles City and the east.
Gallatin & Park
Bozeman, Belgrade, Livingston, Big Sky and the valley.
Western Montana
Missoula, Hamilton, Butte, Anaconda and Dillon.
North central
Great Falls, Helena, Havre and the Hi-Line.
The Flathead
Kalispell, Whitefish, Columbia Falls and Polson.
Questions
What people ask before they call
Do you sell replacement windows or doors?
No, deliberately. It is the whole reason our recommendation about repairing yours carries weight.
Will you really drive out to us?
Yes. That is the business. Tell us where you are and we will plan a route rather than pricing the distance into the job.
Several doors in our log home are binding.
That is almost certainly settlement rather than hardware. Log walls move vertically for years and the openings need slip space above the frames.
We had hail and the glass looked fine.
Worth having checked. A strike can compromise a sealed unit's perimeter seal without cracking the pane, and it fogs up months later.
Does altitude really affect sealed units?
Yes, more than most people expect. A unit sealed at one elevation and fitted at another is under permanent internal pressure, and it should be specified accordingly at the point of order.
Three things broke the same week in January.
Normal. Polymer hardware goes brittle well below zero and a hard cold snap finds every component that was already marginal.
Will you come out for one screen?
Yes, but we would rather you counted them all first or added them to another job. On a two-hour drive a single screen is a poor use of your money.
Do you work on manufactured homes?
Yes, deliberately, and out to rural ones. There is a page for it, because the parts and sizes are genuinely different.
Next step
Tell us what it is doing
Free estimates across all 56 counties, with a route planned to you rather than a surcharge.