Broken glass, doors that slam or drag, locks, leaks, board-up. Repaired where a repair is the right answer — and told plainly when it is not.
Every storefront repair call starts the same way: something on the front has stopped working and the business is open. A door that will not close, a lite that cracked overnight, a lock that turns and does nothing, water on the floor inside the glass after rain. We do this work across the five boroughs, on fronts we installed and far more often on fronts we did not, in Kawneer, YKK AP, Tubelite, EFCO and the other aluminum systems that make up most of the city’s retail glazing.
We also replace storefronts, which is worth saying at the top because it is the reason to trust the repair advice. A repair company has a reason to keep repairing; a replacement company has a reason to condemn. We do both, so the only thing that decides which you get is the condition of the front. On most calls it is a repair. On some it is not, and we say so in the first visit rather than after the third.
Aluminum storefront is a modular system: doors, glass, hardware and glazing gaskets are all designed to be replaced within the frame. That is why a well-built front from the 1990s can be kept running for decades — and why, when the frame is the problem, no amount of hardware fixes it.
There are five conditions under which we will tell you to stop spending money on repairs. Each is something we can show you on the front, not an opinion.
The frame has failed. Corrosion at the sill where the aluminum has been sitting in water for years, corners that have opened and will not close, mullions that move under hand pressure. Hardware bolts to the frame; if the frame will not hold a screw, the hardware will not hold either.
The system is obsolete. Storefront systems go out of production. When the extrusion is no longer made, a damaged door or stile cannot be matched, and a mismatched replacement door in an old frame is a repair that looks like a repair. We identify the system on the first visit and tell you whether parts exist.
The glass keeps fogging. One failed insulated unit is a glass repair. When the third one fogs in a non-thermal frame from the 1980s, the frame is condensing on the inside every winter and taking the seals with it. Replacing units one at a time in that frame is paying for the same failure repeatedly.
The front no longer meets code. An entrance that has to be made accessible, a door that needs panic hardware it was never built for, glazing that is not safety glass at a door. Some of this can be retrofitted; some of it cannot, and the retrofit costs approach the replacement.
The arithmetic. When the repair history over two years adds up to a third of a new front, the next repair is the wrong purchase. We will show you the numbers. We wrote about the other side of this decision — why owners replace fronts that still work — in this article.
Most storefront repair in New York is on fronts whose installer is gone or unreachable. That is normal and it is most of what we do. The first job on any call is to identify the system from the extrusion profile, the glazing method and the hardware, because that decides what parts fit. Kawneer, YKK AP, Tubelite, EFCO, Oldcastle and Arcadia framing all have their own gaskets, pressure plates and door stiles, and a part from the wrong system will not seat. We carry the common ones and source the rest.
If the front was installed by us, the shop drawings are on file and the parts are known before the truck leaves.
A repair call is a technician, not a salesman. We look at the whole front, not only the part that was reported, because a dragging door and a leaking sill are often the same problem seen twice. We fix what can be fixed on the day from stock, measure what has to be ordered, and leave you with a written note of what was done, what is ordered, and — if it applies — what we saw that suggests the front is nearing the end. Night and early-morning work is normal for retail; the store does not close for a closer.
Storefront leaks at the perimeter and at the sill, rarely through the framing itself. On a repair we check that the head and jambs are still sealed to the wall, that the sill has a pan with end dams (older fronts often have none), and that the weep holes through the sill are open. A front that was installed without a sill pan can be resealed, but the fix is temporary; when the sealant fails again, the sill comes out and a pan goes in, which is the point at which many owners choose a new front. See waterproofing for how we detail it.
Storefront repair across all five boroughs: Brooklyn from Williamsburg to Sheepshead Bay, Manhattan from the Financial District to Washington Heights, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, where we are based. For retail corridors with special conditions — landmarked fronts in SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, security glazing in the Diamond District — the repair is specified to the district, not the catalogue.
Storefront Doors Commercial Doors Commercial Aluminum Systems Laminated Glass Tempered Glass Waterproofing Property Maintenance Curtain Wall Systems
When the answer is a new front, this is the work: a corner storefront and curtain wall at 3915 Flatlands Avenue, a curved ribbon storefront at 2 Bushwick Avenue, a structurally glazed two-storey front at 24 Frost Street.
Call or send a photo. We will tell you whether it is a repair and, if so, what it takes; same-day board-up if the glass is out.
