Home Renovations - replacing windows and doors

Old door on the left, NEW door on the right!

I am so excited - by Friday, I will have a new front door. And windows. And patio door!  A few years ago, hubby was doing some renovations and something fell - and shattered the glass next to our front door.  We didn't have the money to replace it, so he blocked it off with wood and we kind of forgot about it (well, not really - but it was easy to just put off replacing it). Today begins a transformation for our home of 8 years.  We are having ALL of our windows replaced, as well as our front door and our patio door.

We have known for many years that they needed to be done - but money just wasn't there.  Hubby would "bandaid" them by caulking around the edges and trying to seal them best we could.  However, the condensation inside the windows and draftiness weren't the only issues.  Our frames were rotting.

This was made even more apparent to us approximately 6 weeks ago. I noticed an ant in the upstairs hallway. Killed it and moved on. I figured it had come in on something, as we had been spending quite a bit of time outside.

A few days later, hubby and Mr. J noticed 5 or so inside Mr. J's bedroom. Hubby ripped the room apart, vacuuming and cleaning (he found some hidden crumbs - apparently Mr. J had secretly brought food upstairs) and hoped we had solved it. A few hours later, there were more crawling around the walls.

We finally tracked the source to the window. After doing some research, apparently ants LOVE rotting wood. That was it, window needed to be replaced.

I called the company that did our neighbours (we had both heard of them before, and our neighbours were very happy with them - so happy that they used them for all the windows over a 2-3 year period).

We decided to have a quote on everything, but figured we would do 4 now, 4 next year and finish off the 3rd year.  After getting the quote, it was a little cheaper than what we had been thinking would be the case (well, I say that - it was HALF of what I had in my head, but I know NOTHING about this type of thing, and it was slightly less than what hubby had thought).

We looked at what we had in the bank, and what we could come up with and decided that we would just go ahead and get it all done now (slight discount in price that way also)

So today, the replacements begin.  I am so excited to have it done. Hoping that it will save us a little money on our heating bills in the winter too....
Have you done any home renovations recently?