Having spent the previous decade and a half building houses, Don Justham knew exactly what he wanted when it came time to design his own home in the spring of 2018. With an open floorplan in mind, Justham decided that he had to have a large number of windows to bring in natural light. And to Justham, that meant one thing: MI Windows and Doors.
Justham started using MI products about five years before he began work on his own home, and he became so impressed by MI that he never even considered another window company when it came time for his new house.
“I’ve used other brands in the past, but I just know that MI is a quality window,” says Justham, of Oxford, N.C. “The warranty is never an issue, they’re easy to install, and it’s an all-around well-built window.”
Jay Sharpe, a window salesman at Builders FirstSource, takes credit for turning Justham on to MI. In the Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina where Sharpe is located, he often recommends MI Windows to his customers.
“I sell as many MI products as I can,” Sharpe says. “We get far and away the best service from MI.”
For Justham’s home, he decided on the 3500 single-hung. One of MI’s long-time top sellers—the 3500 is a vinyl window that offers builder-friendly attributes such as pre-punched mounting fin, easy material pass through, snap-in sill, extension jambs, continuous head and sill mulling, and brickmould and J-channel trim.
The attributes of this product are not only sought by contractors. With bountiful customizable options such as an array of interior and exterior colors, stylish grid types, and energy-efficient glass packages, homeowners and designers incorporate MI’s 3500 single-hung into their home designs with ease. As both the homeowner and contractor for this unique project, Justham was able to experience the many benefits this product offers.
“The 3500 is very cost-effective and maintenance free,” says Justham, who lives in the home with his wife Cheri and mother-in-law Mary. “And it opens and closes well. I’ve used other windows in the past, and from my experience, MI windows operate much smoother than other vinyl products i’ve tried.”
To ensure that he got plenty of light, Justham used 43 windows in all. And while that total includes the attached mother-in-law suite, it’s nevertheless a large number of windows for a two-bedroom home.
“We wanted to open up not just the walls, but the ceilings too,” Justham says. “I wanted to let a lot of light in the room and utilize that large wall in the vaulted spaces.”
Incorporating abundant light was easy with the narrow frame profile the 3500 window offers. Additionally, the window grids that Justham chose also maximize the amount of light that enters the home. In order to complement the Craftsman-style house, he wanted grids in a “drop” pattern, also known as “craftsman” style, so that most of the surface area of the window would be unobstructed.
“That pattern resembles a transom,” Justham says, “so it fits well with the Craftsman style.
“I really like that profile,” Sharpe says of the drop grids. “It’s a very, very appealing look.”
Justham and his family moved into the home in the fall of 2019. It’s one of the latest additions to the growing community of Oxford, which sits in the outer suburbs of Raleigh and the famed Research Triangle.
The area is one of the fastest-growing in the country; Justham has built other homes in the region and will certainly do more. And, if the past is prologue, those new homes will have MI’s 3500 windows, too. “It’s the model I use in upper-end homes,” he says. “The fact that I wanted them in my personal home says a lot about them.”
