Franklin Lakes sits at the western edge of Bergen County, a fifteen-minute run northwest of our Garfield shop, and its housing tells a two-boom story we read straight off the sill. The first wave followed the Route 208 extension that reached Oakland in 1960, filling the borough with mid-century Colonials, ranches, and split-levels; the second came with I-287 finished through the area in the early 1990s. The median house here went up in 1983, nearly nine in ten are detached single-family on half-acre-and-up lots, and close to the same share are owner-occupied. That mix means most of our calls are second-cycle work: the builder-grade insulated glass installed in the 1970s and 80s has hit its thirty-year wall, seals let go, and whole elevations start fogging at once.
Urban Farms, the borough's original planned development laid out on former farmland around Franklin Lake, is where a lot of that work lands. Its High Woods and Mill Gate sub-sections carry the larger Colonial, Georgian, Tudor Revival, and contemporary homes, many with tall arched and geometric openings that were never stock sizes to begin with. On the eastern, older side of town we still see the earliest stock — the Dutch sandstone and fieldstone farmhouses that survive from the borough's farming decades — where original wood sash and single glazing are the norm, and restoration is genuinely on the table.
Local building stock
What We Work On in Franklin Lakes
Predominantly 1960s-through-1990s custom construction: mid-century Colonials, ranches, and split-levels from the post-Route-208 wave, larger Colonial, Georgian, Tudor Revival, and contemporary homes through the Urban Farms sections, and a scatter of pre-1960 Dutch stone farmhouses on the east side. Franklin Avenue is the main commercial corridor, anchored by Franklin Lakes Town Square at Colonial Road plus the Franklin Crossing and Urban Farms shopping centers; High Mountain Road carries a secondary business strip. The Becton, Dickinson corporate campus off Route 208, built between 1986 and 1992, is the borough's signature commercial landmark, and Franklin Lakes counts fourteen National Register properties, among them the 1942 Reaction Motors Rocket Test Facility.
Our work here
Recent Franklin Lakes Jobs
Roof Replacement · Completed · 2026
Roof Replacement & New Gutters on a Brick Colonial — Franklin Lakes, NJ
A finished architectural asphalt shingle roof and new gutters on a brick colonial in Franklin Lakes, photographed from the front lawn by our crew after the job.
A front elevation like this one is mostly roof edges: gables that step in and out, a bay window with its own small metal roof, and short shingle runs that die into brick walls. Every one of those junctions is a place water can get behind a roof, which is why a colonial with this many planes is worth judging on its transitions, not its main field. When you compare quotes on a house shaped like this, ask how the walls, gable ends and bay roof are being flashed, because the flat open slope is the easy part. The gutters went on in the same job, so the roof edge and the drainage under it were finished together rather than on a second trip.
Roof Replacement · Completed · 2026
Completed Roof, Front Gables — Franklin Lakes, NJ
The steep front gable and the main roof field of the same Franklin Lakes colonial, with new architectural shingles running into the brick above an oval window and a new gutter along the eave.
The steep gable on the left and the lower main field meet along a valley, and the shingle courses on both sides have to line up across it. Look at how straight the courses run down the gable face and across the field: on a colonial this size the eye reads crooked rows from the street long before anyone notices a nail line. A steep pitch also sheds water fast, which is why the work that matters on a roof like this is at the edges and the brick, not in the middle of the slope.
Roof Replacement · Completed · 2026
Re-Roofed Rear Roof Lines Beside the Chimney — Franklin Lakes, NJ
The back of the Franklin Lakes house, shot through the pines: new architectural shingles on the rear roof lines around a brick chimney, above vinyl siding and an arched window.
Franklin Lakes is heavily wooded and the back of this house shows it, with white pine branches hanging right over the roof. Trees that close change what a roof has to put up with: needles and debris that sit in valleys and against a chimney, and shade that keeps a slope damp longer than a sunny one. The chimney is the other thing to look at in this frame. It is where a roof meets masonry that moves differently from the framing, so it is one of the first places to check on any roof, new or old.
Typical projects
Common Franklin Lakes Jobs
Second-cycle IGU and full-window replacement where 1970s-80s builder glass has fogged
Custom arched and geometric glass for Colonials and contemporaries in High Woods and Mill Gate
Sash restoration and insert units in the east-side Dutch stone and fieldstone farmhouses
Skylight glass paired into whole-house replacement packages on 1980s ranches and splits
Storefront and door glass along Franklin Avenue and the High Mountain Road corridor
Franklin Lakes Note
Half-acre lots and long driveways mean we stage from the truck without blocking the street, and most whole-house jobs run one to two days with a compact crew. Franklin Lakes has no borough-wide historic district, so a typical window replacement involves no preservation review and, in the same opening, needs no construction permit — when the scope does require one, we pull it under HIC reg.# 13VH13970900; the borough's National Register homes are listed individually, and we flag any address that falls under separate review at the measure visit.
Seasonal pattern in Franklin Lakes
Two exposures shape the work here: water and highway. Franklin Lake, Crystal Lake, and Shadow Lake, plus the 147-acre Franklin Lakes Nature Preserve on the old Haledon Reservoir site, keep the low lakeside blocks damp — condensation collects on north-facing glass and lower rails soften first, so we check sills and framing before speccing anything near the water. Route 208 runs about two miles through the borough's middle and floods near its Ewing Avenue interchange in heavy storms, and homes fronting it or the I-287 edge at Exit 59 carry real traffic noise; laminated glass or an interior acoustic insert is the answer on those addresses, not on the quiet interior streets.
Residential window permits from the Franklin Lakes Code Enforcement (Building/Construction) office at Borough Hall; when a job needs one, we pull and post it before the install date.
A window replaced in its existing opening, without changing the opening's size or framing, needs no construction permit (N.J.A.C. 5:23-2.7(c)1v), as long as a replacement egress window does not come back smaller. When a job does need one, we pull it directly under HIC reg.# 13VH13970900 — homeowner does not file or pay the township separately.
Neighborhoods we serve in Franklin Lakes
Urban Farms High Woods Mill Gate Shadow Lake Estates Franklin Lake area Franklin Avenue corridor Franklin Lakes Town Square High Mountain Road corridor
My Urban Farms colonial has fogged windows on the whole rear elevation — is that a full replacement?
When a run of insulated units fails together, it is almost always the original builder glass reaching end of seal life rather than anything structural. If the frames and sash are sound we swap only the glass units: one measure visit, fabrication in two to five business days, then roughly thirty minutes of install per window. Arched and geometric shapes take the same process, just custom-templated.
Can new windows cut the noise from Route 208 near our house?
On the blocks fronting Route 208 or the I-287 edge, yes, measurably. A laminated lite quiets vibration through its plastic interlayer, and setting two panes of unequal thickness in the same unit keeps the pair from sharing a resonant note, so a wider band of traffic frequencies gets blocked. Where your existing frames are still solid, an interior soundproof insert captures most of that benefit with far less disturbance.
We have one of the older Dutch stone farmhouses on the east side — do we have to replace the original windows?
Not by default. If the frames are square and the wood sound, we restore the existing sash and add discreet weatherstripping, which keeps the proportions the house was built with. Where lower rails or sills have rotted past saving, an insert unit fits inside the old frame without disturbing the masonry opening. We grade it opening by opening at the measure visit.
The full detail
Windows, Glass & Doors — Statewide Guides
This page covers Franklin Lakes. The pages below carry the method behind it — how a replacement is measured and flashed, what a repair actually costs to scope, when a failed insulated unit can be swapped without replacing the window, and a calculator you can run before you call.
Precision is a full exterior contractor, too — roof repair & replacement, leak and flashing work, gutters, siding, chimneys, and skylights, same-day in Bergen County, and elsewhere depending on the job and how booked we are that day, from our Garfield shop.
