Modernize a whole community without ever emptying it — we retrofit windows and sliding patio doors unit by unit, as each one turns. One crew, one standard, across every building you own.
Sonshine is the only Orange County glass vendor built around occupied-building and on-turn multifamily retrofit work. Property managers and HOA boards get one accountable partner instead of a patchwork of single-family installers.
Replacing glass in an occupied apartment community is a scheduling problem before it is a glass problem, and single-home installers are not built to solve it. When you replace a window in one house, you deal with one owner, one schedule, and one empty room. A 200-unit community holds hundreds of tenants who each have a lease, a work schedule, and a low tolerance for a stranger drilling next to their bed. Any vendor who treats the building as a bigger version of a house creates resident complaints that land on your desk.
Search the Orange County market for a glass vendor that speaks to this problem and you find near silence. Local installers market frame material, glass type, and installation quality to single-family homeowners, and their content stops there. None of it explains how work gets sequenced across occupied units, how tenants get notified, or how a retrofit fits a unit-turn calendar. That absence leaves you piecing together a multi-unit plan from vendors who only know how to do one house at a time.
Sonshine answers this with two mechanisms that fit how apartment buildings actually operate. The first is on-turn retrofit. Sonshine moves into a unit during its vacant make-ready window between tenants, so no resident relocates and no wing shuts down. A vacant unit is a clock, and every empty day costs the owner rent, so Sonshine coordinates directly with your turn timeline. The second is phased scheduling for units that stay occupied, confining the work to a small slice of the property at any time.
That approach already runs in the field. Sonshine is retrofitting a roughly 250-unit Orange County apartment community with white vinyl, dual-pane, low-E windows and sliding patio doors, working through the property turn by turn as units vacate.
Sonshine schedules the noisiest, most intensive work on a small slice of the property at a time, not the whole building at once. Industry practice for tenant-in-place projects caps each phase at roughly 10 to 15 percent of units, which keeps disruption confined to one area while the rest of the community stays normal. Sonshine's own crew handles the measuring, fitting, and installation for each phase, so the timeline stays predictable across the property.
The most efficient path retrofits units "on turn." When a tenant moves out, the unit sits vacant for a make-ready window before the next lease starts. Sonshine moves in during that window, replaces the windows and sliding patio doors, and finishes before the new tenant arrives. No resident relocates, and no wing of the building shuts down. A vacant unit costs the owner money every day it stays empty, so Sonshine coordinates directly with the property's turn timeline to compress that gap rather than extend it.
For one 250-unit Orange County apartment community, Sonshine works turn by turn as units vacate, swapping aging glass for white vinyl, dual-pane, low-E retrofit units. The property manager doesn't wait for a community-wide project date. Each unit gets its new windows and patio doors during its natural vacancy, and the retrofit follows the leasing calendar the manager already runs.
Units that stay occupied get the phased approach instead. Sonshine prioritizes vacant and soon-to-vacate units first, then sequences the occupied ones so a resident sees the crew for a short, scheduled visit rather than weeks of activity outside their door. Scheduling the disruptive work during typical daytime hours, when many residents are out, further limits the intrusion.
Buffer days sit between phases so one delayed unit doesn't push back every unit behind it. If a window arrives late or an install runs long, the contingency absorbs the slip instead of cascading it down the schedule. Sonshine's own measuring and fitting crew supports this because the same people who took the field measurements do the install, which cuts the back-and-forth that stretches turnovers with outside labor. For a property manager, that means a phase plan that holds and unit turnovers that land close to their promised dates.
Resident complaints during a retrofit almost always trace back to two things, surprise and mess. Sonshine's crew controls both by containing the work and telling people what to expect before it starts. Sound barriers and acoustic enclosures go around noisy equipment, and dust control with sealed containment keeps debris out of hallways and neighboring units. Water, power, and HVAC stay running through the work, and Sonshine schedules any unavoidable interruption for off-peak hours so tenants aren't left without service midday.
You get one point of contact for the project rather than a rotating crew you have to chase. That person sends advance notice before each phase, spells out which units are affected and for how long, and answers resident questions as they come up. Because the work moves through a small slice of the property at a time, notices stay specific instead of blanketing the whole building with warnings that don't apply to most people.
Property managers can pass Sonshine's schedule straight through to tenants without translating contractor jargon. When a resident asks the front office why there's a truck outside their window, you already have the answer, and you can point to a written notice that went out days earlier.
Keeping tenants informed protects your retention numbers, not just your goodwill. Industry data ties minimized disruption to tenant retention improvements of up to 15 percent when work is phased and communicated well (Fincor Construction). A resident who knows the noise ends Thursday renews. A resident blindsided by a week of grinding starts reading other listings. The communication discipline Sonshine brings to a glass retrofit is what keeps a necessary project from turning into a wave of move-out notices.
Most Orange County glass vendors market to single-family homeowners, which leaves property managers stitching together separate contractors for in-unit work, common areas, and storefronts. Sonshine handles the whole portfolio under one relationship, so a single crew and a single point of contact cover every building and unit type you manage.
Inside the units, Sonshine installs white vinyl, dual-pane, low-E windows and matching sliding patio doors. These run quieter, hold cooler indoor temperatures in summer, and glide open more easily than the single-pane aluminum frames and worn sliders they replace. Residents notice the difference on day one, and that comfort upgrade is what drives renewal decisions.
The scope runs well past in-unit glass. Sonshine covers leasing-office and clubhouse storefronts, lobby and common-area glazing, gym and common-area mirrors, and balcony and patio glass. When a pane breaks, the crew handles replacement and board-up during business hours. For privacy, anti-graffiti protection, or matching tints across a property, Sonshine provides window film to spec.
On the technical side, Sonshine measures, fits, and installs everything with its own crew rather than farming the work to subcontractors. Most glass is ordered to spec for each opening, some panels are cut on site to fit odd conditions, and some pieces get polished at the shop before installation. That precision fitting is what keeps sliding doors aligned and storefronts sealed across dozens of openings, and it means one accountable partner stands behind the result instead of a chain of vendors pointing at each other.
For a manager running several buildings, coordinating through one vendor removes the scheduling friction of matching multiple contractors to multiple properties. Sonshine sequences work across your portfolio, tracks which units and common areas still need attention, and keeps the same crew familiar with your buildings from one phase to the next. You get consistent workmanship and a single number to call when something needs follow-up. See how we work with property managers across every property type.
Sliding glass doors and window wall systems fail in predictable ways in older apartment stock, and both demand exact measuring and fitting to work right. Aging patio sliders develop worn tracks and rollers that make them stick, and their old single-pane aluminum frames let in heat and street noise. Large window wall runs suffer seal failure that fogs the glass between panes and lets air leak around the edges. Each opening in a building can vary by a fraction of an inch, so a panel that fits one unit binds or gaps in the next.
Sonshine's own crew measures, fits, and installs every opening, which is where the accountability lives. Sonshine orders most glass and units to spec for each opening, cuts some on site, and polishes some pieces at the shop, but the crew that installs is the crew that measured. For in-unit work, Sonshine replaces old single-pane aluminum windows and worn sliders with white vinyl, dual-pane, low-E units. Residents get glass that runs quieter, stays cooler, and slides easier than what it replaced, and safety glazing goes in wherever code requires it near doors and low openings.
That same crew handles the rest of the glass on the property under one relationship. Sonshine retrofits leasing-office and clubhouse storefronts, replaces amenity and lobby glass, hangs gym and common-area mirrors, and services balcony and patio glass. When a pane breaks, Sonshine handles replacement and board-up during business hours. For privacy, anti-graffiti protection, or matching tints across a community, Sonshine provides window film. Wherever glass sits on the property, one vendor is responsible for it.
Most estimates for multi-unit glass work cost you nothing to start. You can send photos and measurements per unit or per building by text, and our crew reviews the scope before anyone drives out. For a full portfolio walkthrough on-site, we may charge a small trip fee, which we tell you upfront so there are no surprises when the estimate lands.
Starting with photos speeds up planning because it lets us group similar units and price the repeatable work first. A building where forty units share the same sliding door model is faster to scope than a mixed portfolio with three window wall styles. The more you can show us early, the tighter the initial numbers get.
For planning purposes, single sliding glass door replacements in an apartment often fall in the range of a few hundred to just over a thousand dollars per opening, depending on glass type, safety glazing, and track condition. Larger window wall sections and storefront-style glazing run higher because the panels are bigger and the fitting is more exacting. Treat those figures as a starting point for your budget, not a quote.
A real quote comes after we measure the actual openings and confirm glass specs, since older buildings hide surprises like out-of-square frames and non-standard sizes. Once we walk a representative sample of units, we can build a per-unit price and a phased schedule together. That way you approve the budget and the sequence before the first panel gets ordered.
Sonshine Glass & Mirror handles occupied-building retrofit work across an Orange County portfolio as one accountable crew, from the first measurement to the final installed panel. You get a single point of contact who phases the work around your tenants, coordinates sliding doors and window walls across multiple buildings, and keeps disruption confined to a small slice of units at a time. No juggling separate contractors for each property or unit type.
Start with a portfolio walkthrough so we can see the buildings, the failing glass, and the turnover schedule you're working with. If a full site visit is premature, text or email photos unit by unit or building by building, and we can shape a phased plan and a directional budget from there. Reach out through our contact page to schedule the walkthrough or send your first round of photos.
Yes. Sonshine gives you the specs, price ranges, and product details boards typically need before signing off, so you can bring a clear plan to a vote instead of a vague estimate. Once a board approves the scope, you become the single point of contact for scheduling.
Yes, and it is the preferred method. Sonshine works vacating units on a turn-by-turn basis with no resident relocations and no community-wide shutdown, which keeps disruption confined to units already empty.
Sonshine coordinates advance written notice through your management office and schedules intensive work during typical daytime hours when residents are usually out. You control the messaging to residents, and Sonshine works around the access windows you set.
White vinyl, dual-pane, low-E retrofit windows and matching sliding patio doors. These suit aging apartment stock where single-pane units and worn tracks are the common failure points.
Yes, on a rolling turn-by-turn basis. Sonshine has retrofitted a roughly 250-unit Orange County community this way, unit by unit as leases turned, without vacating the property.
Yes. Sonshine covers leasing-office and clubhouse storefronts, gym and common-area mirrors, lobby glass, balcony and patio glass, and broken-glass replacement across the property.
Contact your Sonshine point of contact and send photos of the issue. Photos let Sonshine assess the problem and schedule the right follow-up without a separate diagnostic trip.
Send photos unit by unit or building by building, or schedule a portfolio walkthrough, and we'll shape a phased plan and a directional budget that fits your turn schedule.