How to Measure for Window Grilles

I’ve had several people reach out to me recently asking how to measure their window for a replacement grill.

In that question are actually two other questions that have to be resolved. First of all, you need to know exactly where you’re supposed to measure on your window in order to get the right size grille. And secondly, you need to know how to drive your tape measure.

How to Drive a Tape Measure

So let’s start with a tape measure first, and then we will take a look at a sort of mockup of a window and show you exactly what we’re doing here. So the sad reality is that every tape measure is a little bit different. You have to figure out exactly what kind of tool it is that you’re working with before you get started. Every tape measure is going to have different demarcations along the tape. So you have to figure out what kind of tool you’re working with.

Standard vs. Metric Tape Measure

Now, I prefer to use standard tape measure, which means it measures an inches. If you however prefer to use metric, by all means, go ahead and do that. I can accept measurements in either form. Just please let me know which one you’re using because it will make a difference. So let’s take a look at the standard tape measure. To begin with, like I said, you have to figure out what kind of tool you’re using.

Into How Many Parts is Each Inch Divided?

And what I mean specifically is you want to figure out how the inch is divided up into parts. Now, because I’m not teaching a math lesson, I’m just teaching you how to give me the measurements that I need in order to create a window grille. I’m going to make this really, really simple. So if you’ll see here between the big lines, this marks one entire inch. Now, in order to figure out what all these little lines mean, you just have to find, start with the first line and count your way across, and it’ll tell you how many pieces this particular inch is divided into.

So we’ll start here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, which means our inch is divided into 16 parts. Now that means when you send me a measurement, if there is anything more than an exact inch right there, I’m going to need to know how many parts extra are added to that inch to give me the total. So let’s say for example, your window was very small and it was three inches, and the line landed right here, all you would do is count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and that means five sixteens. It would be three inches plus five sixteens. Does that make sense? So the goal here is just to come up with a really simple way to get the exact measurement. Now in our business, we can cut down to a thousandth of an inch instead of 16 parts. Our inch can be divided into a thousand parts. We can make the window grills that accurate, but I have never seen a tape measure that can do that.

And frankly, for the purposes of what we’re doing and the purposes of measuring for window grills, sixteens probably enough. If you have a tape measure that only has the eights marked, you’ll know because when you count the lines, there will only be eights that can work. I would recommend going with the sixteens. If you have a 16th of an inch down of accuracy, that’s probably close enough to get us where we need to go. So let’s take a look at this example here. I have drawn a window on my shipping table here. I’ve made it a butcher block paper, and you’ll see that I have marked a rectangle.

Measure Just the Glass

This rectangle is to represent the glass, not the trim outside of the window or around the window or any part of the sash. It’s just the glass. And for the purposes of measuring for a window grille, you want to measure just the glass.

Let’s Try It

So here we go. I’m going to lay the tape measure right along the edge on one side of the glass and over to the other. And over here I see that there’s 24 plus a bunch of lines. Now using the example that we started with, in order to keep it really simple, all you need to do now is count the number of little lines. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. There are 12 little lines, and we already know that this tape measure is divided up into 16. So I have 12 parts out of those sixteens that I need to add onto 24. So the total measurement is 24 and 12 sixteens. Now, if you happen to have been driving a tape measure for some time, you’ll know that 12 sixteens also means three quarters of an inch. However, you don’t need to know all that in order to get me the measurements that I need. All you need to do is to count the number of lines that make up the total inch, put that on the bottom, and then when you measure your window count the total number of lines that that window comes to. Put that number on the top in this case 12, and you’re going to give me that number to represent the part of an inch above, in this case, 24. That makes up this window size. So let’s do one more.

I don’t know if you can see that real well, but right here we have 15 inches plus some more, and you’ll notice that this is where the end of the glass would come to. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to count the little lines. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So there are eight little lines to come to the edge of the glass. So I know that I have 15 plus eight lines over 16. There are eight parts of the sixteens that I need to add onto that 15 in order to give me the right measurement.

No Math Quiz!

As I said, there’s no math quiz involved. You don’t have to tell. You don’t have to reduce the fractions. Just give the total number of parts over the hole that are needed to make up the exact window dimension.