We consider a divergence-form elliptic difference operator on the lattice , with a coefficient matrix that is an i.i.d. perturbation of the identity matrix. Recently, Bourgain introduced novel techniques from harmonic analysis to prove the convergence of the Feshbach-Schur perturbation series related to the averaged Green's function of this model. Our main contribution is a refinement of Bourgain's approach which improves the key decay rate from to . (The optimal decay rate is conjectured to be .) As an application, we derive estimates on higher derivatives of the averaged Green's function which go beyond the second derivatives considered by Delmotte-Deuschel and related works.