Beautiful Bexley Door Restoration

The door pictured below came to Blind Eye Restoration for restoration in 2021 from Bexley, Ohio. The door had been painted black on the exterior and covered in a dark stain on the interior that didn't match any of the wood work in the home. The three decorative leaded glass panels had also become extremely bowed and broken from heat expansion and age. We were contracted to strip the paint and existing stain for refinishing, repair damages to the wood, restore the leaded glass panels to their original shape, and clean the hardware back to its original shine.

The Blind Eye team was able to correct the bowing in the leaded panels. We began by removing remaining cementing and broken glass, removing old solder repairs, and replacing lead came where necessary. New glass was cut to replace breaks in the design from the bowing and fitted to the original locations. All three panels were then fully sealed with a custom pigmented cement before being reinstalled in the door.

The door was manually scraped and lightly sanded down to maintain a tight grain structure. Small cracks and areas of loss were filled. As it was a fir wood we started with a shellac coat that also acted as a grain filler. We created a custom honey color mixture applied in multiple applications followed with a varnish finish. Any areas of fill were hand painted to match the surrounding grain pattern and sealed with the varnish as well. The hardware (door handles, hinges, knobs) was cleaned and the grime was scraped away to leave the metal clean for natural patina to form over time.