Restoration

About three years ago, Andrea and I were browsing the remnant "junk" at a secondhand construction store in Montrose. This was back in the initial Little Gym days when we were DINKs (Double-Income, No Kids) and had a lot of extra time and some extra cash on hand. I purchased an old wood window for about forty bucks, which was still very expensive, but I had this vision of turning it into a mirror for our house.
So I bought it, and it sat in the garage for the past three years. A friend of ours, Brad Thomas, was talking with Andrea and I about this book he's writing, and he was saying how you just have to commit to it in order to get it done. Brad, you inspired me.
I had bought the paint stripping supplies actually a month before the spark of Brad's words. So I went out to the garage that weekend, set up a workspace, and went to work. I was amazed at how many layers of paint I was able to scrape of this old window. The orange goo (stripper) I put on the paint would cause it to crinkle and bubble up, allowing me to run a plastic scraper over it, removing heavy, goo-laden chunks of paint in a single swipe.
The color of the window when I got it was a really boring gray on one side, and a muddy brown on the other. Then came a white primer, then a great forest green, then a rich, maroon red. Then I was down to the varnish layer originally put on the window. This process started in the last weeks of December.
Then came the glass removal, and then chiseling part of the wood away so a mirror would sit flush in the frame. Then more stripping, and a final cleansing with some mineral spirits. Finally I was at a point where I could start painting. Two layers of primer, and then the colors. I wanted Caribbean colors, reminiscent of our trip to the Cayman Islands a couple years ago. So on the inside of the window panes I painted two coats of a darker Cayman Blue and a lighter blue called Mar de Jamaica. Over that I put two coats of a satin varnish to seal up the color and make it durable. The majority of the frame is Design Studio White.
I presented it to Andrea on Valentine's Day. It hangs above our computer now, bringing back coastal memories.
Throughout the process, I was amazed at the parallels between the process of the project and our refining as Believers in Christ. It took time--stupid amounts of time. There was lots of waiting. There were times when I could do a few things in spare minutes, other jobs required planned amounts of work. Stumbling blocks came along the way, like when I'd chisel off a huge chunk of wood and have to glue it back on. Or when the glass company cut the glass to the wrong size. But that in turn was a mixed blessing, because my original measurements for the mirror would have been too small even if they had cut it right the first time. So I got a new mirror, free of charge, cut to the correct dimensions. There were gifts along the way too, both from a lady in the framing department at Hobby Lobby. I had gone in there asking for a backing board to put over the mirror to hold it in place. This lady had seen other people making mirrors where they would use black silicone to seal the mirror into the back of the frame. I ended up doing that, and it worked great. When I brought the finished product back to the same lady to have the back papered and installed with mounting hardware, she did it for free. What a blessing!
It took roughly three months, but the work was worth it. My next project? A patio table for our back porch, with a top designed out of bottle caps. Yes, I have been collecting them since college. But I think I'll wait a little until diving into the table. Andrea likes having the car back in the garage. And with all the snow we've had this year, I can't blame her.