I found this front door at the ReStore for $50! It’s solid wood and has a leaded glass window.
Other people were pawing at it, so I shot a quick pic for Mark to see and ask if I should get it. It had 3 little pieces of broken glass and I wanted him to do a fast search online to see how much it would be to fix them. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to look that up, but there isn’t a whole lot of info, and the sites you do find want you to get a quote from them…entering all of your info and someone will get back to you in 2 business days. Yeah. No thanks.
We decided for $50, we would go ahead and bite the bullet and worry about the broken glass later. I researched fixing it myself, and that looks like more than what I’m equipped for. I called a local glass company and they quoted me $300 to replace 3 tiny pieces! I wasn’t crazy about the fact it was shiny gold colored, so I got a quote for replacing the whole thing, and that was going to be $400-$500! My good deal was quickly getting out of hand, so the glass guy and I started brainstorming.
The beveled part of the design was still in good shape, so we decided he would chip out all the other glass, leave the beveled glass down the middle, then I would paint it the color I wanted. He would then make 2 pieces of tempered glass to fit the big hole and sandwich my piece in the middle. I had no idea how this was going to look or if it was just going to wind up being a hot mess, but I had a vision…and hoped it would turn out the way it looked in my head.
After he chipped out the glass, I taped all of the beveled pieces. I hate taping, and this was time consuming and extremely frustrating. After I painstakingly taped every nook and cranny of this glass (both sides!), I showed it to Mark, and he says ‘why didn’t you just tape it off then use the exacto knife to trim it?’ Well, crap.
Next, I primed it, then I painted the piece with Rustolium’s Hammered Bronze. It’s the same color I used for my Kitchen Hardware, and looks more pewter than bronze.
I then worked on sanding, priming and painting the door.
And then the moment of truth was upon us.
It looked so good! Better than I had hoped. Even the glass guy was impressed. He said he had never done anything like that, and now he had options to tell customers about. Cost of 2 pieces of tempered glass to fit, $150. You need it to be tempered so 1-it’s harder for a bad guy or a kid to put their hand through, and 2-so it will pass code.
I finished up the trim and polyed.
Then it was installation day!
We knew the hinge holes wouldn’t line up, so we put it up there and marked for chiseling. I will go back with wood filler later.
And here we are!
The color is Valspar’s Nocturnal Green. It looks almost black until you get up on it, then you see it’s actually green.
Before:
After:
I hope you enjoyed today’s post and that it can help someone.
Y’all come back soon!
Cheers,
Jodi
