Looking to repair or replace leaded glass door sidelights archived

Did u get a response?
I need someone
I found a guy But they want 600 for two small areas

Opulent Glassworks, 313 Valley St. S.O. info@opulentglassworks.com 973.275.0806 Maybe they can help

Opulent did a wonderful job restoring a leaded glass panel IN a door (not a sidelight) -- carefully finding materials that matched/came very close to matching the same glass panel on another door. Took the panel out and brought it to them. That was maybe 8 years ago, perhaps they aren't doing that kind of work anymore. As I recall a husband/wife team that are very talented. Good luck!

We used Renner & Faust. Extraordinarily talented artists. You won't be disappointed. Nice, down-to-earth people as well.

http://www.rennerandfaust.com/about.aspx

(This kind of work isn't cheap, btw. It's an art, and lead is a pretty hazardous material to work with. You get what you pay for.)

pdg == good point about the lead. My kids were still pretty little then -- and Opulent made a point that the kids shouldn't touch lead windows and she told me that if the leading oxidizes, that's even worse, since that powder goes everywhere. Best thing to do is to wipe it with a wet paper towel, which goes straight into the trash.

In hindsight, having leaded glass in a door or sidelights is more than a little stupid, considering adults and kids are opening, closing, touching, slamming them all the time.

/p

Based on what I read here, I had Renner & Faust do mine. Mark did a terrific job at a great price.

http://tom-mcgee.com/blog/archives/3584

Anyone have newer thoughts on this? Renner and Faust's website seems to be gone, FWIW.

My eldest scared the heck out of all of us today...lost balance, slipped on a younger brothers toy, and smacked her head into one of our side panels. Blessedly she broke out a section of the glass without even scratching her head, but now we need to decide what to do about our side panels.

Front door needs replacing anyway (ancient, not in good shape), so we may just replace the whole thing, but I'm sentimental about the old leaded side panels, so have to think about my options.

Does anyone have repair or replacement suggestions (from people still in business, ideally)?

You can call Frank Valvano from Orange Valley Glass at 973 414 9100 or Tony from Summit Homecrafters at 908 644 9819

Bumping this. Met with Marc Faust and really liked him. Price seemed competitive with one other bid we received. @PDG or @Tom, anyone have any pics? I got another reference but the client is out of town and has not been ke to provide a pic.

@tom, never mind, I saw it on your blog. Thanks.

I have pics, but I honestly can't remember which work was old and which was newly made by them! I can't even tell which piece of window glass was replaced. Part of what we asked them to do included cleaning ancient paint off the old lead work. The end result is not beautiful by any means, since it was repair of old craftsmanship and not entirely their product, but it is 100% percent better than it was and the lead pieces they made they aged so well I can't tell the new from the old.

I"ll post photos so you can see what I mean.

Meanwhile, their website has some gorgeous stuff on it that is all theirs.

Thanks, @pdg.

I am looking for the leaded glass ''cabinet'' doors which flanked my fireplace, one 1/2 door on each side. . they were disposed of beore I purchased the house.

Critterlover - you might get lucky with a company called Olde Good Things, located in PA. We sold all of the old fixtures (that they wanted) from our house before we started our renovation years ago.

http://ogtstore.com

@pdg, Marc included removing old paint from the windows in his contract and I think that will help a lot. If you remember to take a pic I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Here are photos I took last night w/my phone, shh.

The full photo shows the skylight that had a piece of glass replaced. The closeups of flowers show either a replacement flower, or an original flower - don't remember. I also took a closeup of a half flower at the edge of the window that had gobs of paint on it from poor paint jobs.

These skylights are only single pane and are not energy efficient, but we really liked them around our door. They old touch they add (even though the house was built in the 50's) is nicer to me (for our particular door) than anything "new" I've seen lately.

Oh wow. That's cool.
Agreed, I am not a fan of the new doors with leaded glass I have seen. They lack all the character one expects in leaded glass.

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Glad to read it has been resolved.

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Hmmm. Missed the posts before they were edited. Shh - please let me know if I might want to stop referring that couple.

To anyone else who might read my referral above, for reasons I can't share publicly, I deeply regret that I can no longer recommend the company who did work on our leaded skylights.

@pdg, we worked it out. Maybe edit your comments above. Hopefully our work will be completed within the week.

Good to hear, shh! I wish you the best, and hope that the work you end up with is as good as I led you to believe it could be!

I'm still hesitant to endorse as heartily as I did back in March, complete with pictures, etc. Anyone needing this type of work done should take my excellent experience with a grain of salt and get some recent referrals. Like maybe from shh, for instance.

Yes, after a bit of a delay my work should finally be completed. I will report back, hopefully with a glowing endorsement.

@shh and @pdg and anyone else:
I would very much like any details you can give me, good and bad, about leaded glass pros you've used. I've had several workmen I trust suggest Marc Faust, so I'd definitely like more info there in particular. Feel free to p.m. me if you aren't comfortable posting here.

I cannot give a glowing endorsement. He finally installed our windows (after many months of delays, overages, excuses) and was supposed to come back to install hardware and fix a few things but we decided it was not worth the aggravation to have him back to complete this part of the work. He damaged a "friend's" property during a project he started (based on these recommendations) and lied, ignored calls and emails, etc. The work he did for us is ok, but there are some issues we are not 100% happy with (for example, we paid him a lot of money to repair a leaded glass door and this is how he left it. When I asked him he said this is how it had to be done. Some of the copper wire is already detached.)
The windows themselves look ok, but I would be reluctant to have him do anything because he was really, really difficult to deal with.
I should add we did pay him In full for the work he did but didn't have him do a few other things we initially hired him to do because of the above issues.

Thanks for your frank reply. Makes me wonder what's changed with him. I've heard nothing but glowing endorsements of Marc Faust until these recent posts.

Well perhaps the missing Lee Renner is the key. We hired, and were quite pleased with the team Renner and Faust.

I feel just terrible that I was one who sang their praises and poor shh suffered! I try to be much more cautious about who and how I recommend anymore!