Renew & Reuse,  Upcycling

Let’s Restore the Painted Window

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If you’ve read my post ‘Let’s Repair the Painted Window‘, then you know that a few years ago, my oldest son gave me a couple of painted antique windows. If you haven’t read the post, head on over for the details of where they came from and what happened to the one with the peach flowers.

Painted Windows

In a nutshell, a windstorm caused the flower window to fall from the fence and break into a hundred pieces! I had to decide whether to trash the piece of art or attempt to repair it. I chose to repair & restore it. Once it was restored, I just couldn’t subject it to the weather again so I found a place in the house to hang it where we could enjoy it year round.

Damaged & Restored Flower Window
Restoration of the flower painted window

After I decided to hang the flower window in the house, I thought it best to also hang the Seattle window inside too. Since I had been using both windows as fence art, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the condition of the paint. Now that I was putting them in the house, I took a closer look at the Seattle details. Much of the paint was gone. I attributed it to the years I had used the piece outside.

Original Seattle Window Art

While I am creative in many areas, fine art painting is not one of them. Give me a wall to paint and I am all over it but a canvas, not so much. I pulled out the picture that I had taken when my son gave the windows to me. I was surprised that a lot of the paint was already missing at that time. For instance, the entire Pike Place market was blank! How was I going to replicate what had been there when all I had was a blank space? I suppose I ‘d have to Google pictures of the Market and create it from scratch. This is really going to test my creative ability!

As you can see in the picture below, the weather had affected the writing on the signs & it had begun to fade. Another section of the clock face had also disappeared. I set up a table in the garage and placed the window on it. Then I picked out the colors of craft paint that I thought I would need, along with a few of the small artists’ paintbrushes I had in my craft supplies.

Condition of the Paint right before beginning the restoration

I started the restoration process with what I considered the easiest sections, the wording on the signs. Using a small paintbrush, I filled in Nordstrom & Public Market Center letters with a nice, deep red color. Once the paint had dried on the wording, I carefully filled in the background of each sign – white for the Market & grey for the Nordstrom one.  After the grey dried, using red, I repainted the dots around the edge of the Nordstrom sign and then trimmed it out with silver.

Next up was the clock face. Using a deep peach, I created a circle, carefully outlining the numbers that had not yet disappeared. After the peach had dried, with a very small paintbrush, I filled out the clock numbers that were still visible, added the ones that were gone & painted in the clock hands.

Now I thought I would tackle the Space Needle.

As you can see in this section of the ‘before’ picture, the only item on the Space Needle that was somewhat intact was the red ball on the top. The body of the Space Needle was gone when I first got the window.

After some Space Needle googling & looking at pictures I had taken, like this one, on our visits to the Needle, I recreated it using white and silver. For the dining room window, I used black and gold.

Restored Space Needle

I was now getting a little confidence in this painting project so I decided to recreate Pike Street Market. Heading back online, I viewed several pictures of Pike Place Market to get ideas of how to fill in the space below the sign. I chose to include a roof and paint it deep rust. I added a flower box & a few flowers along the front of the roof similar to the ones in the picture below. To give a sense of the market, I painted in a background of blue and added the green columns.

When the paint was dry, I painted in a little pig to represent the brass hog that stands at the entrance of the Market. He’s adorable, yes? 🙂

The paint on the Ship was in decent shape so I just painted over the blue to brighten it up and then outlined the windows in grey and silver. Now that the smaller sections were done, I moved on to the mountain, sky & trees. The paint in these areas was also in decent shape which gave me a nice base to add to. I did decide to add some snow to the tops of the trees, changing the scene from a summer one to winter. Once I finished refreshing all the paint, I sealed the entire painting & frame with two coats of polyurethane.

Before & After Art Restoration
Restoration Complete
Restoration process

As unsure as I was to tackle the restoration of this painting, I am very happy with the way it turned out!

New location

Have you ever tried to restore something that was not in your creative arena? If so, how did it come out? I’d LOVE to hear about it! Let me know in the Comment section below what the item was and how it came out!

Supplies Used

  • Craft Paint
  • Polyurethane
  • Paintbrushes

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