72 degrees and sunny

Its a beautiful day for a pre-bid meeting at the Pasadena City Hall.

#TBT Raymond Theater

(oops a day late) Restoration work in progress at the Raymond Theater in Pasadena (now the Raymond Renaissance) completed in 2009.  Check out our project page for more Before and After pictures of our work.

COMPLETED PROJECT: Mayfield Senior School Copper Door Restoration

Mayfield Senior School was originally founded in 1931 by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, and is a private, all female, college prep school in Pasadena, CA.  The house at the heart of the campus was built between 1914-1919 and was known as the Marshall-Eagle Estate.  The property was purchased for the Society of the Holy Child Jesus by Dr. Charles and Vera Strub in 1950.

We were contacted a few months ago to see if we could save a pair of original copper and glass doors.  The existing doors were pretty far gone: missing handles, missing trim, numerous holes and old patches in the copper cladding, deteriorated wood, mismatched hardware, etc.  However, they couldn’t merely be replaced, because installing new doors would mean the opening would have to be upgraded to meet the current building codes.  So instead, we took the doors back to our shop and got to work on the meticulous restoration:

• repaired the deteriorated wood core
• replaced the non-salvageable copper cladding
• repaired existing trim and replaced missing trim
• patina’d old and new copper to match
• reproduced a missing handle
• installed new slimline door closers

The existing copper doors before restoration.

One of the original handles was long gone.

Newer polished brass door hardware did not coordinate with the historic doors.

After the copper cladding was removed, we repaired the water damaged wood core.

Copper doors after restoration was completed

Can you tell which handle is the reproduction?

New slimline door closers were installed and existing brass hardware was refinished to better coordinate with the historic door.

We’re pretty happy with the results, and the school is ecstatic that we could save their beautiful doors.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Mayfield Senior School Copper Door Restoration

We just removed a pair of beautiful old copper doors from the Mayfield Senior School in Pasadena.  Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks to see the “after” pictures.