Stain Glass Windows: Its Like Home Church

This project is probably one of my favourites. It was such a rare opportunity, that I don't think anyone else could have such a thing. I was in the right place at the right time.

My church was doing some renovations, and my Dad and Uncle were in charge. Our church sanctuary (where the Sunday morning service is held) had stain glass windows on both of the side walls. Since, due to previous renovations, one of the side walls was actually an interior wall, the windows were going to be taken out to be replaced with a simple flat wall.  As soon as I heard this, I asked my Uncle if I could have the windows. Thankfully our church had no use for them, so one day after the Sunday service my Dad loaded two windows in the back of his truck to take home.

They were a lot different than what I expected when I received them. I was expecting a window with a small simple, but as you can see in the picture, that's not what I got. I had to change my plans a bit, but I think it worked out in the end.

Photo by David Chung

What I did:

Photo by David Chung

I started by sanding down all the wood. There were layers upon layers of hideous 80's church color oil based paint, so it took a long time. I then tapped up the windows with painters tape so that I didn't get paint on the glass when I painted.

I was hoping for a beachy/vintage look so I wanted a lot of the wood grain to be showing. To do this I added some leftover white paint to my clear varnish. I painted the whole thing with the faintly white varnish. I liked the effect on the wood after the first coat, and didn't want it any whiter, so I used a different un-tinted can of varnish for the second coat. After the varnish dried for two days I took off the tape, and scraped all the dirt and old paint splatters off the windows.

Photo By David Chung

There was not a lot of steps, but the sanding took forever, so it felt a lot harder than it was. I also later found out that the windows are fake stain glass and not real. It looks the same to me in the end.