Windows Picture Frames

Refinished Old Windows
Become A Beautiful Picture Frame

The Whole Story:

Completed Windows, Shelf, Valance and Candles
I had a lot of fun making this project. As one of my own projects, I was able to do pretty much what I wanted. A couple challenges thrown in and lots of labor resulted in a very nice new feature in our living room.

A couple years before the project began, my mother purchased some old windows at a garage sale. She's always buying old things and then takes them back to Michigan, re-finishes them in "shabby-chic" fashion and sells them. She was to take these windows back up north. A day or two before leaving she asked if perhaps I wanted them. Nope. But ... she had planted a seed. As I thought about them, ideas came to mind. The more I thought, the more I liked the ideas and came back to her asking "Can I still take those windows off your hands?" Like a good mom, she said yes.

The Photo

What I came up with is to hang the windows in the living room and have them be windows to our life. Put a photo behind those windows. I have a friend who prints photos on canvas at large scale. The prints are very nice! So, I looked through all our photos and found one I thought would work well. A photo of our horse in her pasture.

First I had to layout the windows as I envisioned them hanging. Then, measure the size of photo area I needed. Now, I got my photo out on my computer and cropped to the proper proportions. Color correction of photo. Clean up visible photo flaws: leaf piles - out, grass missing in areas - fixed, etc. As an extra touch I wanted a "Where's Waldo" thing going on. I took a photo of my daughter and my son, hid them inside the photo so that you have difficulty finding / seeing them (almost transparent and one is also upside down). For my step-daughter, I carved a "Jennifer + Frankie" into one of the fence posts - again, very subtle, hard to see. (As a teen, I should have known better - not long after the windows reached the wall, the Frankie relationship was over - oh well.) This part did not turn out as well as I wished, but it's ok. Just that compared to my computer screen, the actual prints hidden features are almost impossible to find as they did not show up as well as I had intended. They're there, but absolutely no one has ever found them without our pointing them out. Still a fun feature. Next, I sent the photo to my friend and he made the print on canvas.

The Windows

Windows and Shelf
From there I had to figure out how to get a photo into these windows. and how I would hang it all. I figured out a way to mount the print on the back and raise the photo and windows off the wall an inch or so to give it all a bit of a "floating" feel. I would mount the windows individually with a inch or two gap between them to further enhance the "floating" feel.

Further thoughts included having a valance above the photos. Also, a shelf underneath would be nice I thought. That was the idea.

Many, many hours of sanding. It's quite difficult to get these kinds of old items cleaned up. Lots of little edges and grooves which need to have the old finished removed. The front panes came off and were dealt with individually. I broke one of them in a couple places but glued matters back together. The old windows had some funky looking yellow plastic hinges on the outer edges which were simply removed and discarded. The panes were held in with some ugly yellow plastic push nail things. Those too were discarded. When I put the panes back in I just used some little nails. Looks good and worked well. It took me probably about a year to sand all the old finish off. I didn't work on it all the time. This was my once in a while project for a while. I would get pretty bored if I tried to do this type of work all at once. Working on such a project once in a while, I was able to maintain my enthusiasm and my desired quality. I did finally get it all ready to be refinished.

The finish I used was a Cherry stain. The wood of the windows after sanding appeared redish. I'm not certain what type of wood these windows are made of but perhaps cherry - can't really tell on many old items for sure. I did stain the wood cherry and then four coats of hand applied, hand rubbed satin poly finish. Very nice.

The windows have a very nice appearance and a few nice details. The handles are grooves in the wood which look nice and create a nice visual interest. The panes and grooves are also interesting details.

After finishing the windows, the photos needed to be placed and mounted. First the print was cut in half and a couple inches were cut out of the middle of the print to visually make sense with the gap between the windows. Next I stretched the canvas prints on 1/2 inch plywood boards. Then I used a number of 3/4 pine pieces with rabbit grooves cut into them to hold the photos onto the back of the windows. Each of the pine photo holder pieces were set in an inch or two from the outside edges of the window so that they can not be seen and "float" the windows off the wall surface. Worked out great.

The Shelf

I finished the windows and mounted them on the wall. Very nice, but not great. They were simply lost in the space. They needed the shelf NOW that I intended to add later. Originally, I was just going to get that shelf added some time when I was not too busy with something else. Now, it just didn't look right and priorities changed. I set out immediately to make the shelf.

Shelfs are not that hard. Unless your me. I had to add some style and flair. I had to make it "float" also. No problem, just a normal project to me.

I sat down with some paper and sketched some ideas followed by some tests on scrap pieces. The method and effects I desired were figured out. The main aspect of the shelf ended up a 2 x 4 which is what is mounted to the wall. Counter-sunk holes into the 2 x 4 allow large screws through the 2 x 4 into large, heavy duty wall mounts installed in the wall, all providing a good "base" upon which I mount the shelf, float it and make it super strong as it's in the living room above the couch and I have children.

For style and flair, I added a little "lip" around the upper edge to keep items on the shelf and it looks interesting. The fronts and sides are a little thicker to give it some visual weight appropriate to it's relationship with the widows. It looks heavy-duty. On the front and side surfaces, 45 degree beveled edges were added. The shelf was made from pine and stained with cherry to match the windows. I played with various stains and cherry was of course the best match I could get. The windows had a red tone before stain while the shelf (and later sconces and valance) are made of pine, a simple cherry stain did not match all that well. After about 4 or 5 coats of stain on the pine pieces, the match was / is pretty good. Other than me, I don't think anyone notices that the woods are not quite the same.

The Valance

The next item in the piece was the valance. With the windows and shelf completed, a style was already established. Once again I sat with some paper and sketched some possibilities. What you see in the photo is pretty much the end result. Again, floating it off the wall created some self-imposed engineering problems, but nothing too bad. I wanted it fairly deep to harmonize with the already existing elements. The top edging mimics the shelf edging. Bevels on upper edge and lower edge further harmonize the valance to the other pieces. But ....

I did mess myself up on the valance ... When making the top edging, somehow I cut it short. I had already spent many hours edging and sanding the pieces and was virtually done with the raw wood prep before I figured out my error. Like most of us, I was dissappointed in myself and figured I'd have to make a new piece and just wait howevery many days for my work to catch up with my error before I could stain, finish and assemble the valance. But, as I thought about it another idea came to mind. I could put a little piece in the middle to lengthen the piece I had already made. By cuttin the piece in half and adding in the angular piece you see in the photos of the valance, I filled my error gap. And ... I love it! It's better than I had intended (in my opion) than my original design. One of those "nice mistakes" on this one.

The Candle Holders

Somewhere on this project journey I saw "candles". Don't recall where or when, but way before I reached the end of the project and now, with all else in place it was time to come up with something candles.

I played with some wood in the shop and I made a couple of candle sconces. But, upon completion and holding them in place before mounting on the wall I felt they did not work well - not enough height and weight for the piece. So, back to the shop for some bigger candle ideas.

Now, as you see in the photos, we have a tall candle holder along with my original shorter candle holder on each side. Much better. I included some copper and mirrors behind the candles. The copper is rather thin stuff I found in rolls. I cut that to size and then crinkle it all up and then flatten it out. The copper is mounted to the wood using liquid nails. The mirrors are then mounted to the copper also using liquid nails. The tall candle holders have rounded wood candle holders I found which are finished to match. The short candle holders have large recessed circular areas in the shelf (hand chiseled out) to hold little candle holder things I bought at a candle store.

Window Picture Frame Project Photos: