We not only fell in love with the floors of the house when we saw it for the first time, its doors and windows also captivated us, and we set out to try to restore them, even though at first we thought that it would not be easy given the age of the wood, almost 100 years.
Reding41
In deep
The building in which the house is located, “Las Casas de Reding”, a protected historical building that we have told you about in a previous post, did not deserve anything less. Preserving the original architectural elements of this emblematic building in Malaga, including its inside, was one of our objectives from the beginning.
Genaysa, the company that has made the reform, took us to Ifamasa, manufacturers and artisans of wood. They have managed to restore the doors and windows, and for us, being able to visit the workshop and learn about the process that has taken to restore each of the pieces has made us fall in love with them even more, and appreciate what it means to have these jewels in the house. The artisan process was rejected in the past because it was not possible to make identical pieces, and precisely today that is the value of the artisan. This "imperfection" makes them unique pieces.
The process takes many hours of work, and a lot of love. In the first place, the pieces are classified on site, to later disassemble them carefully and take them to the workshop. There they are put in a bath with caustic soda for approximately two hours, and if a first cleaning does not remove the remains of paint, the process is carried out again.
Once the pieces are clean, they are taken to the workshop, where all the nails are removed and any element in general that prevents them from continuing to work, they are sanded, damaged pieces are replaced, parts of the carpentry that are affected are fixed, and they get prepared for the new hardware that they are going to get. Then they finish painting, lacquering, and varnishing. Finally, the glasses are put on.
In our case, we have painted the windows, but when we saw how the doors had been once they had passed the process in which the previous paint was removed, we decided to leave them unpainted, thus preserving the natural color of the wood.
