Meticulous restoration, custom windows and doors
“We do a little bit of everything,” says Mike Kennedy. “That’s our goal ... but we do specialize in handmade custom wooden windows and doors.
“We’ve started to do more restoration. We’ve done a little bit of work at Dundurn Castle and some of the city’s other historic properties.”
They also take on the occasional furniture job.
“We just did a desk at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre.”
It usually starts with a client meeting.
“Say they’ve got a broken down door they want to replace in their house. We show up on site and talk to them about what they’re looking for. If they want to do something contemporary with the architecture or if they want to do a more modern door. We can work with them to do that too.
“We design everything. All of our mouldings are custom designed, everything.” Most impressive job to date? “We were really happy when the city asked us to do the door for Dundurn Castle. That was huge for us. It’s a formal door. It’s not the front door to the house, but it’s a door that
everyone passes through when they do the tour.
“It was complicated. It was a replacement for a replacement. The one that was there was rotting at the bottom and it was replaced in the ‘60s ... Not only did it not function very well but they kind of ignored some design keys.
“We scoured the building looking for what we thought were some original doors. There’s not a lot of original doors there, but we took moulding profiles off of them and recreated them. We put something in that we thought was more harmonious and true to what was there originally.”
The business has been in Hamilton for five years. Kennedy moved here from Toronto, where he’d been working in others’ shops, building windows and doors.