Two locals turn vintage windows and dishes into art
Debi Brown and Juli O’Hara, two blond-haired South Carolina
natives who live in gated communities in San Benito County,
certainly would look out of place in a condemned home from the
1880s, crowbar in hand.
Two locals turn vintage windows and dishes into art
Debi Brown and Juli O’Hara, two blond-haired South Carolina natives who live in gated communities in San Benito County, certainly would look out of place in a condemned home from the 1880s, crowbar in hand.
But that’s just the place the ladies have found themselves since starting their art business venture, Dejà View Designs.
“We got it down to an art,” Brown said one Friday morning.
The women researched online how to remove windows from old buildings and barns.
“We got a crowbar and literally pull off one side,” O’Hara said, describing the pulley system that used to be used for old windows. “It actually isn’t as bad as we thought.”
The old windows are used as a canvas for their one-of-a-kind artwork. They clean up and refinish the wooden frames of the windows. Then, using a special glue for glass and metal they found through a supplier in New York, they glue glassware from the Depression era and glass beads to the window panes. The glue dries clear and can be used to stick glass to glass, sometimes a hard task with other arts and crafts adhesives.
The idea came six months ago when O’Hara and Brown were having lunch at O’Hara’s Ridgemark home.
“We were having lunch and I always had these old dishes,” O’Hara said. “Debi held it up and said, ‘How pretty it would be if we could put it on a window.'”
The comment sparked something in the women who decided to experiment with an old window O’Hara had.
Brown and O’Hara displayed their first works of art in their backyards, and soon friends and family members were requesting their own vintage window art. The women started browsing through any antique shops they could find in a three-hour radius and also asked a friend in demolition to let them know of any houses or barns from the 1800s that they could raid for old windows.
Their dish finds include old salt bowls, candy dishes and other items. The glassware often comes in different shades, but they pick out pieces that are translucent. Some are clear and pick up a glitter of diamonds in the sun while others are tinted blue, gold or pink.
The women laughed about one of their experiences in an old home, when they discovered a homeless man living in a closet. They also mentioned that one set of windows came from a house built in the 1860s, when Lincoln was president. Another set of windows came from a renovation project at St. Francis Retreat Center.
“Those are like treasure pieces,” Brown said.
The windows themselves are unique. Some are single pane, some four pane, some from cabinet doors and some from the side of houses.
“They have to be in good shape,” Brown said. “Sometimes people will call us to look at them, but they have termite damage.”
After filling orders for family and friends, O’Hara stated a blog to promote the artwork in February. Their first long-distance order came from Tennessee – and the women realized they needed to find a safe way to ship the fragile items.
With that first order, Brown said they kept logging into UPS.com to track the travels of the order, all the time hoping that the window wouldn’t crack of the glass pieces come unglued. Each shipment has been a success.
Though the pieces range in price from $80-300, shipping can be up to an additional $100.
“We do not make money on the shipping,” O’Hara said. “We send an estimate, but no one even blinks an eye.”
For locals, they can cut out the shipping cost by purchasing the items at arts and crafts fairs. The ladies displayed their work at a fair in San Juan Bautista in May and will again have a booth at an antique fair in San Juan scheduled for August 2.
They are down to 20 windows for sale and plan to build up their stock over the next few weeks so they have plenty of items for the fair.
“Twenty is the most we’ve ever done in a week,” O’Hara said. “We love being our own bosses.”
Brown, however, pointed out that some days they do work up to 10 hours.
They package the items at Brown’s house, but do most of the artistic work at O’Hara’s place. O’Hara has a large deck where they can work on their items. Once pieces are glued to the window, it has to lay flat for 24 hours without moving.
Though the ladies are both from South Carolina – and their families there live just 20 minutes away from each other – their meeting in San Benito was as much by chance as their idea to start the vintage window business.
A friend of O’Hara’s mentioned that her neighbor was from South Carolina and introduced them. They soon bonded over their penchant for using southern phrases and their favorite cuisine from home – shrimp and grits, cucumber sandwiches and other South Carolina delicacies.
The best part of their business venture, they said, is that they laugh a lot while they work together.
“If you do what you love to do and what makes you happy,” Brown said, “you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
Dejà View
Designs
www.dejaviewdesigns.blogspot.com
www.dejaviewdesigns.net
408-314-5010
