Restoration
At our shop, you’re in charge of the style, the finish, and the dimensions. We have thousands of shade choices to keep your lights specific to your illumination needs- absolutely authentic or completely one-of-a-kind.
Our lighting technicians:
Customize- whether altering an existing fixture or creating a new design from new and old lighting parts
Coax metals back to their proper shape
Create faux finishes
Match existing patinas to customer design specifications
Shop Rates
Light Repair & Restoration $79.00/hour plus parts
Design & Custom Lighting $165.00/hour plus parts
Please connect with us via the contact link at the bottom of the page or give us a call at (612) 332-8344 to discuss the costs for your specific light. Or better yet, bring your fixture into the store and we will give you an estimate on the spot.
True craftspeople at Architectural Antiques
We take great pride in returning every kind of luminaire to its previous glory. Every day we are exploring new channels of restoring lights to their former glory.
Whether you just found the deal of the century in the back barn of an estate sale or inherited an art glass chandelier that needs a little love, we are the place for you.
Our knowledgeable lighting technicians know lighting fixtures better than the back of their hands.
We are certified by Underwriters Laboratory in the safest and most up-to-date lighting standards, all the while giving a nod to the generations of artisans who came before us.
The right mix of original & new parts
With our extensive inventory of antique and new light parts, we keep the historical integrity of your light fixture whenever possible while bringing it up to modern electrical standards.
That way even the oldest fixture can be placed with confidence into your remodel, renovation or new construction.
Rewiring & UL Listing
Our retail store has been around for over 40 years and we have been repairing and restoring lights for just as long. These are not just our store lights, we have been working on customer lights all along.
We offer:
Certified UL-Listed wiring
Lighting restoration & refinishing
Full service vintage lamp & lighting repair
Only Architectural Antiques can provide all of these services in a single location.
Meet our illumination Staff
Maddie
Hi there! Thank you for stopping by and wanting to get to know a bit about me. I was born here in Minneapolis, but at the age of two I was kidnapped by my family and moved down to the Deep South, aka Louisiana. Before you ask, no I don’t have a Southern twang, but a “y’all” does slip out every so often. What brought me back to the Twin Cities was my interest in pursuing a degree in Fine Arts where I attended Minneapolis College of Art in Design and majored in Furniture Design.
Curiosity and making has always been a part of me. As a child, I had a bad habit of destroying pop-up books in my attempt to solve how they worked, especially this one Christmas-themed book that played music when you opened the cover. I believe my destructive tendencies honed my understanding that you need to discover how something functions internally before designing it externally. I find this to be true in my own creative endeavors such as furniture design, small kinetic sculptures, and especially lighting.
Here at Architectural Antiques, I am probably the one you’d go to for all your stained glass needs. In far off lands I am known as the Glass Guru, or I’d like to think so! I have been working with the craft for nearly 10 years now and am more than happy to discuss options for repairs, lead VS copper foil method, and what color/texture would look great with you lights!
Erin
Erin is the queen of the wired frontier. ;) As the grand daughter of a rancher from Wyoming, she’s hardwired for resourcefulness. Give her a broken old pile of scrap wiring and brass and within days she’ll return with a magnificent three-tiered Murano glass chandelier. No…really. With knowledge of many things old and electric, she’s the go to gal when old shit doesn’t work like it should.
Customers can go anywhere to restore their antique lighting. Yet few know the skills required to truly bring a fixture back to it’s glorious former self. Erin is a master of coaxing metals back to their proper shape, faux finishing and, of course, matching existing patinas to customer design specifications.
A jack of all trades, what else would you expect from a once regional theater props artisan, a registered nurse, a martial artist, and mosaic craftsman. Not one to sit still, She’s lived in nine states and spent time in Thailand, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, England, France, Hawaii, and Mexico. So be thankful Minnesota. She could live anywhere in the world, yet chooses to make lighting magic in this frigid state she calls home.
Ian
It’s been a long time since Ian has settled into one task for more than a couple of minutes. It wasn’t until he climbed head first into the dark tangle of old gas lines for a week to bring life back into the most beautiful but obsolete gilded chandelier he’d ever seen that he realized this form of resurrection might be his calling. Now he feels quite at home disassembling and reassembling any kind of luminaire.
As the officially unofficial leader of this bunch, Ian is happy to bring your antique light back into relevancy, or to work with you on creating something completely new and unique to light up your environment. Or he will tell someone else to do it. It’s a good thing that everyone else in this department is slightly more talented than he is. It certainly makes him look good.
Will
Will has been restoring antique lights for us since 2013,
Everything from monumental commercial fixtures to delicate residential pieces. He's also no stranger to historic preservation, having bought and restored three turn of the century homes over the last 30 years. In opening up an antique fixture, more often than not a level of craftsmanship is displayed in a way that is all too uncommon in contemporary fixtures.
Will’s goal in restoration;
to return each fixture to a condition equal to or better than when it was made. Why? So it can serve proudly for another hundred years.