Next time you're standing in our beautiful new glassed-in narthex, take a look at the main doors that lead into the Cathedral. This entrance has been refinished and restored by Jim Stewart and Bill Barlow.

The double doors, with glass panels, were moved from the wooden screen between the old narthex and the nave. They were a perfect fit, and they allow natural light and a view of outside from inside the Cathedral.

The upper part of the door -- the "over-door" -- had been hidden for years by a concrete beam and the roof of the old porch. Now this Gothic arch with its beadboard detail is beautifully revealed. (We don't know why the concrete beam was necessary.)

The header -- the horizontal casing between the doors and the over-door -- was created by Jim and Bill from wood rescued from an old house being demolished in St. Petersburg of about the same vintage as the Cathedral.

"The portion of the west wall south of the doorway is some four to five inches out of plumb (further out at the top than the bottom), so the whole door jamb had to be reconstructed," Jim says. "What Bill and I added not only dressed up the doorway, it also made the visible finished surfaces plumb with the interior frame on which the doors are hung as well as pleasing to the eye. Symmetry does matter."

The west wall was in danger of falling outward during the demolition phase and had to be shored up for a number of months. That was remedied with structural elements added when the new building was tied in to the old. "It wasn’t possible to get that southern part of the wall completely true, but it’s pretty darn close," Jim says. "I suspect work on any of the Cathedral’s doors or windows will probably reveal similar shifts from true."

The stained glass windows on either side of the doors were re-trimmed to complement the molding uncovered during the renovation, and the woodwork has been painted chocolate brown, a historically accurate color. The windows have been caulked in a slightly lighter shade of brown, creating a two-tone effect that blends perfectly with the surrounding colors. The hope is that all the woodwork around exterior doors and windows of the Cathedral will be repainted in this near-original color as resources become available.

Gothic door and window treatments -- such as these windows -- typically include a lancet or Gothic arch. The predominant feature of the wood trim is square (90-degree) edges. Rounded trim is usually subtle in contrast with modern quarter-round.