Updated: 3 hours ago
Made in Maine: A Westbrook company that restores and replicates antique windows
Photo / Tim Greenway
Charlie Sykes squares up a two-light bent sash before repairing it at Bagala Window Works in Westbrook.
Marc Bagala’s mantra for how he’s grown his Westbrook-based Bagala Window Works is: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Bagala and his staff of 17 restore antique windows for museum houses, historic landmarks and private homes. The work originally required a lot of scraping and sanding, but when Bagala received a frightening diagnosis after a few years in the business — alarmingly high levels of lead in his blood from the old paint — he had to come up with a method that didn’t put his health at risk.
“I needed to think about another career path or figure out how to work in a lead-safe way,” Bagala tells Mainebiz on a tour of his workshop, located in a quirky former church at 677 Main St. in Westbrook.
He’s not a trained engineer but says he learns fast. What he came up with, after a few years of trial and error, is a 6-foot by 6-foot steel box that uses steam to remove paint and asbestos-filled glazing compound, which he calls the Steam Stripper.
Bagala’s invention works inside of 30 minutes, softening multiple layers of paint in one cycle. Then with a simple putty knife, a window can be deglazed and stripped in one operation.
Ensuring that the steam doesn’t degrade the windows’ integrity took some extra ingenuity, but Bagala enjoys a design challenge.
In addition to using the steam boxes at his workshop, Bagala sells them to other window restorers and he’s sold many of them to the National Park Service, which uses the units to strip antique windows at historic buildings.
When he first introduced the boxes in the mid-1990s, he sold more than 20 a year. “Since COVID days, sales are now at about three to six boxes a year,” Bagala says.
The price has also increased because the boxes are highly insulated stainless steel (inside and out) and metal commodities have soared.
“In 1995, they were selling for under $6,000 per box. Presently, they cost $12,000 each,” he says.
The Steam Strippers are one of several products Bagala has innovated and spun off into a second business that he and his brother Carl Bagala run, Gorham-based Window Restoration Supply. In addition to the steam boxes, they manufacture metal interlocking weatherstripping, which creates a tight seal between the window and “jamb” for increased energy efficiency.
Bagala learned to create the weatherstripping with the help of a friend and, ever up for a challenge, he purchased machinery from a 120-year-old company which was liquidating, and started manufacturing the product. Bagala uses the weatherstripping in his renovations and sells it online to other restorers.
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