Remember our weekend warrior reader who created a wine cellar in his Clinton Hill brownstone last month? Well, he’s been at it again, this time tackling a sagging skylight. In his own words…

The skylight is somewhat cheaply made, and not by Michaelangelo. The designs on the glass pieces appear to have been silk-screened. But I think it looks pretty nice, particularly with the oval plaster work, and it’s original to the house (1870s, Clinton Hill). It’s 30 inches wide and 55 inches long…We had a leak, as you can see in lower right. And I’m sure it wasn’t the first leak over the past 140 years. And, upon a closer look, it became clear that the skylight was falling apart, sagging badly and in serious danger of raining down the stairs in tiny, irreparable shards. But how to get it down without breaking it?

When I crawled up into the cockloft, I discovered that the previous owner of the house thought he could improve upon actual sunlight with a flourescent fixture….I imagine the skylight also would look a little nicer with a little cleaning (you can’t make them out, but there are at least six dead bees and a thick coating of grime, here) but I was actually really scared to touch the thing at all.

Initial plan was to slip a piece of quarter-inch plywood beneath frame, screw the frame to it, and then lower it through the hole. But the husband correctly pointed out that this A) would be a huge pain in the ass, and B) the glass had sagged so much that placing the skylight on a flat piece of wood would probably bust out pieces of it.

So I slipped an old, strong shower curtain under the glass, pulled it taut, and stapled it all around. Did the same thing on the top. And lowered it through the hole to husband, waiting on tall ladder, without any damage. Now to get it restored!

Two questions: (1) Does anybody know where these clearly mass-produced approximations of stained glass came from? (2) Can anybody recommend a place for stained-glass repair? Thanks.