Vinoy Five Star Resort - exterior

In November of 2013, I was asked to restore eight large panels on the front of the Vinoy, a Five Star Resort on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, Florida.  The year before I had restored a mural in the main restaurant of the resort. 

The building was originally finished in 1925 and in 1992 completely restored.  However, the panels in question had fallen on hard times since the restoration.  The exterior panels are on the seventh floor and I didn't quite know the extent of the disrepair until after the swing stage was erected and I was able to get a hands on view of them.  The next photo is the condition I found each panel in.

Needless to say I had my work cut out for me just to get the panels in shape to paint on. One of my all time favorite power tools is the grinder.  I use it a lot for my sculptures and it was invaluable for this job.  Each panel is 6 foot (1.83 m) high and 4 foot (1.22 m) wide. The motif of each panel is raised up from the background about a half to three quarters of an inch.

Heights don't bother me all that much so working off the swing stage was fine. I did have to wear a safety harness all day which inhibited some movement but reasonable considering.

I could only work on two panels at a time and then the swing stage had to be moved along so I could get to the next two.  It took almost three days to move the whole staging setup so I had to be sure each panel was totally done and would not need any touchup. 

After I got all the debris cleared off each panel, I then used a clear penetrating sealer especially developed for cementitious substrate. Then applied the original background color.

 

Once the background and frame color was painted on I started to paint in the motif of each panel.

There are two different motifs used, so 4 panels  for each design.

I tried to get a photo up on the swing stage but it was hard to get a good angle given the stage was only 24 inches wide.

A look at all eight at once completed.

The next photo is the front of the Vinoy with the panels complete.