AUGUSTA — Nathan Spaulding used traditional tools of the trade, a scraper and sandpaper, as he removed paint and smoothed out the newly exposed bare wood of a century-old main entrance door frame at the historic Colonial Theater.

Meanwhile, his wife, Katie, on the opposite side of the same doorway onto Water Street, employed a decidedly more modern, high-tech approach by using a laser.

They shared the same basic shared goal: make the wooden doors and windows of the old theater, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, look brand new even as they retain their century-old character.

Spaulding, 40, who has been in the wood restoration trade since he was a boy working with his dad, sought out the challenging work on the downtown Augusta theater. The historic building, originally built in 1913 and rebuilt in 1926 following a fire, has sat mostly vacant since it closed as a movie theater in 1969.

Nathan Spaulding sprays stain on a door frame for the Colonial Theater on Wednesday at Spaulding Furniture Restoration Shop in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

He approached members of the theater’s building committee on a dark, rainy night as they left the theater, handing them business cards and striking up a conversation with Gary Peachey, chairman of the building committee, as well as the project’s architect.

Spaulding, owner of Spauldings Furniture Restorations, won a bidding process to do the work. Now, his small shop, just over the crest of Sand Hill up Northern Avenue from the theater, is filled with both partially restored doors and windows from the theater. He also has new doors and windows he’s repaired and replicated to look like their old counterparts, to replace items that were too rotten or damaged to be reused.

“I love working with this historic millwork, and saving history,” Spaulding said of why he sought out the work at the theater. “When we moved here (in 2018), we really just fell in love with the town. And this (the theater) is just one of those cool projects I wanted to be a part of. It’s going to be a stunning venue.”

Katie Spaulding applies glaze around a window pane for the Colonial Theater in Augusta on Wednesday at Spaulding Furniture Restoration Shop. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Cathy Milojevic-Kaey, interim executive director of the Colonial Theater, said Spaulding’s timing was excellent, as they were just then seeking someone with “a level of craftsmanship that would maintain and restore the integrity of the original structure as much as possible.”

Katie Spaulding removes the finish from a door frame using a laser ablation machine on Wednesday at the Colonial Theater in Augusta. The laser light removes the finish by vaporizing it and leaving a clean surface to be sanded before refinishing. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

“Because restoration is their specialty, Spauldings was certainly qualified, and to find someone local was like icing on the cake,” Milojevic-Kaey said. “Still, there was a bidding process and the Spaulding bid was the most competitive we received. Nathan Spaulding’s meticulous attention to detail is rare these days. For him, this is not just a job, but his passion, and that is evident in his work. We’re very pleased with the outcome thus far.”

The highest-tech tool the Spauldings are using to save old wooden pieces of the theater is a $12,000 laser ablation stripping machine, custom ordered and imported from the country of China. The tool uses a laser to burn paint off the surface of wood, vaporizing it and thus leaving behind no waste to clean up.

An old movie poster hanging on the wall inside the lobby was visible behind Nathan and Katie Spaulding from the street through the partially painted and partially bare wood door frame they worked on together.

Milojevic-Kaey said many of the people involved in the project bringing the theater back are local and have said the project holds a special place in their hearts.

The $240,000 door and window restoration project is funded by a Maine Development Foundation grant program, which is supported by the Historic Preservation Fund of the National Park Service. Additional grant funding is also coming from the Davis Family Foundation, Maine Preservation, Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust, and Evelyn Hunt on behalf of Randy Mackay Trust.

Ongoing fundraising efforts for the theater restoration were hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic and slow to restart after it. The project was initially expected to cost about $8.5 million to restore the theater and build an adjoining annex to it to provide modern bathrooms, meeting room and rehearsal space, a restaurant and better accessibility to the historic theater, but construction costs have escalated greatly since those initial estimates.

Theater advocates currently are working on construction plans that should allow for updated cost estimates. Donations may be made through the theater’s website.

A fundraising gala is in the planning stages for Nov. 1, at the Governor Hill Mansion, with a theme of the roaring ’20s.

Roughly $2 million in raised funds has already been put into the theater, including a new roof and a new floor that covered a gaping hole in the old, long-neglected floor.

The next project at the theater will be an expansion and restoration of the stage area, funded by $1.5 million in congressionally directed spending.

For Spaulding, the rush is on to finish the theater’s windows and doors so, as they’re completed, they can be put back in place. He said the project is probably the largest-scale one he’s taken on.

Katie Spaulding said they two work well together since they’re not only married co-workers, they’re also best friends.

The theater’s doors initially thought to be mahogany, turned out to be pine with veneer and stained to look like mahogany. Spaulding is repairing the doors still solid enough to be reused, and redoing the mahogany stain on them. New doors needed to replace ones too rotten to be saved are made of mahogany.

All of the doors and windows are being stained in the same stain, a custom blend Spaulding mixes up himself, to ensure consistency.

Nathan Spaulding sprays stain on a door frame for the Colonial Theater on Wednesday at Spaulding Furniture Restoration Shop in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Sometimes, while working on an old piece of hand-crafted wood, Spaulding thinks about the craftsman who made it, some 100 years ago.

“I’d love to know who the carpenters were, love to be able to talk to the guys that built this,” he said in his shop. “But by restoring their original work, that’s the closest I can get to that.”