Why Discerning Property Owners Choose Our Proven Process

Barry Barbas, Founder

• Logistical Superiority: We eliminate the need for cranes, street closures, and the weeks of downtime associated with custom glass orders.

• Artisan Precision: Our technicians are trained in advanced resurfacing, ensuring a distortion-free, 'like-new' finish that DIY kits and amateurs cannot replicate.

• Environmental Stewardship: Restoration is the 'green' choice. By resurfacing existing glass, we reduce construction waste and the carbon footprint of manufacturing new units.

• The "Grand Loop" Commitment: Our mobile units are strategically positioned to provide faster, local service across Hillsborough, Sarasota, and all of Southwest Florida.

Why Do The Other Guys Break So Much Glass?

Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. Giving each job the proper time is the key. Monitoring temperature, recognizing the danger points, knowing when to use the big tool and when to use the small tool, these are just some of the finer things that only years of experience can teach. No employee let loose after 2 weeks of training can know these things, so they will have a very high failure rate. Our "Faster" results come from efficiency and mastery, not from rushing or cutting corners.

That is exactly the difference you can expect when hiring Glass Restoration, Inc., to repair scratched glass faster and better. How deep is that scratch? We have the tools to measure it. They don’t. We use data and science, while "the other guys" are just guessing.

The Faces of The Voices Behind the Service: Meet Allison & Sarah

Sarah Gabaldon Barbas

AR and Scheduling Assistant

Glass Restoration Inc. is a family-owned American business. Our entire field team communicates fluently in English — ensuring clear, precise communication with every homeowner, builder, and property manager we serve. Spanish-language assistance is also available through our office team.

When you call Glass Restoration Inc., you’re speaking with family. Allison Schmidt (our daughter and wife to our lead tech, Skyeler) and Sarah Barbas (wife to our son, Stanton) are the friendly voices behind the phone. Together, they share the responsibilities of scheduling and logistics for our projects from Sarasota to Naples and beyond.

While Allison serves as your primary point of contact for project coordination, Sarah manages our Accounts Receivable and ensures the office never skips a beat. Whether you're a homeowner or a national builder, Allison and Sarah provide the seamless, personal service that has been the hallmark of our family business for over 20 years

Allison Schmidt Scheduling

The Best Hands in the Business

Meet the team behind the results. At Glass Restoration Inc., we don’t just send workers to your job; we send trained glass artisans. With over 20 years of family-owned experience guiding every project, our crew understands the unique nuances of Florida’s glass challenges.

Whether it’s salt-etched sliding doors on a Sarasota beachfront or construction debris scratches on a new build in Naples, these guys treat your property with the precision it deserves. When our team is on your glass, you aren't just getting a repair—you’re getting two decades of perfected craftsmanship delivered right to your door.

The 2026 edition of Glass Magazine's annual Sourcebook — the glass industry's definitive national reference publication — lists Glass Restoration Inc. on page 29. The Sourcebook is referenced by glazing contractors, architects, engineers, and construction professionals across the United States. For a family-owned, owner-operated restoration specialist based in Sarasota, inclusion alongside the nation's major glass manufacturers and distributors is a reflection of the standard Barry has pursued since he first studied glass in 1983. It is not a credential we sought. It is a recognition the industry extended. It is proof that our continued hard work and dedication to our Artisan Craft has been recognized by industry experts.

Why Glass — The Story Behind the Company

Glass has fascinated me since before I had the words to explain why. In high school I studied drafting and engineering under a teacher named George Garmen — not just an educator but a challenger who pushed his students to think past the obvious and ask questions the textbook hadn't considered yet. In 1983, my senior year, I wrote a paper about the use of silver nitrate in photochromic lenses — the chemistry that causes eyeglass lenses to darken in ultraviolet light. My theory was that the same principle could be applied to architectural and automotive glass and activated electrically, creating glass that could transition from clear to dark tint on demand. Nobody in the industry was doing it. I was seventeen years old and working from a vocational school classroom in Northeast Ohio.

More than a decade later, Kent State University — twenty miles from where I grew up — invented Liquid Crystal glass: PDLC glass (Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal), smart glass, switchable glass, or privacy glass, a material that transitions from opaque to clear under electrical charge. The science was different from my approach, but the concept was the same one I had been turning over in my head since high school. I was not surprised. I was just glad someone had finally built it. What I had understood intuitively as a teenager, the research community had confirmed with a laboratory.

I never got to pursue that theory formally. I was raised in a blue-collar household where there simply wasn't money for the kind of education and development those ideas required. What I did instead was chase the work. In 1983, the same year I graduated, I called the Glaziers Union from a phone in my vocational school looking for an apprenticeship. They weren't accepting new members. So I kept dialing and ended up in the Carpenters Union — which I loved, especially the days I got to work alongside the glaziers. Glass kept finding me regardless of what door I walked through.

I have spent decades studying glass — not just how to restore it, but what it actually is. Its origins trace back to ancient Egypt, where lightning strikes on desert sand produced natural glass that the Egyptians eventually learned to replicate and shape into the first known glass objects. Thomas Edison could not have created the lightbulb without glass — the vacuum that made the filament possible, the lens that made science possible, the window that made modern architecture possible. The test tube that so many medicines were created in was not concrete or metal, they are glass. Glass may be the single most consequential material in the history of human civilization, and almost nobody thinks about it that way. I think about it that way every day. Every time a bug splatters on my windshield, I know it is the reason we can travel at speed with a good measure of safety.

That is the foundation this company is built on. Not just the technical skill to restore glass — though we have spent years perfecting that — but a genuine understanding of the material itself, where it comes from, how it behaves, and what it is worth. When the value of glass goes up as technology expands its capabilities, so does the value of saving it. That is not a business strategy. It is a conviction that has been with me since 1983, and it shows up in every job we do. That depth of study is also why, when glass damage becomes a legal matter, attorneys and insurance adjusters across the Gulf Coast retain Barry as an expert witness. Learn more about expert witness and litigation consulting services →

Still In It — After 43 Years

This year marks 43 years of marriage to my wife, Joyce — and nearly as many years chasing the work I love. I am stepping back from much of the physical labor next year, but I am not stepping away. Stanton, and Skyeler are the future of this company, and I intend to be behind them every step of the way — not because I have to be, but because watching your children succeed at something you built together is its own reward. Glass Restoration Inc., was never just a business. It was a conviction that the right work, done the right way, by people who actually care about what they do, is worth something. It still is. The Customers that have become friends is nearly uncountable, and that says a lot.

Stanton, Allison & Joyce pictured