Eva wasn't so sure. Big Jim stuck to his D8 guns. Our friends quickly divided into "old house" and "new house" people. Most couples had one of each. The new house people were generally scowling before they finished getting out of their car. Some of them even asked if it was safe to leave an automobile in the driveway. Old house people would arrive and their eyes would immediately begin to water. The look was much like a teenager in love. My best non-scientific guess is that the old house thing is a chromosomal aberration. If so blessed, one becomes sufficiently overtaken by romanticism and notions of grandeur lost that a gaping ten foot hole in a roof looks like a minor problem. I am an old house person.
I did triage on the barns within days of closing. They both needed major repair, but my hasty patches made for mostly dry roofs and enough closure from the weather to at least significantly slow the pace of decay and give us time to formulate a proper strategy to rebuild them. We had never concerned ourselves too much with the house because we were leaning towards taking it down anyway. With the tenants gone and deeper inspection, it began to appear that there might be something to preserve. There was a six foot hole in the same slate roof that several contractors had said needed replacing. If we were going to save the house, the roof needed to be fixed before winter. Part of the porch was caving in. The porch wasn't critical from a structural perspective, but it did make the house the worst looking in the neighborhood. Not that we had any neighbors to really complain, but I half expected to return each weekend from our apartment in NYC to a condemnation notice. Eva was not a fan of the desiccated animals on the front porch.
A complete inspection of the house surprisingly revealed strong bones and a high degree of structural integrity. As we would come to learn, the house was built in several stages in the late 1700's and mid 1800's, of traditional timber frame construction with clapboard siding and plaster interiors. The interior woodworking was simple, elegant and extremely well-executed. The structural timbers were all American Chestnut, a wonderfully rot and insect resistance hardwood that was wiped out by a blight from Asia in the late 1800's. We have one huge chestnut stump in the backwoods of the farm that sprouts new growth every spring, only to fall victim to the blight before making any real growth. There are many arborist working on developing a genetically resistant strain of the tree - I hope to see the reintroduction of a blight resistant American Chestnut in my lifetime.
While suffering from years of neglected maintenance, the house had been “enhanced” only lightly from its original construction. On the exterior, a previous owner had added a layer of cedar shake over the original clapboard, obscuring the reveal of the exterior trim and putting lots of holes in the clapboard. Plumbing and electricity had been added in the 40's and only minimally so on the first floor. With the two family renovation in the 70's came two kitchens but no material structural changes. There were fake walls poorly built to ensure tenant separation. The Cat Lady's extended family had damaged the windows and one area of door trim on her side of the house, but otherwise the trim and doors were entombed in layers of lead paint and in nice shape. The original chimneys were in need of repair and the main cooking fireplace had been closed off to provide venting for the two oil burners that supplied heat to the house. A new exterior chimney was reasonably well done although the internal stonework and 70’s vintage “Heat-a-lator” wood stove left much to be desired. Did I mention that the fireplace trim was pink? All of the bedrooms had been upgraded with shag carpets over wide pine floors and faux wood paneling installed with furring strips over the original plaster. As I would come to learn, the previous owners must have hired a framing carpenter to do the interior renovations in the 70’s because 16 penny (3.25 inches apiece) were used on the furring strips. This installation played hell on my subsequent efforts to save plaster walls and ceilings.
The main staircase was lovely. At the base of the stairs stood a very large newel post. The square pommeled base measured 7 1/2 inches across and the largest turning elements were of similar size. The post was finished in shellac and appeared beneath the grime to be hard maple. The balusters were simple and well-executed. Upon close inspection, the hand turned nature of each baluster became immediately apparent. The sizes varied from as big a diameter as 1 5/8 all the way down to 1 3/8 for the small ones with about 1 ½ as an average. They all had the same elements, coves and beads, an acorn and tapers yet they were all noticeably different. Somehow, every one worked aesthetically and yet formed a cohesive whole when viewed so. The banister was simple and elegant with lovely sweeping turns at the first floor landing. The only damage to the stairs were two balusters on which one son of my local business owner tenant had decided to experiment with a small saw. His experiments resulted in a decapitation of one at a cove detail and a fatal cut thru another at the start of the taper. The finish on the newel posts and balusters, which I believed to be shellac, had browned and crackled over time and resembled elephant skin. The banister finish was mostly worn away from use.
The main entrance to the house had been encased behind a partially built vestibule on the front porch. Although hard to see, framed by a transom light, side lights and raised panels was a faded white etched glass farm door. Etched into the glass was a wonderfully detailed scene of a “milk maid”. The door itself was traditionally constructed rail, stile and raised panel with appliquéd detail. The visual appeal of the door detail had been enhanced by a prior tenant with pink accents. All of the paint was chaulking and cracked. The center of the door had a small protruding brass knob – an antique door bell it turned out, but the bell and ringing mechanism were missing. Buried underneath the paint behind the knob was a metal cover with embossed lettering, but the paint obscured all detail.
So my house project went from one made for a D8 to one suitable for the G8. Martha Stewart and “This Old House” make it look easy. I am guessing that it is more so with an unlimited budget. For the rest of us, restoring old buildings takes a tremendous amount of time, research and money. We have been at it for 11 years. The house is in pretty good shape today, with just a few more big pushes until we can declare the restoration over and start anew. Just kidding. I have done about as well against my original budget as the federal government does with its forecasts. Friends call it a labor of love. Eva and I are still married and she is mostly friends with me and the house. My articulate children call our home a “little junky” but want to live in it forever.
My latest project has been restoring the staircase in the Cat Lady’s side of the house. The original staircase was steep, unsafe, unlit and enclosed. Due to the slope of the roof, entering the second floor required either skipping a step or risking a sideways head butt into the ceiling. Descending the stairs was plain scary. The original banisters were long gone by the time we bought the house. As part of a bigger restoration project and subject of a future post, we built an entirely new staircase. I had the brilliant idea of replicating the main staircase, complete with an identical newel posts, balusters and banisters. Eva thought it was a lovely idea, but was moderately concerned about how long it might take. I promised I could do it quickly.
As I have many friends in the old house restoration business at this point, we priced having a professional turner make us replicas. At $10 apiece, the balusters were pretty reasonable, particularly given that I needed 95 of them. Because of space limitations, we decided to terminate the banisters into second floor newel posts rather than make the lovely sweeping, but space consuming curves of the main staircase. My turner friends told me we would not be able to replicate the original first floor 7 ½ inch square newel post with one piece of wood because that size maple was not available. The second floor newel posts were smaller at 5 inches square, but could still be difficult to get in one piece maple.
I have learned much about attention to detail and careful craftsmanship throughout my life. In most cases, the relentless pursuit of excellence and rigid adherence to chosen standards are prerequisites to great work. Sometimes, though, rigid adherence to high standards can be a mask for bullheadedness or some other form of intellectual malady. Is hand made tongue and groove flooring different than machine made? Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?
I fall easily into the trap of insisting on making the tongue and groove by hand because that is how it was done originally. Modern and antique manufacturing methods produce indistinguishable installed flooring. I tell myself that I know the difference. A more pragmatic part of me laughs at the internal dialog. H. Jackson Brown, Jr. wrote that “character is what you do when no one is looking.” I don’t know if character applies to old house restoration, but I have lost sleep over my election to use wire lath in lieu of wood when we replaced walls with new three coat plaster. I am still not convinced that I haven’t started a negative global karmic chain reaction.
So I decided that I would make the newel posts and the balusters. Ninety five balusters did not seem like that many from the comfort of my dining room. I figured I can turn chair legs in 15 or so minutes from rough blank to finish ready – the balusters aren’t that much more complex. At 3 balusters an hour, I would have roughly 30 hours in the project, my turning skills would improve dramatically and I would get the satisfaction of completing the project by myself. As such things go, it all looked good on the drawing board.
I am relatively certain that the original balusters had been turned while the wood was wet or “green.” Several have moved a crazy amount – more than I think dried wood could move, even over almost two centuries. Hand splitting green wood ensures that the turnings follow the long grain fibers of the tree and are very strong. Green wood is also really pleasant to turn, cuts faster and requires less frequent sharpening breaks. The downside of hand splitting is that you waste a fair amount of wood and it is a lot of work. The thought of hand splitting 100 or so 35” blanks for the balusters seemed overwhelming so I called my local sawyer and ordered kiln dried hard maple. I inquired about pieces for the newel posts and he told me that maple would split during the drying process if we milled it 8 inches square. I showed him pictures of my newel post and he challenged me that it could not have been made from one piece.
And so I started researching newel posts. There are unquestionably large 7+ inch square newel posts from the 1800’s that were turned from a single piece of material. I have seen numerous examples in beech, maple, oak, walnut and ash. My newel post is most likely maple and I am most certain that it is one piece. I have spoken with numerous sawmills and wood suppliers trying to source 8 x 8 maple. The uniform answer I get is that you can not get unchecked American hardwoods of that size. So a joiner in 1800, armed with far fewer tools and far less information figured out how to dry an 8 x 8 piece of maple, but the iPhone society can’t? The commercial answer seems to be no.
So off I set on my own uncharted course. My first attempt failed miserably. My sawyer had cut several large maple beams for a project that was never picked up. The beams had been drying for 2 years under a covered shed. As many of you probably know, the rule of thumb for air drying hardwoods is one inch per year. These beams were about 10” x 12” so I did not expect them to be dry, but I did expect that the 2 years would have stabilized the wood. We looked through about 8 beams and found two that were clear and had not checked. We then took the beams inside of the main sawing building, where the owners keep a very nice old Oliver 24 inch planer. We ran the beams through the planer and they cleaned up beautifully. Maybe the solution to large unchecked hardwood blanks was as simple as a few years of seasoning?
I took the beams home and sawed a 34” piece to turn the first of 4 second floor newel posts. Things went reasonably well and I soon had a decent rendition of what I was trying to turn. The top pommeled element looked a bit heavy, but seeing as it is very hard to add back wood, I decided to remove the post from the lathe and take it into the house for placement and scale. Eva and I studied the post in place and agreed that the taper needed to be greater and the top square needed to be reduced in mass. I promised to take it back to the shop the following morning and get it finished. When I awoke the next morning, I passed the newel post, which I had left by the front door. I immediately noticed a crack (a “check” in woodworking parlance) that started on the square base and continued up thru a bead and into the taper. I pondered whether the low humidity of the house had anything to do with the checking but concluded that while the weather was still somewhat cold, being early spring, the house was not that dry and heat/dryness had not caused the checking.
Remembering my bowl turning buddies who use cyanoacrylate glue to great effect with cracking green bowls, I resolved to fill the crack with super glue and go ahead and finish the post. The super glue business is a great one because I bet not one person has ever used a whole bottle of super glue – it always dries up before you get more than about ½ way through the bottle. In any event, I used all the super glue I had fixing this crack. By sanding with wet super glue in the crack, I was able to repair the crack in a manner that was mostly invisible. I turned the post down to a better taper and reduced some mass in the top square element and called it good for the time being. I set the post aside in my shop to see if the cracks would stabilize.
Within about two weeks, the post had major checks in it and was no longer useable for my project. The post is now shop ambiance or a nuisance depending on when you ask, but it is close enough to a finished product that I am struggling to use it for its best and highest purpose - firewood. In looking at the piece more closely, I have several thoughts. First, the beam was cut from the a portion of the tree that included part of the pith on one edge and a large section of heartwood. Checking tends to occur because different parts of a piece of wood dry and thus shrink at different rates which creates tensions that literally pulls the fibers apart. I think I need to use only heartwood. Second, I would have been better off trying to slow the drying process down after I turned it. There are several products on the market which slow the drying process considerably and really help with checking.
My second attempt is underway. I sourced a very nice hard maple log that is large enough to give me four 5 to 6 inch blanks out of the heartwood. My plan is to split out four blanks and hand plane them square. I am then going to finish turn the newel posts. I will apply a shellac finish to the finished post while still on the lathe. I will probably paint the bottom end grain with a special sealer. I am then going to install the posts. Based on everything I have read and can conjure up, I believe that the 7 ½ inch newel post in my house was made exactly that way. My more knowledgeable colleagues have proffered many opinions about my likelihood of success. I will keep you posted.
....to be continued
