We’ve begun in earnest the dismantling of the O’Kane House, in Durham, NH. It began with a training day with John Butler, a photographer and carpenter who has worked with us on a number of museum de-installations. He showed us how to remove trim without damaging the surface using a variety of softwood wedges, and…
The Hill fireplace is nearing completion. From the outset, this project has been among our most rewarding. We designed the panelled wall using HABS drawings from a house built by the father of the builder of this house. Knowing that the design is grounded in historical precedent lends the project a sense of purpose greater than that…
On Friday, we peeled plaster from the walls of the Blue Parlor, in the O’Kane Farmhouse. Scott was Bill and I, Ted, as we traveled in our proverbial telephone booth through layers of plaster, lath, wallpaper and time. There were clues to some of what we might find. Surrounding the door openings were wooden strips,…
Preservation Timber Framing has been involved in a number of museum projects in the past. We reconstructed the Brown-Pearl and Manning Rooms for the Boston MFA, rebuilt the Moffatt-Ladd coachhouse in Portsmouth, and dismantled 16th c. Carved Ceiling Beams for the Fogg Museum at Harvard, to name a few. We are honored to have been a part…
Tomorrow we embark on the building of the Hill fireplace. The Hill house is a turn of the 19th century farmhouse, with all the attendant revisions and additions. The owner wants to restore her fireplace to reflect the time period it was built and the building trends in her region. Through her own research, she…
Allow me, for a moment, to wax about about windows: They are the eyes to a building’s soul. The transom light above a Yankee barn door and the triple-hung sash in a meetinghouse facade help to distinguish a building, or relate it to its peers. Even when dismantling the most decrepit of barns, we are…
Built by Elias Carter in 1821, the Acworth Meetinghouse, with its double lantern spire, is a masterful representation of historic building craft. But by 2008, the building was in desperate need of repair. PTF was called in to give an estimate, but Acworth, NH is far, and endowed already with a number of seasoned carpenters. Arron,…
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article about I-Farm and Chris Barensfeld’s efforts to restore it. Online, the story was accompanied by a video and slideshow. From the article: For years, Christine Barensfeld dreamed about fixing up and living in a property down the street from her home: a historic white barn, carriage…
Since last we updated, PTF has been busy on a number of projects. The Northern contingent documented and dismantled a barn in West Poland, which will be repaired and rebuilt on a new site five miles away. The Southern contingent is repairing the trim on the Federated Church in South Berwick, as well as putting…
Over the past year, part of our crew has been busy repairing a barn at I-Farm, a multi-building complex soon to become a working farm that teaches early farm technology and sustainable agricultural practices. Around the turn of the century, the barn that had been there previously, a hand-hewn English frame (eave entry) was converted…