If you don’t already know Timber Framing, the journal of the Timber Framer’s Guild, you should. It contains information about techniques like simplified scribing, and engineering for framers, as well as in-depth coverage of projects that are even cooler than ours. I wrote the following article for the issue published last March 2019. It covers the adaptive re-use of the colloquially-known “Burd Barn” and benefitted from extensive editing by Michael Cuba and Adam Miller. I was so honored to have it published there. Subscribe, subscribe! You won’t be disappointed.

Smith-Bradbury in situ

New Life for a Kennebunkport Barn
Timber Framing, Number 131, March 2019

At 17 ft. by 38 ft., Kennebunkport’s Smith Bradbury Barn is small. It is also remarkably intact, containing almost all of its original framing members. Although studs have been moved, and removed, and window and door openings added, the standing frame exhibits an impressive integrity and consistency. Recently, our company was called upon to repair the barn as part of a larger, house renovation and expansion project. While the rest of the project strains the bounds of preservation, in the technical sense, the barn remains an island oasis in a sea of modern construction.

The barn stands behind the Smith Bradbury house, built in 1793.  The home is on the National Historic Register as part of the Kennebunkport Historic District, and was home to Charles Bradbury, author of the 1837 History of Kennebunkport. Smith Bradbury, the house’s namesake, was a merchant who came to Kennebunkport from Newburyport in about 1790. During that same year, the shipbuilder Tobias Lord moved his operation from the Mousam River to the more navigable landing site on the Kennebunk River. The site was called, descriptively, “The Landing”, and is located about two miles upriver from the Bradbury plot. Kennebunk merchants were granted their own customs district, and numerous shipbuilding operations made The Landing the commercial center of the region until 1860, when the main economic driver was shifting to tourism.

Roof Frame

The barn’s timbers are neatly hewn, with few visible juggling marks and little tear-out. The style, form and tool marks are consistent with the late 18th century. At that time, builders in the region had some sawmill access, but it was typical for the major timbers to be hewn. A notable feature, this barn’s braces are also hewn, which is atypical but not unique. The walls have mortise and tenon studs and the bevel-edged sheathing was hung with wrought nails. A hewn barn frame with studs and horizontal sheathing is uncommon for our region of southern Maine. From a structural perspective, the Bradbury barn is an artifact of profound historical significance for the town of Kennebunkport. It is extremely rare for a building of this size and age to remain so unchanged, especially in a bustling tourist town.

Currently, the barn consists of three bays, defined by four bents, which is typical for many 18th-century New England frames. At least one bent was removed and replaced by a breezeway, connecting the barn and house. In bent four, now the gable end of the truncated barn, the single original post contains empty loft-girt and brace mortises on its sheathed gable face. The first two bays are 9 feet and 12 feet wide. The third bay is wider at 16 feet, and is supplemented by an additional pair of rafters at the mid-span. The plates are 38 feet long and contain original, identical, stop-splayed scarf joints with 4-ft. tables. The plate scarfs are centered in the current iteration of the building, and don’t offer any clues to the missing bent. It is common enough for plate scarfs not to be centered that their centering now doesn’t negate the fifth bent theory. The overlaps of the purlins, on the other hand, are more informative.

Rafter-purlin connection

The principal rafter – common purlin roof is simple, beautiful, and typical for the region. The remaining bents contain all of their original framing members in excellent, functional condition. The pitch of the roof carries from the rafters through the tie ends. The rafter feet and tie beam ends show no deterioration at the eaves. Exterior trims are simple with just a narrow soffit hung on the flat, with a beaded edge. (Soffit pic?)Narrow purlins connect the rafters. Cut from saplings, the purlins maintain the taper of the tree and are quite charming. They are hewn and squared in the first bay and taper to the round thereafter. These purlins are continuous over the first two bents, and are staggered over the third and fourth pair of rafters, extending past the rafter like the tails of a bow. The location of the overlaps suggest that the barn was once one bent longer. If the building had an additional set of rafters, the carefully staggered purlins would have been centered over the middle two pairs of rafters.

West eave wall

The first bay incorporates a high girt in the eaves wall, almost nine feet above the sill, to allow for hay wagon or carriage entry. In the remaining bays, the loft hangs only six and half feet from the top of the sills. All the better to admire the loft joists, which are beautifully hewn. They extend the full width of the barn and rest on top of the wall girts. The studded walls have caused many a framer to look for evidence that the building might have once been a house. To date, it appears that the building was always and only used as a barn, from the drive-bay, to the lack of a chimney, and the consistent orientation in the reference faces of the bents. The lack of a foundation proved definitive. The sills were balanced upon dry-laid piers of stone, set on grade, and open to the elements. The studding is striking, and unusual, but ultimately, it is the only element that whispered “house.”

In the early aughts, the rear wall of the barn was melting into the landscape. The damage to the frame and subsequent repairs indicate a roof leak gone on too long. The lack of a foundation was finally wearing out the sills, and multiple generations of fenestrations were taking their toll. The owners sought a repair sympathetic to the timber frame, but they hired a contractor unacquainted with timber framing. The carpenter got as far as ordering a solid timber post, but severed all the associated joinery when he installed it. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence, and among the primary reasons we get calls. We replace more timbers less than two decades old, than timbers older than two centuries. And, when original material is rotted, it is often due to recent alterations to the building, a re-roofing that fails its flashing detail or a foundation repair that relies too heavily on concrete. Fortunately, his alterations were localized to the immediate area surrounding the rear post in the fourth bent, and the rest of the frame was left intact.

By the time we were called, in late 2017, the barn frame was slated to be repurposed as a master suite and incorporated into an addition that includes a library and dining room. The adaptive reuse and respectful repairs will ensure that the frame will remain standing and in use. The architect’s design respects the historic character of the house as well as the contemporary needs of the occupants. In the barn, the clients have prioritized retaining original material wherever possible. The whitewash on the hewn timbers, left over from their working days, will be preserved. The scarf repairs will be visible in the bedroom. The juxtaposition between old and new will highlight the craftsmanship of the original frame and bespoke quality of the repairs.

Burd on steel by Tim Sweeney

The first step in the barn’s reuse would be to eliminate its most barn-like characteristic and pour a basement. We wasted no labor toiling beneath a standing frame. Building movers made quick work of picking the frame up by its loft girts and rolling it over a grid of steel I-beams to four cribbing piles in the backyard. (crib photo) The sill system was completely rotten. We replaced it with a hybrid floor system: timber sills hung with I-joists and covered with engineered subflooring. Manufactured materials may not be our cup of tea, but that’s what contemporary collaborations are made of. Using conventional methods in the first floor allowed us to concentrate labor where it will be seen. We may have demolished the rotten floor framing entirely, but we were able to preserve historic posts that required extensive repair. The posts were joined to the timber sills with traditional mortise and tenon, and anchored to the foundation with Simpson straps embedded in the concrete.

Tom Glynn

In July of 2018, the building was rolled back to its foundation. Tom Glynn oversaw the timber repairs. You might recognize Tom from the guild conferences; he looks a lot like Willie Nelson (although that doesn’t really narrow things down). Tom’s worked with the company for over two decades. During that time, he’s embarked upon the reproduction of an 18th-century blacksmith’s shop using only period tools, and keeps a bench in his kitchen to sharpen his chisels and plane irons. In the repair of the Smith Bradbury barn, Tom is mentoring our next generation of traditional timber framers.

The first round of repairs addressed the posts. In order to accommodate contemporary humans in general, and a 6 ft. 2 in. occupant specifically, all of the posts were raised by six inches. The northwest half of the barn, including the high loft, was in sound condition. The posts in bents one and two maintained their post feet as well as their original bevel edge sheathing. Tom and the crew raised the intact posts onto plinth blocks. Three posts required extensive repairs, and the post that was replaced in the aughts was replaced yet again, with joinery.

Halved and bladed post repair

In order to retain the maximum amount of original material, the crew employed a bridle joint fix on the bottom halves of the bent three posts. A long slot mortise is cut into the old timber, preserving the interior and exterior faces, and a post foot with a long center tenon replaces the rotten end. The rear post required an additional shoulder repair at the girt level, on the sheathing side of the timber. The front corner post, in bent four, required a five-foot halved-and-bladed scarf joint. This scarf will resist twist in the corner post and replaces extensive rot on the sheathing side of the post. It is common for clients to fully replace posts that have been damaged along more than half their length, but it is not always necessary. When posts are replaced, their story is erased. A repaired post can be one of the most appealing details in a restored frame, and, if designed and cut correctly, plenty strong. As a result, the Smith Bradbury barn will contain much more original material, with only one post replaced in full. The scarf joints will add character and help tell the story of the building. The finished interior will have integrity and consistency.

To that end, the crew repaired stud feet with undersquinted lap joints and replaced missing studs to their original mortises. While post scarfs typically require more labor than replacement posts, stud fixes like these don’t take much more time than cutting and installing new studs. This is especially true with the economy of scale achieved by repairing an entire wall of stud feet.

Stop-splayed, under-squinted and keyed scarf joint

Touring the barn at the end of the framing phase, Tom pointed to Jake’s stop-splayed, under-squinted and keyed scarf joints as the element he was most proud of. “The joint works really well when it fits tight,” he said. “They came together really nice.” The stop-splayed scarf works well in shear, the under-squinting helps it resist twist, and the key in the center helps the joint to perform in tension. During the aughts, the well-meaning contractor replaced 11 ft. of the rear plate and joined it to the existing plate with a six-inch lap. A well-supported lap repair can work in a plate, especially if its abutments are under-squinted, but six inches doesn’t provide enough bearing to securely fasten the two elements. The tie beams were unceremoniously severed at the plate repair, with no joinery to reconnect them. In order to repair the ties, and reestablish their function, Tom and his crew cut one half of the scarf into the original tie beam end and a complimentary half into a new, in-kind timber. In the new end of the tie beam, they cut a traditional English tying joint with a teazle mortise and half dovetail.

East wall girt repair

The stop-splayed and keyed scarf was also used on each of the long, eaves wall girts between bents three and four. Tom’s compliment was specifically directed at the east girt, located in the center of the largest area of repair. The east wall, near bent four, had been damaged extensively by water infiltration. He was particularly happy with how the repairs came together during assembly. In that corner, the crew needed to replace a corner post, install the rear girt fix, and install a rather long plate fix. The plate repair alone extended 22 feet from the corner post to the original scarf joint at the center of the building. They cut and installed the tie beam fixes first. They precut the replacement post, plate and girt fixes on the bench. After everything was cut, the crew headered the loft joists and installed dead men under the tie beams, jacking the tie beam just enough to slide over the top of plate. With just three crew members, they installed the post, girt and plate fixes the following day. The pieces were cut accurately and required minimal adjustment. On a busy jobsite, crowded with multiple contractors, it was a relief to have the major part of assembly go so smoothly.

It isn’t every job that so thoroughly prioritizes repair over replacement. Our old-fashioned ideals weren’t even reflected across the rest of the jobsite. But inside this little barn, the attention to detail was the kind of challenge that thrills our crew. As Tim Sweeney, one of the members of the next preservation generation, said, “It’s the artistic part of the job.”

Jessica MilNeil has worked for Preservation Timber Framing since 2008 as a carpenter, designer, and conditions assessor. She keeps a blog at www.preservationtimberframing.com where she writes about interesting buildings and the problems they get into.