When I embarked upon a career in wood, I wondered whether I should become a furniture-maker, and construct finely joined objects of beauty, or build houses, which provide a lot more utility to people. I soon found that it was a false dichotomy; working in preservation, I can work on buildings that are constructed like…
Since April, Ed, Lee, Reese, Chuck, Jesse, Shawn and Arron have been laboring to restore the undercarriage of the Mill at Freedom Falls (c. 1834). The crew faced a number of obstacles: one corner of the building had dropped more than 10 inches out of level, and a stream that once powered the turbine still runs between…
Yesterday was the first day we had a crane on site to help dismantle the O’Kane house frame. I don’t think the day could have gone more smoothly, all thanks to a great crew, and crane operator Frank Donahue. Thank you, Kendra, for all the pictures. Check back soon for more.
Brian Cox is managing the removal and inventory of the O’Kane windows, and he sends us the following report: As the O’Kane house continues to be examined, documented, and carefully disassembled, the windows in the ell have begun to be removed. They were previously photographed, measured, and assigned an alpha-numeric designation consistent with other elements.…
Over the past month, an injection of new blood has invigorated the dismantling process. Not only have we three new Maine Preservation interns; Dave Ewing, Andrew Cushing and Noah Kerr, but Jim and Kendra, two clutch workers, to boot. Brian Cox has been on site, managing the inventorying and dismantling of the windows (stay tuned for…
On Friday, Scott finished removing the trim from the Pink Parlor, pictured above. I had eagerly anticipated the joinery surrounding the fireplace, given our recent work on another fireplace surround. The displaced surround, turned upside-down, is below: When I think about the era in which this house was built, in a relatively new country, with…
On Tuesday, Dan was removing southern yellow pine flooring in a room we’ve dubbed “the Pink Parlor.” As an earlier layer of flooring was uncovered, he detected beneath the scrim of sand and dust a pattern in the mottled finish. A little washing revealed a fine stenciling. Scott had also been working on dismantling the…
This is post about a persnickety process: After a piece of trim is removed from an O’Kane wall, it is taken over to a photograph of that wall and traced with a fine tip marker. The dis-assembler then writes a description of the piece on the item list for that wall and assigns it an…
Before it was dismantled, the fireplace in O’Kane’s Blue Parlor got a lot of attention. It is a simple-looking surround, with a single large panel above and an applied mantle, but it’s a good representation of the vernacular style from its era. Aside from a little bit of backband added in a Greek Revival-era renovation,…
One of the first treasures we uncovered at O’Kane was a wall of horizontal featheredge sheathing painted in bright yellow. It was hidden behind plaster in the Blue Parlor, and had shadow lines delineating where once there were shelves. Where the boards terminate, on the left side, we think there was originally a wall, creating…