We’ve been using softwood wedges, made from 2x stock, to carefully remove delicate moldings and wide wall panels. Either the wedges loosen the nails completely, or they provide use with enough room to slip a sawblade behind to cut the nail. Like ziploc tupperware, they can be reused, but eventually the edges get grungy,…
PTF has recently embarked upon a worthy away job to preserve a mill in Freedom, ME. Originally a grist mill, it was later converted into a wood turning mill, which closed in 1967. The building has lain dormant since. When the project is completed, the water turbines in the basement of the mill will generate…
Over the past week, we have been using up our supply of softwood wedges at the O’Kane House. In the effort to gently remove the delicate, hand-planed moldings, we tap narrow wedges in along the paint lines, crushing the wedges with repeated use (and saving the edges of the trim). It is a slow, thoughtful…
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…
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,…
On Friday we erected the Ice House, c. 1770. This small, 10′ x 13′, frame is an exact replica of the larger barn to which it was found adjacent. The Ice House had been fully sheathed inside and out, and the wall cavities filled with sawdust, for insulation. It is extremely rare to find an…