Room 101 (The Pink Parlor), Wall D, Photo by John Butler
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:
Pink Parlor Surround Turned Upside Down
When I think about the era in which this house was built, in a relatively new country, with newly earned independence, it can feel very foreign to me. I struggle to understand the mindset of these post-colonial carpenters. But when I see the joinery detail below, and a fireplace surround constructed nearly the same way I’d construct it today, I feel much closer and more connected with our region’s history. I realize that we are still a young country, and in the context of the rest of the world, this is a pretty young house. The importance of preservation is emphasized not simply because the house is “old,” but because so much hard work went into constructing it.
Mid Rail and Stile Joinery
Oh, and the stiles were buried deep, just like in the Blue Room.
Buried Stile
For more photos of last week’s progress, click on the slideshow, below:
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, the surround was intact, and allowed a visitor to feel transported in time. While I found the piece pleasing aesthetically, I didn’t fully appreciate the workmanship until it was dismantled, revealing another chapter in the story of this building.
After Scott removed the adjacent paneling, and had cut or pulled the wrought nails attaching it to the wooden lintels, we realized that removing the surround wouldn’t be so easy. The stiles on either side of the panel and fireplace opening extended past the first layer of brick, but we could never have guessed just how deeply. After removing a piece of subfloor and digging into crumbled clay mortar, we found that the stiles extended below the surface of the subfloor by 8 inches. Eight Inches!
We haven’t found anything like this elsewhere in the building, and, based on the adjacent wall paneling, which went no deeper than the first layer of flooring, there is no reason to think that the original floor was eight inches lower. My theory is this: while the frame was being fit, joiners were cutting this and the other frame & panel walls (joinery shots, below). As soon as the frame was erected and sheathed, joiners installed this surround first so that this hearth could warm and feed the carpenters as they finished the rest of the house.
After digging out the stiles, we carefully laid the surround onto a specialized piece of preservation equipment called a Trash Can, and then we discovered something AWESOME.
A Pulvinated Panel! I have a thing for pulvinated, or “breasted” panels (would an analyst draw some connection between my interest and being a woman in a male-dominated field?) I have loved them ever since I first encountered them at Hancock Shaker Village on a NBSS class trip. At Hancock, the technique is seen on the front of the panel, and elsewhere, it seems to refer largely to friezes. I just think it is The Number One Most Elegant Way to field a panel, and ought to be used more often, and visibly. It is appealing to me how present the crafts-person is in this method of shaping a panel. The curve is shaped by his eye and hand, rather than a combination square. To me, the process is nearer to the construction of a chair than that of the austere wall panel.
Pulvinated Panel at Hancock Shaker Village
Given that the back of the panel we found was mostly rough, and totally invisible, the gently curved backside was not really where this crafts-person showed his stuff. That was in the triple stub tenon we found in the wide bottom rail, and the double tenon up top. The joinery involved is partly what leads us to believe that the surround may have been made ahead of time, off-site.
To see more photos of our process click on the slideshow, below
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 of simply filling in the space around a fireplace.
Fireplace Return Panel
The paneled wall is composed of three frames, joined by mortise and tenon. One, that surrounds the fireplace opening itself, contains a large panel approximately 3′ x 6′. Its 8′ stiles extend past the panel to the floor, and the joint between the flat panel and the stile is covered by a bolection molding developed from the John Cram HABS drawings. The same bolection molding will cover the joint between the lower half of the stile and the masonry.
Adjacent the right side of the large panel is an open frame that will enclose a bookshelf, and perpendicular to the left edge is a third frame with a panel in its lower half, and a bookshelf above.
Pilaster Layout Close Up
The front wall plane will be adorned with three pilasters, designed from the Cram drawings, which handily obscure the joint between the two front frames, and their edges. The pilasters are not only decorative, as their obfuscation allows the front frames an expansion joint, that will move with the weather.
When I first approached this job, I was sure that the many mortise and tenon joints would pose the greatest challenge. And while they were a lot of fun, they came together with relative ease, and the glue ups were the most interesting aspect of the first phase of the process. Years ago, I used to wonder whether there was a word for glue-up phobias, because I clearly had it. The idea of the glue dripping and drying as I scrambled to fit the swelled joinery once filled me with dread, but over time I’ve borrowed tips here and there to develop a stress-free system that results in remarkably flat panels.
The larger of the two panels was 6′ x 3′. Historically, a plane of this size would have been broken up by a stile or rail to accomodate panels composed of single boards, some of which were over 2′ in width. However, the client has a specific painting that she wants to hang over the fireplace, and we thought it an appropriate compromise to create the panel by gluing together four boards. We’ve seen wide glued up panels in houses of a similar age, such as in the O’Kane House, in Durham, NH.
Half Glue Up
The biggest challenge when gluing together a wide panel is keep the whole assemblage flat. My contemporaries would recommending gluing together narrower pieces to keep it stable, but we wanted to use wider boards to better approximate the panel that may have originally been; so we used four, 9 1/2″ wide, eastern white pine boards. Tom and I started by jointing a face (flattening the face on a jointer), and then running the board through the thickness planer to create a parallel face, and then jointing an edge, and using our new SawStop to create a parallel edge. I then laid the boards out with their best faces up, arranging and rearranging to achieve the tightest joints and flattest initial surface. I then drew marriage marks across each of the joints, and used the marks to reference the biscuit jointer. A biscuit jointer adds to the prep time for glue ups, but I think that it has been the most important changes in my path towards glue-up enlightenment. After the glue is applied, no longer do the boards twist and slide past one another like Jamiroquai and his couch in the Virtual Insanity video. As the pipe clamp is tightened, the biscuits help to hold unruly boards to their better behaved brothers. They allow you more time to arrange your pipe clamps and cauls.
Panel, half scraped, see its shine?
I glued the panels in two pairs, and then glued the pairs together. I then used a cabinet scraper to remove some of the larger globs that had squeezed from the joint, and followed it with a random orbital sander. I tend to be snobby about sandpaper, thinking it a lesser method of smoothing and flattening, but for taking down the glue between joints (if it has hardened too long) I have found nothing better. Sandpaper abrades the surface of the wood, always leaving a slightly fuzzy surface, while planes and cabinet scrapers cut the fibers, leaving a smoother, shiny surface. In most cases, a plane is also faster. But I couldn’t risk the tear out that might occur if the flat-sawn boards had adjacent grains that run in the opposite direction. I was still able to achieve a traditional finish by following the sander with a cabinet scraper and extremely sharp block plane.
Raising Panel
After the panel was smoothed, I relieved the backside, creating a raised panel. Because the client wanted a flat panel on which to hang her painting, the work will never be seen, but like a lot of traditional forms, the fielding serves a purpose. It relieves the edge so that it will fit in a dado (groove) that runs in the edge of the stiles and rails, but allows the center of the panel to remain at a full 3/4 inch thickness, which increases its stability.
I transported the frames and panels to Hampton Falls, where they were assembled, and pinned. Tom and I spent the last week installing the frames, and adding the pilasters and trim. Please peruse the installation photos below, and check back for final shots of the completed work.
