Category: Houses
Historic homes, Historic houses
Categories
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Watch the Tuttle House restoration on the small screen!
On and off since 2019, PTF has been involved with the restoration of the Tuttle Barn at the Desert of Maine in Freeport. The new owners, Mela and Doug Heestand, have transformed the Desert to be more welcoming for families and more clearly interpret the unique ecology of this site. This past year, we restored…
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Crisp crane day at Kavanagh
We raised the Kavanagh ell last week. The frame was in rough condition, but the owners have prioritized preserving original material as much as possible. All but one tie beam received two new ends, each joined by a timber scarf. Most of the posts received repairs as well. The undercarriage and roof system were beyond…
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Kavanagh Undercarriage, Oak Bell Yoke, and Barn Raising
PTF has been wicked busy. We are working on some phenomenal projects, and I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves: The Northern Crew of Jake, Dan N. and Tim is completely rebuilding the undercarriage of the historic Kavanagh House. The Far Southern Crew of Erik and Brian painstakingly reproduced the historic bell yoke…
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Sustainable Home Renovation at iFarm
On April 27, iFarm will be hosting a workshop for homeowners to learn about energy-saving renovations (that’s this Saturday, folks!) A working farm with lovingly restored buildings, iFarm combines 19th-century knowledge with 21st-century innovation to create a model for sustainability in agriculture. With the effects of manmade climate change now apparent, it is more important than…
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Attention: Tenon ends!
For me, it was not love at first sight. The Dummer House, built in 1786, is the oldest in Hallowell. Tucked onto Dummer Lane, the building had already been moved once and was languishing under a pair of overgrown maples, awash in eau du restaurant dumpster. It’s a plank frame building, which means that the…
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Foley Notebook: This roof was hip before you knew about it.
To the crew at least, the most impressive piece of the French frame is the roof system. The roof has a very low pitch: the apex of the ridge is little more than 4′ above the tie beams. There are two continuous ridges, each about 30′ in length, that meet on top of a short…
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Foley Notebook: Design Time
If you are prone to feeling lazy, you’ll have to ignore the Foleys. In addition to their intense day jobs, they care for four horses, a flock of sheep, chickens, and a pack of wild dogs (it’s only two dogs, but they have a lot of energy). The French frame is the third frame we’ve…
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The Foley Notebook: Salvage Detectives, part 3
Almost a year ago, we faced the year’s first pile of pick-up sticks: a neat but undifferentiated pile of timbers that formerly formed the French House of Kingston, NH. They were first assembled in 1804, around the time that the landmark Badger Tavern opened in Kingston, and the formerly enslaved overthrew their oppressors in the…
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The Salvage Detectives, part 2
An enduring feature of timber frames is that they can be dismantled and re-used. A traditional barn-raising, in which a community comes together to erect a frame in one day is preceded by weeks of joiners’ labor: cutting and fitting the posts, girts and braces, plates and tie beams. With the help of many hands, or…
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Good Day, Bad Blog
This blog goes dark when it’s sunniest. Seems like every day this summer has been a good day to be working outside. We’re installing the last repairs to the undercarriage at East Derry First Parish Church, installing electricity for the clock at Hampton Town Clock Tower, waiting for the last of the ceiling to…