Category: Preservation
Categories
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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…
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“We’ve been watching that steeple slant backward for years”
The Troy Union Meetinghouse had a crane day last week. The long-leaning steeple was partially dismantled, leaving behind the two front posts to stand like wooden antennae. The entire replacement frame has been cut by a crew of local craftsmen, and will be resurrected before the end of the summer. Read more about the process here,…
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East Derry Derring-do
The First Parish Meetinghouse of East Derry, NH is preparing for a big anniversary, its tricentennial. What does one even get for a church on its 300th? Wood? Copper? Both, as it turns out. Beginning with a thorough assessment and rehabilitation plan in 2011, the congregation has been working steadily to repair extensive damage throughout…
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Hard Work, Adaptation, and Love
The client’s wedding was in a week, and the barn in which he’d marry was in pieces on the ground. It was crane day, and a Friday, two things that don’t usually go together. In the worst case, a crane day on Friday means you don’t have an additional weekday in case you hit a…
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Kung Fu Timber Framing
Troy Union Church was built in 1840, in a vernacular style that combines elements of Greek and Gothic Revival. It is a modest building, 34′ x 42′, built to host the small town’s various Christian denominations, hence the “Union”. Caught up in that communal spirit, the bell tower is preparing to take a trust fall onto…
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Freedom Mill in Food & Wine
Last Month’s Food & Wine featured The Heartbreaking Story Behind The Lost Kitchen about Erin French’s revived restaurant in the restored Freedom Mill. The author was especially charmed by her surroundings: …Take a quick left on Main Street, and there’s The Mill at Freedom Falls—The Lost Kitchen’s once crumbling, now beautifully renovated home. Cross a narrow bridge…
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After Fire, a Family Doubles Down on Preservation
Restoring an historic building takes a lot of stamina. The sense of warmth and meaning one feels within a restored structure comes from the labor invested by the craftspeople who built it and the experiences of the community that used it. Once complete, the Steiner-Truesdale residence in Newfields, N.H.,will reflect not only a century of…
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Stylish Scarfs for Summer
On Monday, the Pennell crew erected the ell by hand. They had a roustabout on-site, which is like a more portable, telescoping gin pole, but the bents were light enough to raise with a crew of four. The ell, a drop-tie frame built in the mid-1800s, was dismantled earlier this spring during the first phase of…
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Natural woods, their individuality and friendliness*
There exists in wood a quality so satisfying that the proper use of it in the structural features of a house produces an effect of completeness which does away with the need of elaborate furnishings or decoration. – Gustav Stickley, The Craftsman, July 1905 Every now and then, I encounter a windbag who wants to…
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Dismantling the Pennell Ell
Over this long spring, we’ve been so elbow deep at the Pennell project in Brunswick that I’ve been remiss in writing about it. The James Pennell House, on Pennellville rd., is a two-story Greek Revival house built in 1838. It is a high-style home, with the later addition of cupola and ell. The project…