Here’s the finished room made from that old house. You can see the posts exposed in the corner where it meets with the log cabin, and you can see the antique joists above. (we not only built the log cabin, and this timber frame addition, but also the cabinetry, and even… the kitchen table)

Originally posted 2015-07-31 11:59:05.

Okay… it’s time to put the old house back up.

We decided here not to use stress skin panels but rather we would built standard 2by6 exterior walls and then build the old timber frame on the interior of those walls to be seen and appreciated for decades to come. (no real reason for that… I guess there just wasn’t enough of material needed to bother ordering panels)

For all the stone work enthusiasts out there let me point out one feature of the stone that makes it attractive… depth and roughness. Smooth surface stone will never give you the play on light as do rough faced, jagged stone.

Once the walls were all framed up we started with the rafters.

We could then start to get a sense of what the finished kitchen would look like.

Originally posted 2015-07-30 14:18:51.

Moving day.
The entire house only took us two trips to move…
chimney and all.

Originally posted 2015-07-30 13:49:27.

This is how the addition off of the log cabin started out… with a worn out mid-1800’s home scheduled to be torn down.

She wasn’t much to look at… but her frame was built well (which is why she was still standing) and I needed a frame.

Notice the original siding on the chimney end.

The frame of this home was like nothing I had seen before. It clearly was built in a transitional time of construction.

The timbers were smaller than in the older homes that we had previously experienced but the mortise-and-tenon joints were still each carefully marked with roman numerals, (as seen in the photo above). Each of these joints was held in place with a wooden peg (many of which we had to drill out).

But what made this frame unique, in my experience at least, was the grid type appearance. So many horizontal framing members… hmmm… why would they be there?

The only time I ever install horizontal framing is when I know I’m going to put up board-and-batten siding. And that’s what this house had… but… the board-and-batten found here was a form of underlayment on this house which was then to be covered up with horizontal siding.

This is the oldest house that I have ever seen with a layer of underlayment under the siding. This layer contributes greatly in sealing out air infiltration and strengthens our homes today. And I guess that’s what it was doing here… the timbers were getting smaller and an added layer of wood was giving the house the added strength that it would need.

Soon the timbers of our houses would shrink to the size of two-by-fours and the fancy joinery would be eliminated, replaced by a few nails.

Originally posted 2015-07-29 13:25:17.