The Flint Hill house… Part 7

00001342

And then, we finished re-erecting the timber frame for the coming addition.

I often ponder what the original men who built this frame would have thought if they could somehow know of what we did.

Two hundred years ago those men went into the woods with an axe to fell trees. They squared the logs in the woods with those axes, leaving the waste there, and making the material lighter to move. A team of horses would drag these hewn timbers to a pit saw where one man would stand on top and another would be down in a pit, each taking turns pulling on a saw so that dimensional timbers could be made.

Then master craftsmen would do their joinery magic and assemble a frame that would stand for 200 years, even though she endured decades of neglect.

Their work would not be seen in all those years, covered in plaster on one side and siding on the other. And then, just as the home was about to be lost, some young men came in and once again made use of their seventeenth century workmanship.

I have encountered hand prints left by those men, and pocket change that fell out of their pockets, and once, I found a chisel that had been accidentally left on horizontal beam and was covered over by plasterers, still as sharp as any in my tool box.

I’d like to think that both generations would be appreciative of the other. A brotherhood that spans centuries.

Originally posted 2015-03-10 17:48:10.

The Flint Hill house… Part 72019-06-29T10:11:35+00:00

The Flint Hill house… Part 6

00001331

Finally, the fun part begins. I love this stage of construction… I already know what the finished product is going to look like and it’s exciting to watch it be revealed to the world.

The design work is done, the permits have been obtained, the deck has been built, the materials have been salvaged. Even the sky is bluer.

The time has come to build! One piece at a time the frame goes together.

Life is good.

00001335

Originally posted 2015-03-10 17:08:23.

The Flint Hill house… Part 62019-06-29T10:11:34+00:00

The Flint Hill house… Part 5

00001324

We recovered some tremendous framing members from this old house that we would use to build the coming addition.

00001329

Notice the sag in the main floor system. I’ve never taken down a frame that was under such a degree of strain and stress. I was relieved when it was all on the ground.

00002399

I’ve never had a serious injury on one of my projects in the 25+ years that we have been doing this… and for that, I am very thankful.

Originally posted 2015-03-10 16:33:42.

The Flint Hill house… Part 52019-06-29T10:11:33+00:00

The Flint Hill house… Part 4

00001326

My clients wanted an addition designed and built that would have “a timber-frame barn feel” to it.

I could tell by their description of the addition’s future use that a house frame, with a much greater number of framing members, would be a better option than making use of an old barn.

And as fate would have it, about that time I received a call asking if I would be interested in salvaging an old house.

00001320

This house, in her day, was stunning. Likely built in the very early 1800’s. Old homes like this are extremely rare. It was a crime to let something this valuable go to waste.

Collapse was imminent. She had been greatly neglected for a long time. All of her doors, floors, mantles and windows, even the trim and the staircase were gone. There was talk of burning what was left.

But the frame of the house was amazing… even though a fourth of it had rotted away, and the rest was sagging under tremendous strain.

00001323

Here are three photos taken on day one of our salvage operation.

Originally posted 2015-03-10 15:31:44.

The Flint Hill house… Part 42019-06-29T10:11:32+00:00

The Flint Hill house… Part 3

00001317

If this isn’t the ugliest new home that I have ever seen, it’s certainly a contender.

All of you dear friends who have been following my ramblings for a while know that I place great importance on the concept that a home needs to be attractive from all four sides… and that the most important of those four sides is the one seen from where you park your car.

After a long hard day at work, or an outing with kids, or returning from a vacation… when you get out of that car you want to be pleased with the home you are entering. Pleased, heck, I think you should be blown away with your home! “Wow! Look at this place! Am I blessed or what???”

Yet this photo is the profile these folks and their guests were given from a famous designer/builder to gaze upon when arriving. Can you believe it? The plans they were given showcased the view side of the house, which is nice, but he neglected this side completely.

Originally posted 2015-03-09 21:47:15.

The Flint Hill house… Part 32019-06-29T10:11:31+00:00

The Flint Hill house… Part 2

00001313

I did not build this log cabin. Yet, I was called in to design and build an addition for it. I wondered why.

The cabin had been built “by a nationally recognized expert on log cabins”. Why wasn’t he being called in to add an addition?

The cabin did have some things going for it… nice old logs, not a bad chimney, appealing roof pitches, and a porch located on the side of the house where one could enjoy the views.

There were a couple of things though that jumped out at me that I would have done differently, but I didn’t comment on them to the owner. For one thing I’ve never been a big fan of square windows… I like windows that are taller than they are wide.

Also, I don’t care for board-and-batten siding on a log cabin. In all my years of looking at historic cabins… hundreds and hundreds of them… I have never seen a single one that originally had board-and-batten siding on it. None, at all.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like board-and-batten, just not on, or near, a log cabin… they tend to give a cabin an “outbuilding feel”… If you want your cabin to take on a chicken-coop look, go with board-and-batten. If not use horizontal siding.

I asked the cabin’s owners about their relationship with their previous builder and if they were pleased his workmanship. The long list of problems they began describing was unbelievable, starting with their discovery that the builder had not installed footers under the foundation and that they were forced to hire someone else to jack the house up and build a new proper foundation under it.

hmmmmm. So, his building skills needed improvement but what about his design work?
I’ll let you judge… in Part 3.

Originally posted 2015-03-09 21:21:01.

The Flint Hill house… Part 22019-06-29T10:11:30+00:00

The Flint Hill house… Part 1

00001410

OK… Here’s another project that I think you will find of interest.

I was asked to design and build a vintage barn addition that would adjoin an old log cabin that another builder had put up.

And, that’s what I did.

Here’s a look at the nearly completed exterior of the addition. I have plenty of construction photos, as well as finished interior images, to share… but let’s start at the beginning.

Originally posted 2015-03-09 20:28:56.

The Flint Hill house… Part 12019-06-29T10:11:29+00:00

Rope pointing

00002223

This little cottage required a lot of stone to build… a lot of stone… as you can see in the photo with the blue tarp.

00002226

I’ve also included a couple of photos showing the same area of the house as we were building it… the first shows the stonework in a phase that we call “dry laid”… the stone has been shaped and put in place using cement (most clients prefer this look and so this is where we stop.

00002227

The historic stone house that is on this property, that we restored, is a typical Valley home in that has decorative pointing that is applied between the stones once finished. And that, is what we did to this little cottage… as you can see in the final photo.

00002229

Originally posted 2015-03-09 14:42:20.

Rope pointing2019-06-29T10:11:28+00:00

Five key features of good design

00002216

While we were there… restoring the Strasburg stone home… we thought we ought to go ahead and build a sweet little stone cottage. It now serves as a guest house and studio for the homeowners… pretty cute, huh?

00002220

Found in this new structure is  five key ingredients to excellent design and construction. When combined a home can be created that is striking in appearance to all who gaze upon it.

First it’s small. Now houses don’t need to be small to be attractive, and it is possible to have an ugly small home… but the odds are in your favor that if you build small, that the structure will be attractive. Large homes can be attractive too, but one must avoid the flaws so prevalent in the dreaded McMansion.

The second feature found in this home is the simple, elegant, and historical lines… nothing here for show, no doo-dads, fake gables, or plastic columns. Simplicity at it’s best.

Third, is the quality stone work… lot’s of stone… and not some kind of stick-on random pattern stone work. Here we have the best stone available for this location, laid by skilled masons. Brick can be nice too… if well done.

Fourth… install a quality roof.  This one is copper. The eye and the mind, can’t help but notice the added richness, if the house is worthy of possessing a precious metal for it’s roof, then it must be precious. Like fine jewelry on a woman.

And finally use antique wood on the interior. An antique is always worth more than something newly manufactured. It’s warmer, worn from use, and of a higher quality than can be found anywhere else.

00002232

Originally posted 2015-03-08 17:27:23.

Five key features of good design2019-06-29T10:11:27+00:00

Increasing the height of a basement ceiling

00002231

Here are two photos of the restored stone home’s interior.

The first photo was taken of the main floor. As you can see, the danger phase is now over, and sanity once again rules the home. This new floor system should be good for another century or two.

The second photo was taken of the restored fireplace in the basement kitchen, with the new/old joists that we installed clearly seen overhead. Nice aren’t they?

00002246

The second “issue” with this home… the other reason we were brought in… was the low ceiling height found down in the basement. I believe it was something like 6’6″, from finished basement floor to it’s plastered ceiling.

It was “possible” for someone like me, who is 6’2″, to be down there without bending over, but it was mighty uncomfortable. All I would need to do would be to drink a little too much coffee, gain a little bounce in my step, and I would be destined to acquire a headache very quickly.

Now anywhere else in world, other than the Shenandoah Valley, this would have been an easy fix… just dig out more dirt below. But the builders in the Valley, when they build a home, dig down until they hit bedrock and then build their homes… hmmm… they build their houses on rock… that sounds almost… well…Biblical… a house doesn’t get any stronger than one setting on a miles-deep ledge of stone.

So with that being the case, I could not give my clients their desired extra two feet of ceiling height, at least not for any reasonable cost. But, we were in a situation where every inch I could gain would make a difference.

The first idea for more height was easy, we would not replace the plastered ceiling. That would not only give us an extra inch, but more importantly it would give the illusion of having much more headroom due to the higher space between each ceiling joist.

Next, we thought we could eliminate the stone flooring and perhaps even pull out the old concrete slab below it. We could then put back in a thinner slab and use it for a finished floor.

And that, is what we did… in the process we gained a full six inches in basement height… which surprisingly made a huge difference in the enjoyment of the basement kitchen.

Originally posted 2015-03-08 16:42:54.

Increasing the height of a basement ceiling2019-06-29T10:11:26+00:00
Go to Top