Here’s a close-up of one of the hog-trough corner posts found in the Sugar Hollow house.
If you look at this image closely you can see rows of nail holes that once held wood strips which were used as part of the interior plaster work. You can also see the striping effect of where the plaster would touch the beams between those lathing strips.
Once you see these plaster details then the genius of creating the carved out hog-trough posts becomes apparent. Those early builders gave this house the strength of massive corner posts and at the same time created corners that could easily be plastered and trimmed out.
Much later timber-frame homes in Virginia (those built between 1880 and 1900) used much smaller corner posts and just skipped this detail. The plasterers who would come in later in the project would simply nail a board to each side of the corner post to support their plaster work.
To this old country boy, the corner post of timbered home is it’s maker’s signature. A well crafted corner indicates a well crafted house.
Originally posted 2015-04-10 15:13:25.