Evan’s carpet soffits

Posted on 6 August 2013

One of the joys of buying an old fixer-upper is discovering all the wacky things that previous owners have done. Humility of course tempers the pleasure, as a boy can’t help but wonder which of his design decisions will turn out to be the avocado fridge of 2013. Sometimes, though, the universe is generous, delivering a detail so outrageous as to preclude introspection.

My colleague Evan recently bought a fantastic little Cape in Watertown, MA. It’s a solid house in a great neighborhood, and just the right size to be manageable. And it gave us all the gift of carpeted soffits.

But maybe the best detail was evidence of a previous layer of carpet.

Categories: Found, Seen, vintage

Tagged: 1950s, carpet, kitchen, soffit

Paul’s house in the woods

Posted on 4 August 2013

I first heard of Paul Koval years ago from a graduate of the Cabinet and Furniture program at North Bennett Street School. I was complaining about the paucity of really good cherry lumber at the big wholesale yards where we usually buy our hardwoods. I think it was Sam Chase who said to me, “Well, there’s this guy, and he’s out in the middle of nowhere, but he has some amazing stuff — wide cherry and air-dried walnut, really gorgeous.” I called the number on the little slip of paper that Sam gave me, and crossed my fingers. Wood guys can be a grouchy bunch, wary of greenhorns wasting their time, and I was newly enough in business to still feel like an impostor.

My anxiety was groundless, as Paul (and his family) proved to be friendlier and more open than I could have hoped. His middle-of-nowhere operation turned out to be in Ashby, in Central Massachusetts, and much smaller than I expected. When not working as a physical therapist, Paul seeks out promising trees, partners will a feller and sawyer to turn them into lumber, and dries the resulting boards in his solar kiln (sometimes for a year or more). And while he may have stock from only one or two trees at a time, the material is spectacular — wide, clear boards with beautiful figure. I didn’t have my wits about me on the first visit to make any photographs, but I bought as much cherry as I could fit on my Tacoma, destined for a pair of cabinets that would complete a large renovation in Jamaica Plain.

More recently, I returned to Paul in search of charismatic walnut boards. I have a client who loves the furniture of George Nakashima and asked us to make a pair of coffee tables inspired by his work. Nakashima was known for incorporating the live edges of boards into his designs, rather than sawing and squaring all his lumber.

Dining room table made by George Nakashima

Walnut Minguren desk made by George Nakashima

Commercially-available walnut is typically narrow, squared, and free of florid defects, i.e., unsuitable for work in Nakashima’s style. Paul, though, had exactly the right stuff. My colleague Evan Heraty and I made the drive out on a Friday in early March.

Working in the style of Nakashima is necessarily improvisational, as the character of the wood dictates the final form of the piece. We had a general sense of the size and proportions of the tables we planned to build, but we didn’t yet have specific plans. The wide, quirky boards that Paul had sawn and dried were exactly what we’d hoped to find, and the design of the tables started to emerge.

Paul tallied the wood we chose,

and we loaded the truck.

Loading wide walnut board into box truck

Before we left, Paul suggested that we take a look at his maple sugar operation, as we had arrived during the height of production. His solar kiln does double duty as a sugar house each March, so we headed down.

Paul Koval and Luc walking down to sugar house in snow and fog

Of course, the sap is boiled on a wood fire.

Paul Koval adding firewood to boil maple sap

In the background, you can see some lumber whose drying is temporarily interrupted.

Finally, the two tables we made:

walnut coffee table in the style of Nakashima

Another walnut coffee table in the style ofGeorge Nakashima

Detail of walnut coffee table in the style of George Nakashima

I confess to suffering no small envy of Paul’s life and work; every visit to his house rekindles my rural longings and renews my admiration of his craft. Paul can be reached at wyndyhyll@aol.com.

Categories: Found, trade secrets

Tagged: Ashby, coffee table, furniture, George Nakashima, maple syrup, Paul Koval, sugar house, walnut

How hot is it?

Posted on 18 July 2013

We work with wood for a living, but I think we should all qualify for dual degrees in carpentry and meteorology. This week in particular, thoughts of structure and fine joinery have been pushed aside by more pressing concerns: How to avoid heat stroke. We watch the thermometer and try to chase the shade around the house and speak derisively of people who spend their days in air conditioning; doesn’t help much. It can be curiously comforting, though, to get an objective confirmation that it’s really bloody hot outside, and that we’re not making it all up. In this light, I was delighted to see that the tar patches on the road around Peters Hill in the Arnold Arboretum were starting to bubble.

Of course, I had to poke my finger in to see if there was a liquid center.

I should add that I spend much of my time driving from job to job these days, and the guys on the crew take the brunt of the weather, hot and cold.

Categories: Seen

Tagged: Arnold Arboretum, Hot, Peters Hill, tar bubble, weather

Addendum: Plumbers and carpenters find a third way

Posted on 13 July 2013

Before:

Cast iron waste line in bath floor with cut floor joists

After:

Complicated bathroom floor framing to accommodate plumbing

Closer view of complicated bathroom floor framing to accommodate plumbing

Leo Tuccinardi, our plumber, is technically proficient, but we really love him because he talks to us. I think we spent an hour or more staring at this small bathroom and making sketches on scraps of 2×4, but we figured out how to accommodate both the pipes and the floor structure. The final framing layout bears almost no resemblance to anything you’d find in a carpentry textbook, but I’m pretty confident that the 12×24 tile in the finished bathroom won’t crack.

Categories: Structural work, trade secrets

Tagged: bathroom, floor framing, Plumbing, structure

Burl theft

Posted on 12 July 2013

Yesterday at lunchtime I stopped by Houghton’s Pond in the Blue Hills Reservation outside Boston to let Musti and Luc stretch their legs and pee on trees for a few minutes. As we were walking, I saw an oddly damaged white oak tree.

Vandalized white oak tree with pond in the background

As we got closer, I realized that someone had gone at it with a chainsaw, attempting to cut off a large burl from the base of the trunk.

Oak trunk with insect-damaged burl beside it

Late last year, a number of stories in the local media suggested that the illicit removal of burls from public trees was becoming an epidemic. The Boston Globe described a chainsaw-wielding thief cutting burls off trees in the Fenway Victory Gardens, and another story described similar vandalism in Mount Auburn Cemetery. In this case, the would-be thief abandoned his effort when he (why can we always assume that’s the correct pronoun?) saw that the burl had been thoroughly chewed over, probably by carpenter ants.

Insect-damaged white oak burl cut from tree

The wood from an intact white oak burl can be spectacular, and spectacularly expensive, but geez, can’t people stick to stealing copper out of abandoned factories?

closeup of white oak burl grain structure

Categories: Seen

Tagged: Blue Hills, Boston, burl, burl theft, Houghton's Pond, vandalism, white oak

Force of habit

Posted on 9 July 2013

We saw hints before we started the project that there had been a fire at some point, but we weren’t sure of the extent. The fire predated the current owners, and they weren’t aware of any lingering issues.

When we opened up the walls, it became clear that the fire had been quite extensive. There was charred framing, lath, and sheathing throughout one of the rooms, as well as evidence of a less-than-careful repair job. Large areas of framing and sheathing were painted white, presumably with a shellac-based odor-blocking paint, and other sections had been crudely replaced.

wall with fire damage and sheathing repair

One inside corner, though, was particularly troubling. It wasn’t just ugly, but seemed like it might be structurally insufficient.

The post was painted white, so the repair crew had definitely interacted with it. Just below the subfloor, though, it looked like the fire had significantly eroded the meat of the post where a floor joist met it in a mortise-and-tenon joint. Because the post was in an inside corner of the building, we couldn’t see as much of it as we’d have liked, but there was evidence that it was collapsing under load. The cheek of the mortise joint in the post was bowing out of plane from the rest of the member.

We called our favorite structural engineer (Elliot Weiss of Aberjona Engineering), who confirmed the soundness of our concerns, and together we came up with a plan for replacing the damaged section of the post.

We would need to open the exterior side of the corner to get access to make the repair, but we were concerned that the exterior sheathing might be carrying some of the load from the compromised post. We started by installing temporary supports.

jacks and temporary support posts under a failing fire-damaged post

Then we removed clapboards and sheathing to get a better look at what we were dealing with.

fire-damaged post seen from the outside of a house

Interior view of fire-damaged corner post

When I was first learning to be a carpenter, I read about the various forces that operate on built structures — compression, tension, shear, and in high wind zones, sometimes uplift forces — and thought I was getting a good handle on why buildings stand up*. As I saw more of the real world, though, I realized that my initial education was incomplete; sometimes it was very hard to figure out why some old houses were still standing. Was it the nails in the sheathing? Or perhaps just the many layers of paint? Years later, an architect/engineer I work with (Chris Hosford of Helios Design Group) filled the gap in my understanding: some buildings remain standing through nothing more than force of habit, and our corner post was a perfect example. There was almost no material left around the joint, and what remained was completely charred. We gave ourselves a minute to shake our heads and stare, and then set to replacing the failed section.

We cut the existing post back to where it was sound, and spliced in an engineered lumber post using half-lap joints, tie plates, and Timberlok bolts.

tie plates and timberlok bolts connecting spliced post repair

exterior view of damaged post replaced by engineered lumber

With the new post in place, we removed our jacks, patched the exterior wall, and got back to the real job.

Interior view of post replaced with engineered lumber

* There is a wonderful pair of books by Mario Salvadori called Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down. Both are spectacularly informative and very entertaining, and I recommend them heartily.

Categories: Found, Structural work

Tagged: Fire damage, force of habit, jacks, post, structural work, why buildings stand up

Also found in the bathroom

Posted on 7 July 2013

I guess there’s something about bathrooms in Jamaica Plain. We found this ring tucked behind a vanity cabinet during a whole-house renovation a few years ago. When it turned up, I anticipated a tearful reunion scene when we presented it to our clients, but the ring wasn’t theirs, and they didn’t seem especially impressed (I thought it was pretty cool). Our current clients were more excited about the dentures.

Categories: Found

Tagged: bathroom, diamond, found, Jamaica Plain, ring

Found in the bathroom

Posted on 2 July 2013

Someone tucked these dentures behind the beadboard behind the vanity cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. Were they playing a prank, or was this some kind of time capsule? I regret to report that my squeamishness prevented me from thoroughly examining the materials and detailing in the teeth. Perhaps I’ll have more to report later…

We found the envelope in the space under the bathtub, in the same bathroom as the dentures. The addressee is Ethel Beaument (sic). I got sucked into the website of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society recently and discovered that Ethel Beaumont seems to have been the granddaughter of a Col. Frederick Beaumont, an early owner of the house we’re working on. The account suggests that some version of the house predates his purchase of the property in the 1870s. More on this later, I hope.

Hard not to wonder if any of those bonds still held value four years later.

Categories: Found

Tagged: 1925, bathroom, bond recommendations, dentures, found, Jamaica Plain

On the source of the historical enmity between plumbers and carpenters

Posted on 21 June 2013

We are accustomed to seeing framing notched, drilled, and otherwise modified by plumbers trying to fit their pipes into houses built before indoor plumbing was de rigueur. This bathroom floor is a bit extreme, though, as the floor joists are almost entirely cut away, and the cast iron waste pipes seem to be providing the only remaining structure. And the cast iron wasn’t in great shape either:

By some miracle of gravity and hydrodynamics, the space below the hole was not filled with sewage.

I should add that our plumber, Leo Tuccinardi, of Pipe Connections in Watertown, MA, has the utmost respect for wood framing and its role in keeping buildings upright.

Categories: Seen

Tagged: cast iron, cut framing, joists, Plumbing, structure

Lost the bet

Posted on 8 June 2013

Starting a new project is fun and challenging on many fronts, but one of my favorite parts is developing intimacy with an older building, starting to discover its quirks and secrets. We’ve just begun work on a magnificent Victorian in Boston; the front façade is voluptuously ornate, with no less than six different styles of window trim. Notably odd, though, is the fact that two of the windows are missing — filled in with clapboards.

When our clients bought the house a few years ago, they thought this was pretty puzzling. They assumed that someone with a limited respect for the house’s history had taken a shortcut during an earlier renovation, and they were hoping to restore the windows some day.

As the architect and I got going on the current renovation, we both told the clients that we felt comfortable betting money or reputation that we would find the original window frames inside the wall. It would be a relatively straightforward project to remove the infilling clapboards, cut away the plaster covering the windows on the inside, and install new sashes, bringing the house back to its original form.

Hmmmm. Today we made a little observation hole on the inside of the wall where the windows had been.

Not only did we not find the window boxes we were expecting, but the hole revealed old-looking studs infilled with a schmeer of horsehair plaster.

The coat of plaster inside the wall, applied to the interior face of the sheathing, is a detail we regularly see in houses built before the 20th century. I’ve understood it to be an attempt to stop drafts in an era before effective insulating materials had been developed. Unless someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to perpetrate a cruel hoax on us, the windows had never been there.

Categories: History

Tagged: horsehair plaster, mystery, victorian, windows