Historic Preservation and Documentation Wednesday, Jun 13 2012 

Projects , acairfearann 14:25

Historic Preservation has two functions: to aid in preservation, which hopefully includes some form of sympathetic reuse, and to witness the removal of the past.  I am not especially keen on preservation that focuses solely on the enshrinement of building fixed in a moment in time.  There are a few, rare cases where this is desirable; however, most buildings are better kept in use.  If they cannot be used, the society in question probably cannot afford to maintain them.  Sometimes, mothballing a building is possible, thereby avoiding demolition or massive changes, with the idea that eventually a more sympathetic use can be found.  Mothballing, in fact, probably ought to be a more available option.*  But most buildings need to be used, while at the some time recording what has changed (if only so the next guy knows what did and didn’t work)

However, any modification usually means erasing something.  But it is also a point of opportunity.  This picture shows a minor point of combined destruction and discovery:

Taken during the remodelling of the kitchen eight! years ago, this shows the old south wall of the pre-1870’s farmhouse, before all the additions.  The old lathe is visible, over it is the new diamond wire mesh for the new plaster.  What is also visible is a shadow on the wall, actually a stain.  The diagonal line running from the center of the stove to the top of the photo is the old stairs, also present are the stair treads.  These stairs were removed in the 1870’s when the south end was expanded.  While it was known from the floorboards of the room above that stairs might have existed, there was no proof until this renovation project.   Putting in the new plaster simultaneously revealed and, probably, destroyed this stain.  The photo, therefore, becomes an invaluable source of information. 

Historic preservation in action.

*It is not due to the combination of security, regulatory, tax, and financial hurdles.  Tax and regulatory are huge, especially in locations where property tax exists.

 

Compilation versus analysis Tuesday, Jun 5 2012 

Projects acairfearann 10:25

Information overload is a fairly common problem these days and history is no less prone to it than any either field.* If one does any amount of work in historic preservation, one quickly encounters a Byzantine series of standards and guidelines designed to ensure that the information will be preserved in perpetuity.  Reams upon reams of paper, both real and digital, are collected.  As something of a cynic, I have to wonder…does any of this ever actually get read and used?*  Or, are we dragons upon a hoard?

The thing is, data, by itself, isn’t very useful.  It is what we, by our study of the data, create that is useful.  This goes beyond collation, it goes beyond even analysis, straight to creation.  All the information in the world, neatly collated, organized, and fully searchable will not tell us the meaning of life.  It will tell us What it is, but not how we should, as humans and not computers, relate to it. 

Information overload, of course, is the difficulty with a place such as this.  It is a mountain of data, but lacks either narrative or analysis.  It also lacks the organization.  The trick is to work on the narrative/analysis at the same time as the organization…sigh.  I don’t know about creation, though, I am not a terribly creative individual.

*At least it isn’t the environmental sciences, where the amount of money spent studying a problem rather than, you know, Fixing the problem often appears to be out of balance.

*I always remember a comment that would enrage most archeologists: ‘if the only thing left of a civilization is some smashed pottery, perhaps it wasn’t all that interesting of a civilization.’ 

 

 

Drip, Drip Thursday, Apr 26 2012 

Projects acairfearann 14:21

I tend to liken old houses to wooden ships.  One of the basic principles of survival is to keep the water out.  Actually, if you simply invert a boat’s wood hull, you have a structure not unlike some houses.  Indeed there are a few examples out there, on the northeast coast and along the St Lawrence/Great Lakes,* of building built by shipwrights, sometimes incorporating bits and pieces of boats into them.

In any event, leaks will develop.  This one is a minor one, in comparison to last year’s epic ice dams.**  An attic window, easily reached for once from a porch.  I am not in the least surprised; the roof isn’t a century old, but I bet the flashing is.  In any event, our friendly carpenter, who is a craftsman in the finest sense of the word, will come past and deal with it.  Another basic principle: develop a network of people who know how to work on the building and whom you can trust.

*I am sure there are others, I vaguely recall some in Scotland and Scandinavia.  Oddly, all the ones I can think of are churches, make of that what you will.

**There is absolutely nothing you can do with three feet of snow, frozen gutters, and a roof that is forty feet from the ground and inaccessible without scaffolding….except watch the water stain spread across the ceiling.  Until the summer, at which point you promptly repair the heretofore unknown leak.

 

Paint! Thursday, Apr 19 2012 

Projects acairfearann 15:31

The porches having been sanded, we have started on the process of repainting them.  They needed it, badly.  As always, chrome green to match the trim.  I got the east porch floor done today (though not around each of the pillars) and I think the paint will work quite well.  It is always a bit a gamble.  The only paint that truly lasted was the WWII surplus battleship grey, that lasted decades.  The previous job was incorrectly applied and lasted all of a year or two before it began to fail.  To be fair, antique wood over a dirt crawlspace….not the easiest sort of porch to paint.

We shall see, this is an acrylic (with lots of fancy gibberish concerning epoxy particles and such).  It went on easily, looks good, and seems to be drying well.

 

Chip, chip, chip Thursday, Apr 12 2012 

Projects acairfearann 14:32

Taking paint off of old, cast iron garden furniture is an unhurried process.  I don’t have access to a sandblaster so it is most done with a much abused set of wood chisels and a drill-powered wire brush.  The latter is not as useful as you might think…  It is useful, but you simply cannot get it into all the little nooks.

I think we have all encountered the chic patio furniture patterned on the grape vines and pretending to be Victorian.  Well, this is the real stuff, and I am dying to encounter the replicas now.  Why?  Because the originals have leaves with actual indented veining, grape stems with the sort of vertical ribbing a real vine has so some of the vines are faceted, tiny cutouts, and other extremely sharp detailing.  All of which had been obscured first by some vivid green paint, and then a hideously heavy layer of white paint.*  Encasement in the extreme.  But I’d like to know if the replicas were patterned on clean originals or painted/rusted originals…anybody ever looked?

Now to decide should it be green or white, if green which green. The jury is still out.

*yes they are lead, what else?  Brain…what brain! ( I do take suitable precautions, but not to OSHA/CT standards)

 

A Stitch in Time Sunday, Feb 12 2012 

Projects acairfearann 13:25

Furniture repair in a house is an ongoing process, and for me a learning curve.  The first rule is, as in the medical profession, do no harm.   Figuring out how the piece was originally built, with what, and how it is supposed to work are the first steps.   Patience and the proper tools are also critically important.   And then, prompt repair: if you have the tools on hand and something breaks you can fix it immediately, reducing further damage, loss of broken parts and growth of the attic of broken furniture. 

So in the last few days, as I am working my way through the house cleaning furniture, I have also had fixed (I am not the furniture fixer) a rocking chair and a massive veneer failure on a sideboard.  The rocking chair had been a slow failure of two previously fixed breaks in the legs and rocker.  Theoretically it could have continued to be used in its wobbly state, but by repairing it we don’t have to warn people to be careful (never something one wants to do).  The veneer was a potentially more disastrous failure: an entire drawer face split in diagonal cracks.  Because the veneer is a flame pattern and matches the other drawers, replacement would not be possible.  So the careful application of glue and clamps for a full 24 hours was undertaken, which looks like it will solve the problem.  Unfortunately in both cases the problem will reoccur.   All of the sideboard’s veneer shows the diagonal stress, indicating a stress built in to the original attachment of the veneer.  The rocker is weakened by a rather kludgy fix early in its life (about a century and half ago).

I liken it to a an olden wooden ship: it floats just fine if you routinely fix the leaks.  Still it is nice to know that both fixes will allow those pieces to remain in use for another few decades.

 

Man Hours Friday, Jan 27 2012 

Projects acairfearann 17:43

Almost everything major in this house, exceptions would be the kitchen and mechanicals, was created predominantly by hand.  Granted, most of the time machine power amplified human muscle power,  for example a circular saw replacing a hand saw, but truly automated assembly has a small presence in the house.  This means that the house and its contents are an absolutely immense monument to man’s capacity to work, even leaving aside the staggering time investment of the creative work represented by the book, music and art collections.  We take our ability to do this sort of work for granted, yet how completely it sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom!  To build, to plant, to create and then to exchange those goods for something else, at the root of it creation is our means of survival.  And that has evolved into a remarkable work ethic, I think of the willingness to carve and to paint gargoyles and decoration high on buildings (both religious and secular) which no one, before the era of flight, would ever see, simply because that was how it ought to be.  

This work, of course, is the case with any building, but it is brought closer to the surface when one can find the traces of past work: carpenter’s marks, slight irregularities, or perhaps most impressively when one is faced with repairing something.  I was contemplating this while working on my off again-on again project of repairing the binding of a rug, which requires upwards of ten or more whip stitches per inch, each carefully placed for the correct tension and strength while obscuring as little of the pattern as possible.  Even if you have the hang of it, it simply takes time.  Some of the rugs record previous repairs, in all cases the wear records the pattern of feet, time after time.  And as I repair the rug, I wonder, ‘who was the person who wove it?, what did they think of?, was it just a job that they were thankful to have?, did they enjoy what they had created?, did they wonder about the people who would buy the rug, who lived in a world so very different?’    Maybe they cared little for the rug, maybe they thought it ridiculous (surely some of the carvers of the gargoyles must have grumbled at the architect) but they did it nonetheless, and did it well.  I can’t pretend to grasp what the lives of the people who wove, and still weave, the rugs we lump under ‘Oriental’, but in my repairs, I can, for myself, weave a connection.

 

The Winter of the Spring * Thursday, Jan 26 2012 

gardening and Projects acairfearann 13:20

This year, when winter has been a fleetingly erratic guest, though there are still a few months to Spring proper, the signs of new growth have never been far.  I was very glad to see the other day that the crocus (croci?) that I planted last year are beginning to appear.  It was a bit nerve-wracking to plant some 1200 bulbs.  One can’t help but wonder if the shipment was good, since I have had an entire shipment get fried before, and, of course, one doesn’t know till after they are planted, long after.  But it looks like they will come up, probably even many of the ones that my horse stepped on.  (it is slightly ridiculous, I have resorted to spraying Deer-off along the fence, because out of 15 acres that is where he Must walk and eat)

And hopefully, they will look like they ought…though the mutant in the pot we forced has me worried; it is about five inches tall and is a set of white sheathed spears, unfortunate at best.

*Shamelessly stolen from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem: ‘A Dream of Summer’

 

Pergolas Tuesday, Jan 3 2012 

gardening and Projects acairfearann 13:26

And the building thereof.  There was a pergola at Esperanza at the turn of the last century.  It had square white pillars, echoing the porches, and appears to have had few vines.  It had as a south focal point the bust of the faun; as such it was more of a structural ornament as opposed to a structure built for the vines first.  It didn’t last long, it was probably built around 1900 and seems to have vanished by 1930.  One of its main uses was in the enactment of tableaux scenes generally of a vaguely classical theme.*

We are contemplating a new pergola on the same location. However, this one is going to be dual purpose: both growing grapes and creating a structural element.  Figuring out how to make it visually work from all angles: the south lawn, the driveway entrance, the house, and built so that it can take the vines is a bit of project.  Part of the difficulty is the house’s outward looking architecture: as mentioned previously the house looks to its surroundings, its rooms are designed to immediately connect to the outdoors and the porches blend into the lawn.  This means that structural elements outside have to work with the house even when they are not physically connected to the house.  Their style must compliment the house’s style.  Sketches have ensued, as has a small forest of poles to determine which edge lines up with which other edge.  I think Photoshop may become involved…

In addition to space for grapes, the pergola will also add an edge to the south lawn, so that beyond it the lawn can gracefully transition to the woods through a bit of meadow grass.  The area has a tendency towards some of the wild flowers already: paintbrush, pussytoes, violets, bluets, blue-eyed grass, wild dianthus, wild geranium, wood sedge, etc. are all present.  But most of the south lawn is formal and structured and simply stopping regular mowing at an arbitrary line looks peculiar.  Yes, shrinking the lawn is a goal too!  Along with the pergola, a replacement for the pear tree will also be planted. 

Assuming we make the transition from planning to reality…always the hard part!

*It is interesting to note that the word ‘pergola’ doesn’t enter the English language until the 17th century.  It is slightly different from the word ‘arbor’ from Middle English.  They essentially mean the same thing; but arbor’s etymological roots give greater weight to the vines or trees whereas pergola, coming from the Italian word for a projecting roof, gives greater emphasis to the structure.  You can create an arbor out of trained living vegetation, you can’t create a pergola.  So, if the vines become more important than the structure (which they will) it should be an arbor, unlike the c.1900 one which was always a pergola. 

*I could write quite the post on the tableaux, a form of entertainment that has vanished quite completely from today’s culture.

 

One Man’s Vision Saturday, Nov 26 2011 

Julie's Pond and Landscapes and Projects and Trees acairfearann 20:16

or why we spent the day dropping a sixty foot ash into the pond and then hauling it back out, a task made somewhat fraught by its attempt to swing over into a key laurel bush, jam on the bank, and otherwise hang up.

Why did we take the ash out?  Well, for one it was rooted in the stone wall of the bank; two that it was shading a perfectly lovely black oak; and three…it looked bad.  While the two, much larger, trees (a black cherry and a maple) stood back from the curve of the bank; and the black birch leans far out over the water in a graceful manner; the ash was a perfectly straight pole that broke the curve and stood too close to the cherry disrupting the picture.  It also had a bad top and was thoroughly surplus.  That the long term aim is also for the area to be oak/hickory with a laurel/ilex understory also factored in happily.

Some landscapes aren’t managed by man, parts of the North American north for example, though there a sense of pathos is often created in a piece of artwork (as opposed to the actual experience of being there, when it tends to be an unwanted intrusion) by the careful placement of a man-made structure in the foreground.  Connecticut, however, is much like Europe or Great Britain…man shapes and reshapes the landscape.  Current thought is that even before the colonists, the Native Americans extensively managed the area through the use of fire and hunting patterns. 

Landscape design often deliberately attempts to create something that looks natural, even when it isn’t.  Or that emphasizes certain natural elements and uses man-made elements to draw the eye.  To do this well is fiendishly difficult.  The pond on a lesser scale reflects the same sort of picturesque, shaped landscape that was a signature feature of the movement in the nineteenth century that was best realized in North America under Olmsted’s creations of Central Park, the Boston Fens, Mont-Royal in Montreal and other places.  That it happens that such places can be ecologically as well as aesthetically pleasing makes it even better.  The pond has played host to several groups of migrating wood ducks, teals and mallards, as well as the ever present wood-peckers, the innumberable amphibians, turkeys, deer and many others.  It has healthy , if small, populations of partridge berry, pippiwessa, ilex, laurel, highbush blueberry, three or four fern types, and hopefully will have trilliums, Indian cucumber, native sweet flag and cardinal flower.  By taking the ash out, the dominate feature of that bank (oak/hickory) will hopefully be given emphasis…it is what would primarily occur there anyway, but without any distractions.  The trick is figuring out what counts as a distraction and what is integral, either ecologically or aesthetically.

 

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