Question for George Wilson or others with knowledge of old farm houses

[Larry Edgerton]

George

I am restoring an old farm house in Southern Michigan and am stumped at the facias. I have been able to find bits and pieces that are original for everything but the facia has all been replaced by someone and normal modern stock was used, and they did not have an eye for moldings. I can make something up, but I have been having cutters made to match the rest, so it only makes sense to be authentic with the facias as well.
The house was built in 1876, and is a very well made example. It deserves to be treated with respect. It is a typical farmhouse [see attachment]in that the central square is 26'x26' with a hip hoof, 10' ceilings down and 9' ceilings up. The house has the separation between the servants and the owners, with two stairs, one serving both halves. Interestingly the servant side has varnished oak, and the owners side has more detailed painted trim. From what I can find I understand this was normal as paint was more expensive than varnish. The house is in amazingly original condition on the inside with unmolested moldings still in awesome condition. We are replacing the windows from the outside and not disturbing the original trim on the inside. On the outside we are replicating all of the trim in Azek, a plastic board, ironically to replace wood so it will last longer. The wood lasted 130 + years, but I will only argue with customers on battles that I can win. They are tired of peeling paint.The siding is being replaced with clear cedar of the same size, stained. I am replacing one window with a door and have made a copy of the trim with a 55 for a exact match. All of the porch fittings will be recreated in Azek as well.

Can you recommend a source of old pictures that may be a guide for the facias?

Any help will be appreciated.

Larry

[Mike Sheppard]

Larry
Some of the old towns in se michigan have a historic dist., they my have pictures on their web site. Northville comes to mind as there are a lot of restored homes and shops in the town.
Mike

[Neal Clayton]

most of the homes around here from that area had a simple cove fascia. the idea is functionality as well as appearance. fascia boards that get too fancy can catch moisture, which is bad no matter how you look at it. a simple cove looks nice and directs the water down.

on the subject of replacing wood with plastic to appease poor modern paints, maybe try to convince them one more time?

i brought it up in the finishing forum, and have painted some sample boards and let them cure for a week or so as an example, but long story short there is at least one company that makes a paint with all of the characteristics of old style lead/linseed oil paint, only with titanium white instead of lead white for the base. absent the lead it's harmless and legal, and it behaves just like old lead style paints, in that it does not bind to a primer, but rather binds to the wood itself like a stain. you don't use a primer beneath it, only an oil sealer (a mix of BLO and turp works fine) the maintenance schedule recommends a 20 year cycle of recoating, rather than the 5-10 people are used to with poorly designed modern paints. in the meantime the paint wears properly, by gradually losing pigment, so that recoating does not involve putting a new layer that will imminently fail over an old layer that has already failed (thus shortening the life cycle and building unnecessarily thick film with each new coat).

right to left, a modern oil primer + oil enamel combo (SW A100 and all surface enamel, albeit only one coat rather than the typical two) that i hit against my bench a few times, as you can see it chipped where i hit it, knocking some of the coating down to the primer, and one bit down to bare wood. the green is simple linseed oil/metal pigment paint. beat it with a hammer in the far left pic and it leaves divots, but the coating is in the wood, not on the wood, so it still survives without separating from the surface.

i've been meaning to throw together a quick trial with a heat gun as well to see the accelerated effects of the sun, but basically the result is heat will remove a modern paint quite easily, as we have all seen i'm sure by stripping paint with a heat gun. lead paints a heat gun will not nearly as easily remove. if you get it hot enough to get the linseed oil residue moving you can remove it to an extent, but it will very readily re-bind itself when it cools and be just as tough as it was before.

for the cost they're going to pay you to reproduce the exterior trim in azek, they could pay someone to remove the failing paint on the outside at least down to the lead layers, and pay you the difference to repaint with a paint compatible with the original, and pretty easy to maintain, and everyone is happy.

on the subject of windows, have you pitched to them the idea of putting simple wooden storms on the outside of the originals? restoring the originals is time and money consuming and i understand if they think that isn't feasible for their budget, but a storm window will give all of the benefit of new windows, without the horrible appearance of cheap vinyl from the curbside.

yea i know you may be aware of all of this, but it's so silly to me since i live in a historic area where everything is between 100-150 years old, and constantly argue with my neighbors about the same thing. they've been convinced by cheap material marketing that the only way to make a building maintainable is to coat it and fill it with plastic. when in fact older methods and especially older materials are quite superior, they just require different maintenance schedules, not more (in most cases, less).

[Larry Edgerton]

Neal, I only argue until I feel I will lose the job, then I give them what they want. I used to refuse to do some things but in this economy I am fortunate to still be working. I already have all of the trims recreated from Azek, in exact detail down to the closest 1/16. No one will know I was there, except all of the rot will be gone. As far as storms, well, this is how I make my living, so I am not going to turn a $100K job into a $20K job, that would just be silly. I generally like to do it the other way around.:) In other words I am not going to lose my house so theirs can be totally authentic.

More importantly, we are bringing the house up to modern standards of fuel efficiency. While the siding is off we are wrapping the whole thing with Tuff R, foaming the windows and generally tightening things up. the ceiling will be attended to when winter is over, and the cupola attended to as well, but now I am going to make it so they can be warn without spending $1800 a month. In fact on real cold windy days it would just not stay warm at any cost, and there are already storms on it.

Mike, I always wonder if the restored houses have what was original, that is why I would like to see old pictures. Marshall is just down the road from where I am staying just outside Albion, and there are a lot of wonderful old homes there. You should take a drive there if you have never been, and time it so you can take in the Sunday brunch at the original Sheulers [spelling?]resturant in downtown Marshall. The brunch is the best I have ever had and the Hotel/Resturant is an interesting building as well.

I am not using Vinyl windows, I would not put those in a doghouse. We are using Marvin's with true divided lites.

I will post a picture in a few months when it is done and I do not think you will be able to see that difference, other than the soffit/facia will be correct.

[Neal Clayton]

thank god they have at least that much taste. nothing looks worse in a 100+ year old building that has its good features still intact than fake light plastic windows ;).

i don't suffer as much from lack of insulation, since my house was/is originally stucco. i can sympathize with the desire to do something with drafty wood siding. old stucco jobs were alot more substantial than new dryvit type work, so i get a pretty decent amount of isulation effect from it. versus newer stucco jobs that are 1/2 to 3/4 thick, the stuff they did on mine in 1908 was about 2.5 inches thick over rebar. i think it would be difficult to hurt with a 20 pound sledge.

but yeah as for the fascia, a simple 1/4 cove is what i've always used on my house when sections needed replaced, for both visual appeal and functionality, and from what i've seen from here to new orleans in older cities, it seemed to be the most common in that 1890-1930 era.

[Larry Edgerton]

I think I may have found the original molding. I was rummaging around in the attic of the barn, which is of the same vintage and found an unusual molding that looks to be what was there before. It had the same paint and square nails. It is a shape that I have not ran across, and it stands a lot more vertical than common crown, which is what the last guys put up there. It stands at about 15 degrees or so and will solve the big ugly that is going on there where the crown comes out to the dripedge.

I'll post a profile after I do a slice of it tomorrow. I have to fax it in and have a set of knives made.

And...... While I was looking for clues to the molding, I came across a stack of 8/4 chestnut, which will find its way back to my shop if all goes well....

[george wilson]

Sorry,Larry,I never saw this posting until tonight. Unfortunately,I am not a house construction person.Others can answer those type questions better. However,I just noticed a couple of books on architecture for sale in the classified section.