Back in TIme

A lot of folks have asked for more pictures, especially of the outside of the house "before."  So, here goes:

Front from Street

Back Doors, Kitchen on Right

Back View

Side View

Back with Shed (the original outhouse)

Garage and Garage Shed (dated 1901)

Library

Library

Great Room

Upstairs Hall

Bedroom First Floor

House Across Street

Bit by Bit, Stone by Stone

Thanks a million to all of you who have sent me notes of encouragement!  I think everyone has included a comment to the effect of "wow, that's a big project."  Well, yes.  And on Friday the project got the best of me.  I was duly daunted.  The mason stopped by and had a bit of a different idea of how to tackle the foundation.  We talked it r=through for a while and settled on a combination of what he was talking about and what Anderson and I had talked about. He prefers, of course, to come once and do it all, which would mean opening all the sides of the house and potentially supporting pretty much the whole house on temporary posts, which I am not comfortable doing.  He also said he'd need to push off starting until the week after July 4, since it was a bigger project than we initially thought and he has work he needs to complete before the 4th.

This all left me somewhat paralyzed - I couldn't decide whether to continue to expose more of the house, take up the rest of the floor in the first story bedroom, concentrate on a different project...go to the beach.  I eventually decided to just keep going on the floor, and take it all up in the first bedroom, essentially exposing a quarter of the house crawl space, sill, and foundation.  I was shocked to find that the floor joists - all original timbers - were in very good and basically sound condition.  We saved all the floor boards and framing structures, numbering each piece (duck tape on the right-hand side)

This picture, with Matt at the window, gives a good perspective on how the floor joist and support system was constructed.  Each of the small slats has hand-cut tenons on each end which fit into hand-cut mortises on the joists.

.

On Saturday we were again at a standstill in terms of whether to keep going on the next front room - the library - given how good the bedroom joists looked, and that the sill and corner post on that side seemed to be in very good condition.  The question in my mind was, if we took everything up across the front of the house, then were we prepared to do the same across the back of the house.  And if we weren't prepared to re-do the whole back side of the house, then why were we bothering to do the whole front side.  We decided it was all dependent on how stable or how bad the back of the house foundation and floor framing was.  The foundation seemed like it was in better shape from the outside, and from the access hole in the living room it looked as if all the joists had been reframed with dimensional lumber and the old floor sat on a layer of 3/4" plywood and was very sound.  But, who knew.  There was only one way to tell.  So, down I went into the access hole and into the 18" high crawl space.  Someone had to do it; Im not sure why one of my twenty-something nephews didn't draw the short straw, but oh well. Of course, they had a grand time seeing me go at it.

Good news - the foundation on the back side of the house has already been re-poured behind the exterior granite blocks.  This is exactly the treatment the mason was suggesting.  And, all the joist framing has ben re-done and appears rot and pest free.  The only issue is the plastic liner on the crawl space floor and the crumbling insulation hanging from the joists and sitting on the ground.  That's made the crawl space pretty dank and musty, and I suspect home for little furry friends over the years.  That all needs to come out.  Someone else's turn next time, though!

Timber Frame v. Post and Beam

Credit: Maine Barn Company

I woke up today thinking to my self "just how structural is the foundation in a timber frame building?"  I know, deep thought.  The point is, where is the true load in a timber frame structure.  There are obviously loads on all the beams and obviously the structure needs a foundation.  However, in present day "stick" or platform framing, exterior walls are all structural and all carry a load down to the foundation, which in turn is intended to be able to carry a uniform load at every point.  In timber framing, it seems to me, the true load is at the vertical posts, like the corners.  See in this picture as an example, the structure is supported at the corner posts; the exterior walls don't require structural stud walls for support.  (And the diagonal cross members eliminate the need for plywood sheathing to create rack strength.)  In the case of the 168 Strongs (our house), we have vertical members at the corner posts and the mid-point of the gable wall, like in this diagram. 

I haven't figured out the load on the front and back walls yet.  If it stops raining, that will be today's mind bender.  All this to say Anderson is probably right - the corner blocks are the key foundation points.  The side foundation between vertical posts conceptually really only needs to carry the load of the sill plate to support the first floor floor joists - a much smaller load.  But, given the age and the apparent "all you can eat salad bar" that must've been somewhere for our cellulose-chomping friends, putting in extra structure and creating supporting stud walls is not a bad idea. 

By the way, I was also curious about the difference between "timber frame" and "post and beam" construction.  The (online) consensus is that timber frame construction refers to solid wood timbers typically connected in mortise and tenon joints secured by wooden pegs, and post and beam refers to heavy wooden timber construction where steel plates or gussets are used to secure joints.  What we commonly refer to as "Tudor Style" was actually timber frame construction and sometimes referred to as "half timber," because the faces of the timbers were left exposed externally and sometimes internally (assuming the "timbers" aren't just thin trim applied for show).

I Built my House of Brick

We started stripping siding and exposing the sills and corner members to get a bead on what we're dealing with.  This is the worst corner of the house (leaving aside the kitchen which is literally flopping in the wind).  We started with the front half of the East gable side, exposing what was left of the sill and the foundation.  We have the corner and the second floor header and the diagonal cross beam supported with 4x4s.  

The issue now is what to do with the foundation.  I was initially happy that what people refer to as a "stacked rubble" foundation in our case is fairly substantial-sized blocks of granite which seemed to be tightly fitted, as you can see across the front of the house. 


I had hoped to repoint the blocks and move forward.  But, after exposing the blocks completely, it's apparent the facing side of the blocks are smooth and tightly fitted, but the interior side of the blocks are all sorts of uneven and irregular, with large gaps between the blocks.  It's hard to imagine how these could be re-set, let alone repointed, to be sufficiently "structural."  But, then again, it's been here nearly 225 years and the house hasn't seemed to have suffered from much settling along the perimeter.

Our friend Anderson, who is an architect, was kind enough to walk me through some alternatives, pointing out that the corner blocks and mid-point of the walls may have been more structurally significant, and the foundation blocks between these points placed later on to create a solid-looking foundation.   This makes a lot of sense, especially because the top of the foundation walls, surprisingly, are not flat, but slope down away from the face 10-15 degrees or more, and so wouldn't provide a solid plane of support even if they were re-set.  Maybe there was mortar on top which has deteriorated, or maybe the tapered tops made it a lot easier to set the blocks when creating the flat face.  Maybe both.  In any case, we both agree the right approach is to probably dig footings and build block piers about every 8 feet to create a sustainable foundation. Anderson even drew me an unofficial detail.  Now it's just a matter of getting motivated to go dig after a big breakfast at The Hampton Maid!  

Thank goodness it just started to rain again...saved by the weather.  I've also loaded a couple of pictures of the floor construction detail because I was going on and on yesterday like a little kid because I was so blown away by the joining detail.  Every joint in the house is mortise and tenon construction, tightly fit by hand, piece by piece.  The major joints of the framing use a wooden peg to hold the timbers together, but lesser joints like these in the floor joist are hand fit and still snug after 200 years.  Amazing.  The larger timbers running left to right in the top photo are the floor joists and are the original tree trunk timbers (with bark generally still intact), hand flattened on the top side, and narrowed to a square tenon on the end, which then fit into a hand-cut mortise in the sill.  The wall studs likewise were squared to a tenon and fit into a mortise in the sill.  Each one, one-by-one, with hand tools.  The boards running top to bottom in the picture are each individual cripple joists about an inch thick which have been fit mortise and tenon into the top of the floor joists and support the floor planks between each joist.  The large piece of wood at the right-hand side is the underside of a floor plank we took up to get access to the interior of the foundation blocks.  The picture at the bottom shows one of these cripple joists (as I am calling them) and the mortise and tenon in a little more detail.  To put into perspective how tight the joints still were, I had to tap most of them on the bottom with my 20oz framing hammer to loosen them enough to get them out.  Then we numbered each one based on the joist front-to-back (1, 2, 3) and the cripple row side-to-side (A, B, C), so we can re-assemble later.  When we're done, chances are I will lay down plywood first, and then put the original planks back down on top, so these cripple joists won't be needed, but I feel obligated to replace them all from where they came in proper order, because they are part of the house's body, and the body is the temple of soul, no?.  And, perhaps in another 200 years someone else will have the thrill to re-discover them and marvel as much as I am.  Call me strange. 

A Bit of History

I purchased the house from the Estate of Stratton Walling.  Walling - or "Strat" - as his friends and neighbors refer to him, was an actor.  Stratton lived in the house with his life partner, Samuel R. Rolston.   When Sam predeceased him, Stratton continued to live there with Sam's mother, and then by himself when Sam's mother passed away.  Sam had a full life - he died at age 88, in Bangkok, Thailand (where he vacationed in the winter), riding on a motorcycle.  You can check out Stratton's Filmography and Obituary for more background.

Fanny Haines (r), Mehetable Haines (l), of 2nd and 3rd families respectively
(Credit: Bridgehampton Historical Society).

A friend sent me an interesting link a few weeks back from a local blogger who is a preservationist and history buff.  The blogger apparently took an interest in this house when she attended the estate sale, and did a bunch of research on the house.  I was a bit unnerved when I looked at the pictures and realized the blogger had come onto the property and INTO THE HOUSE to take her blog photos.  But, a good friend assures me she is well-intentioned, even if a bit zealous, so the work she put in getting the history is a fair trade off, I guess.  The opinion article Circa-1790 Homestead Survives Largely Intact provides a great history and lineage of ownership, and a really cool period photo of the exterior c. 1860.