Restoration Plan

Restoration Chronology
Horse Barn
Working Barn
1920s Fill-in
1940s Add-on

Restoration Discoveries & Questions

photos - West wall before restoration 1, 2

In April 2001 excavation work was begun along the foundation of the west wall in preparation for restoration mason Thom Livingston to start work on the foundation.

The soil level had built up even with the top of the foundation at the northern end of the wall. This was no doubt partially responsible for the fact that there was nothing left of the original sill in this location. We started by digging a trench about a foot deep and two feet wide along the foundation. Students from the Katzenbach School helped with this excavation. In the process, many historical artifacts were unearthed, including some of the original pintles that the barn doors were hung upon.

A three foot long stone was found about six inches below grade in front of the northerly of the two doors in this wall. This stone appears to be an original doorstep and indicates that the soil in this location had risen over the years about a foot from its original level. We re-graded the east side of the barnyard to return it closer to the original grade.

photo - Stone doorstep uncovered while excavating the barnyard

Thom Livingston began his masonry work on this wall, re-laying and re-pointing all the stonework. He worked primarily on Saturdays as a public demonstration. Thom took samples of the original mortar in the walls and analyzed it so that he could match the original composition as closely as possible.

photos - Thom Livingston working on west wall foundation 1, 2
photo - Foundation as restored and after grass has grown back

It wasn't until late in the year that we got back to this wall and began the carpentry work. The southeast corner had been the first priority due to its poor condition and leaving the west wall intact as long as possible provided shelter from the prevailing winds while we were working on it. In December 2001 we began to start looking towards working on this west wall, the most complicated feature of which was replacing the sill. In the process of exposing the bottoms of all of the columns and studs, we discovered that there was a second original door in this wall. This doorway is adjacent to the more modern door at the south end of the wall. This existing door was cut in by the Tylers in the late 1940s to provide access to the milk room used in their goat dairy operation. The doorway discovered on the other side of the column from this 1940s door is by all indications original to the barn and matches the northern door in size and style.

photo - evidence of original door found in west wall (Notches cut in post to allow a batten door to close flush with the wall.)

Before installing the new west wall sill we had to break the concrete away from the foundation and sill on the inside. In the process of this concrete removal some of the new masonry work was damaged and needed to be repaired again.

In January 2002 we installed the new sill in this wall. This process was complicated by a couple of factors. First, because we decided to put in a one piece sill, we had to maneuver a forty-foot long oak timber into place. Second, whereas all other posts had deterioriated where they met the sill, the second column in from the south end was completely intact at the bottom, including the tenon. We felt that it was important to preserve this original wood if at all possible.

photos - Installing the new sill 1, 2, 3

Fortunately, this one intact post was the one that had supported the newly discovered original door and we had already decided to restore this original opening. Because this door provides access to the horse yard and will see frequent use, we decided to cut the sill down to half height to make an easier passage. This also allowed us to save the tenon on the post. To do this we put the north end of the sill on rollers on top of a board on the foundation and hung the south end from a beam between two cribbing towers using a chain hoist. Then, by sliding the sill north along the foundation into place under the column the tenon could also slide into place. The Howell Farm woodlot does not have a mature stand of White Oak so we could not produce a one-piece sill from it. However, our neighbor, Ferdinand Roebling, very generously donated three trees from his woodlot for use in the barn restoration. One was hewn for this sill and the other two will be hewn as the sills for the north and south walls of the working barn.

photo - West wall showing location of the two original doors beneath mow doors

Once the sill was in we were able to make repairs to this wall. We started with the post on the south corner and worked towards the north. The inside of this wall was sheathed with plain one-inch thick boards. There was some question as to the date of some of this sheathing. Some boards were of fairly recent vintage, clearly showing the marks of a circular saw and nailed on with modern wire nails. However, a number of boards have the straight parallel saw marks of the early reciprocating mills in use at the time of the original construction and many of these boards are fastened with cut nails like those in use when the oldest sections of the barn were built. It is quite possible, though not definite, that these boards are original. Because they are a mixture of woods, including hemlock, white pine, and poplar, it appears that at least some of these old boards were recycled from other buildings. The barn is framed entirely in hemlock (except for the sills), and the siding and door material are a mixture of hemlock and pine. The poplar boards found on the inside of the west wall appear to be reused from somewhere else, though the boards themselves are unquestionably old.

photo - West wall with new southwest corner post
photo - Old interior sheathing and new interior sheathing

A section from the south end of the west wall was carefully removed as a single piece, and reinstalled intact, so that we could save some of this original sheathing material. The rest of the wall in the south bay was filled in with old boards salvaged from the other sections of that wall, which were more difficult to keep in one piece.

The repairs and framing work on this wall proceeded quickly, both because the original material was in better condition and because we had gotten the routine down. Even though most weather comes out of the west here, this wall showed significantly less water damage than the east wall. This is mainly because the sun is much more effective at drying out a wall in the afternoon, when it is warmer, than in the morning.

Except at the corner, all of our work on the west wall frame was below the mow level.

On April 6 Thom Livingston began the work of redoing the damage done to the west wall foundation in removing the cement floor. (This marked the one year anniversary of the work Thom did on the foundation of the west wall - April 7, 2001)

photo - West wall in April 2002

In mid and late July new siding was put on the west wall.

photo - West wall on August 2, 2002.