New Roofs and Beer!

Today our roofers arrived on site to begin roofing work on the garden house on the Amstel property and tomorrow they will roof the Dutch House garden shed. About a week and a half ago, some carpentry work was completed to replace some fascia boards that had rotted on both outbuildings. An access hatch was also cut in the ceiling of the Amstel Garden House to allow a way into the surprisingly roomy attic. The hatch was cut through the ceiling boards from above and the saw kerfs are directly above the ceiling beams so from below you can't tell there is a hatch there! It's great! Here's a pic of the attic:
The roofers spent pretty much the whole day on the garden house. The rear roof was already removed, and they made short work of removing the front roof. All the shingle lath was left in place.


We asked them to hand nail all the cedar shingles so the process may have moved more slowly than a modern job. They installed cedar shingle referred to as '24" Royals'. They are 2 feet in length. Both sides are sawn which we think matches the appearance of 18th century shingles better than modern shakes - which have a primitive split look to them. (While its true that shingles were hand-split in the 18th century, their surfaces were also smoothed or "dressed" with a drawknife. So they looked more like today's shingles than shakes.)


The roofing crew is just finishing up for the day as I write this. They need to do a bit or work around the chimney in the morning then they will move on to the Dutch House. The dumpster did not arrive today so the old roofing debris will remain on site overnight so we'll be closing the garden to visitors this evening.

On a related note...one of our guides, Martha, told me a great story today that she heard from a descendant of Mrs. T. Coleman du Pont. Mrs. du Pont was instrumental in building the Amstel garden house back in the 1930s. It was made out of salvaged materials - bricks from an old house on the Atlas Powder Company property and timbers from the Pocopson Bridge (in PA I think)- to make it look old. So when a new wood roof was installed, the nice new shingles just didn't fit with the look Mrs. du Pont was after. Someone apparently advised her that if she poured beer all over the shingles it would artificially age them. So she and her son came to the Amstel House one morning and proceeded to pour beer all over the roof. In the process, Mrs. du Pont got pretty well drenched by the brew. She arrived home around noon - probably smelling like a brewery - to find a group of guests waiting for her that she had forgotten that she invited to lunch. Imagine their surprise!

So...While I don't intend to pour beer all over the new roof - since tomorrow is Friday - I think I may just have to crack a cold one and raise a toast to Mrs. du Pont and her dedication to getting everything just right!

Cheers!

There's Nothing Like The Sound Of Jackhammers In The Morning!

It rained yesterday in New Castle so the masons moved inside to work on the kitchen fireplace. The plan was to remove the "new" masonry to get back to the fireplace's original size and configuration. They warned me it might get noisy since they would be using a small jackhammer (my office is directly above the kitchen fireplace!) I closed the door and, being Irish, cranked up Radiocelt.

Here's what the fireplace looked like before work began yesterday:

At some point in the fireplace's history the opening of the fireplace was reduced in size. About 1.5 feet of masonry was added to the inside of the left leg and about 6 inches to the right. Additional masonry was added to the back wall of the fireplace, and more masonry was added behind and above the lintel. Our primary question about this added masonry was why was it added? Was it a structural issue? Did the fireplace smoke too much? Another question - what kind of condition was the lintel in?

A couple of other questions too:

• Is the crane original to the fireplace? We believe it was placed in its current location in the early 20th century because it impractically swings in front of the bake oven opening. We hoped to find original pintles in place that would match our existing crane, and confirm or deny its originality to the house.
• Is the bake oven original? We believed that the opening was indeed original though the oven outside appeared to be a 20th century reconstruction - it is severely undersized.
  

I resisted going downstairs until lunch and the masons informed me that the original masonry looked remarkably well-preserved. I was expecting our architect and lead mason to arrive around 1 pm so I continued to exercise restraint and didn't look under the plastic yet. I wanted to wait for the great unveiling later!

Once everyone arrived I got my first look at the recently uncovered fireplace:


It was very exciting to see the original fireplace with several features that we did not know about:

• A flue opening directly above the bake oven opening revealed that the original bake oven was a "squirrel tail" design. In this design smoke from inside the oven exited through an opening at the rear of the dome, traveled through a flue that ran along the exterior (top) of the dome (like a squirrel with its tail pulled up over its back) and re-entered the fireplace smoke chamber above the oven door to vent into the smoke chamber then up the chimney (below).
  

• The inside corners on each leg of the fireplace were rounded and the interior of the fireplace was plastered. A large portion of the original plaster remains solidly in place (below).
  

• No pintles were discovered in the original masonry. There are no other indications of a wall-mounted crane ever being used in the original configuration. There are two iron rods running front to back inside the smoke chamber (below). Did these suspend a lug pole (an iron rod or timber that ran parallel to the lintel, spanning the cooking space below)? Pots could be suspended on trammels hung from this lug pole during cooking. Or was a floor standing crane used and these iron rods are actually tie rods to stabilize the chimney?

• A fragment of a hearth paver that appears to be square and thinner than the brick pavers that were put in place when the fireplace was narrowed (The triangular fragment is just below the yellow cord in the photo below). Other fireplaces in the house use 6" by 6" pavers for the hearth.

• The lower section of the rear wall in the firebox shows no sign of soot.

Good news too...the lintel appears to be in very good condition and doesn't show any obvious structural deficiency that would have prompted the addition of masonry below it. Perhaps the fireplace opening was reduced to alleviate an issue with the fireplace smoking (more on that in a sec...)

All of this poses more questions for us to consider: Should we rebuild the exterior portion of the bake oven to its original squirrel tail configuration? Can we find the oven's foundation through archaeological investigation? Should we lay the restored hearth with 6" by 6" pavers based on the fragment we found and the other fireplaces in the house? Where will we get them - can we have them made using local clay? Where was the clay dug in the 18th century? Is the flue correctly sized for the fireplace opening?

If the fireplace was reduced in size to solve a smoking problem are we going to have a smoking problem if the fireplace is ever used in the future? How do we solve that? If we enlarge the flue then the chimney's exterior appearance will be too big. Is there a way to improve the draft using a fan at the top of the chimney? How well does that work - it is visible from outside or audible inside?

Of course, as we are proceeding we are removing the work of previous owners and restorers of the building which reflect the building's history and evolution. We already came to the philosophical conclusion to restore the fireplace to its original appearance. How far does that philosophy carry into the rest of the room? Or the rest of the house?

And the questions go on and on. Some of these questions will be resolved in the short term by our project budget, but many have far reaching implications for the interpretation of the house as a museum. As we wrestle with these and other questions, I'll keep you posted on what we decide to do and why.

I've always said that every day is an adventure when you work at a historic site and today's adventure did not disappoint!

Fireplace, Hearth & Chimney Restoration Begins

Our first major project at the Amstel House is the restoration of the kitchen fireplace, hearth, and chimney. We are restoring the fireplace to its original size and configuration, c. 1738. The project is expected to take about 5 weeks to complete.

On-site work began last week. Carpenters arrived Thursday to cut an access hatch in the ceiling of a second floor bedchamber (our current office) so the masons can get into the attic above to work on the chimney. Conveniently there was an obvious area in the corner of the ceiling that was patched with plaster, and the plaster had cracked in a right-angle pattern suggesting a previous access hatch. We hoped if we opened the same area that we would see evidence in the framing of an original hatch. So, with fingers crossed the carpenters opened the hatch...

...and found no framing - darn! It was apparent that someone had previously cut through the ceiling in that area since the original lath was cut back below a large timber, and the lath used in the patch was sawn rather than hand-split.

After consulting with our architect we decided to move ahead with our original plans to finish the opening permanently with a jamb, trim and panel so we will always have easy access into the attic for storage, maintenance and to trap the occasional squirrel or raccoon (if you live in New Castle you understand this!). We'll finish the plaster around it and paint it after the chimney is finished. Here a detail shot of the trim and door: On Monday the masons arrived for their first full day on work. Scaffolding was set up at the rear of the kitchen wing, taking a good portion of the day. The investigated the chimney as well as the condition of the other two chimneys and took some very valuable photos of the other chimney, flues, and roofs. As you might guess the photos reveal that additional work is needed (ugh!). But more on that later...Toward the end of the day the began deconstruction of the kitchen chimney. Meanwhile, I spent about two hours trying to pick appropriate bricks out of a huge pile of (mostly) 18th century bricks from a nearby house that was torn down (the owner was gracious enough to donate bricks for our project). For a novice like me, picking appropriate bricks is tougher that I thought. When I brought my first cache of bricks back to our site, the masons reviewed them and gave me some additional insight into picking good bricks. So when the weather clears up I'll go back to try again.

That pretty much wraps up the first couple of days from my perspective!

Welcome to Preserving New Castle's Heritage!

Welcome to the New Castle Historical Society's new historic preservation blog! I'll be using this blog to keep you up-to-date with preservation activities, issues, and projects happening in and around Historic New Castle, Delaware.

The idea for a blog developed last year as the New Castle Historical Society (NCHS) planned some major preservation projects on our historic properties - the Amstel House & the Dutch House. The posts on our original blog (on www.newcastlehistory.org) slowed down due to some delays in getting our projects started. Now that we are underway, I will use this blog to keep you informed about progress on our projects, our decision making process, treatment options and choices that we make. I hope you will find information that is useful in your own preservation projects.