Door Dutchman Repair

As an aside to our shutters project for Centre Hill, we picked up some work repairing the doors on the mansion.

We started by cutting out the rotten portion on the door stile.

We had to use two different pieces of wood cut to leave room for the flush bolt lock and then put another layer on top, to mimic the original milling of the stile.

And finally, epoxy the joints to hold it together and make it blend seamlessly with the existing wood.

Work on the Centre Hill Mansion Shutter Restoration Continues.....

It has been several months that we have been working on the 150 shutters for Centre Hill Mansion. It has given us some good work to do during the recent rain and snow storms.

We've moved onto the 10' shutters.

The real trick is to seamlessly blend the old wood with the new... luckily this is the sort of thing that we do. 

We're using dutchmen to rebuild the old stiles and mortises and replacing rails that were too rotten for repair.

Door restoration at Centre Hill Mansion in Petersburg

The delicate plaster ceiling could not take the pressure of our plastic wall poles, so we had to rig an elaborate tent to contain lead paint dust.

 The building as it looked 10 years ago, with shutters. We will restore the shutters this winter and reinstall them in the early spring.

 Inside our cozy tent, we did dutchmen repairs to the door.

More work in our shop

This is beautiful tread, take two. The first antique pine tread we made was too small.

This door has seen 200 years of changes in Church Hill. Well worth the surgery I had to perform on it.

Dutchmen held on with pegs, clamped overnight. This repair isn't going anywhere.

A million little dutchmen

I like to do dutchmen in the original material, or as close as possible. That way the wood will 'breathe' (expand and contract with moisture) at the same rate. In this case, more antique pine.