3101 E Broad St. Continued

Work continues on 3101 E Broad St. (See the first post here)

Siding on the West Side of the house has been completed. We're using 1/2" yellow pine.

The next phase of this project is to repair the porch on the East side of the house, which involved some jacking.

 In the process of exploratory demolition, we discovered severe rot and boring holes in the box beam of the porch, so Dr. Chris Koenig and his Assistants Sean and Nick went to work.

We replaced the former box beam with an LVL for a long-term solution.

We replaced several deck boards, including having to mill some tongue-and-groove decking to make it fit in the existing spots.

We got bottom 1x on new beam, got 3 new posts set, removed temporary ledger and shoring jacks. We also replaced all of the posts (4x4).

We are currently repairing these column bases.

And all of the fascia board and other trim elements on the box beam that we replaced are in place.

And the work continues...

Demolishing Anachronistic Features of a House

Sometimes in our line of work, we come across architectural features that aren't original to the structure or are added, but don't fit in with the historic character of the house. In these cases a little demo is required before rebuilding.

We restored the Hilary Baker House in Church Hill a couple of years back and this is one area that the client couldn't address at the time. Two years later, we are finally getting to remove this anachronistic porch. What we now see as the front of the house was actually the back of the house in 1819 when this house was built. At this point this would have been the only house on a large lot. Over the years, development of the neighborhood by filling in portioned lots with row-houses has turned this around.

We will be putting in a period-appropriate stone porch here in the near future.

Making Deck Boards Conform to a Round Column

The time has come to lay the deck and make it conform to a round column. Luckily we have years of experience.

We made a jig out of plywood, laid the decking across it, and cut the deck boards to fit to the stencil.

The finished product with the decks coming together at the South-East corner.

Setting columns at Hilary Baker house

These solid wood columns took weeks of restoration, but where can one buy entire trees to set on their deck anymore? We took extra care in setting the columns because we don't want to undo any of our hard work on either the columns or the ipe deck.

Reinstalling these columns was a bit like a giant life-size jig saw puzzle. Using the original heart pine columns really adds something to the facade of the house.

Porch restoration

A brand new roof for an old porch, built by Chris Koenig, master framer.

Beautiful front porch from salvaged material

Another beautiful porch

Making fir treads

Making wide fir treads

We should have let van jester woodworks make these treads for us, because they're so good at it, but gina and I knocked it out.