RESTORATION TALES 6-14-11


I have been restoring old buildings across America since 1985, and have many more tales than can be printed from my past columns. When I lived in Little Rock Arkansas from 2005 until 2013, I was lucky enough to have a forum at a painfully short-lived paper known as The Emerald City of the South, a sometimes-bi-monthly (or bi-yearly) city paper put out by Glen Schwartz, an editor/owner/publisher/ad seller that let me do just about anything, as long as it read well. Like most of my editors, he didn't really have to do anything, including formatting the text.
Though HE might have a differing opinion.
Hey, Glen!
You old stoner, you.

 

GHOSTS AND TREASURES

Anyone dealing with old buildings automatically becomes a bit of historian, whether they own it or dig a ditch in the front yard. It goes with the territory. And anyone not interested in history is automatically expelled from owning an old building, or they’re just plain misguided.

It’s when history comes calling in the form of the physical and ethereal that my hackles rise in anticipation.

I personally believe in ghosts, but professionally do not. I’ve never seen or gotten a picture of one, and trust me, I’ve tried. I three times recorded a nonexistent string quartet in the Married Officers’ Quarters at MacArthur Park, now the Military Museum. Jim Eison, the past curator, would let me set up high-bias recording equipment in different areas of the building back in the eighties, when it was the Museum of Discovery. And that string quartet was there each time, no matter where we set up, with the same volume and clarity (neither which amounted to much). The music was the same piece each time as well. I got the same results recording just outside, on the porch. No radio was left on, and the building was quiet as a tomb. Go figure.

And in case anyone wonders, I do know where one of the tunnels is, though if it’s the fabled “tunnel to the river” that may or may not exist, I’ll never know. Park officials made the backhoe driver fill it in as soon as they got wind of it, but I saw it just after he broke through. Triangulated its location, as well, after dropping into it. Made of hard brick, it measured ten by ten feet high, with an arched top. Stretched twenty feet to the south before a collapse and disappeared into darkness to the north. The park officials scolded me and the backhoe operator, but I was the archaeological monitor on the park at the time, so I had business there. They told me not to talk about it. Statute of limitations are up, gentlemen. The State Archaeologist at the time was not interested in its existence. Go figure again.

But I’ve not seen any floating vapors. There is an apartment complex we restored a few years ago, and the manager swore it was haunted. He still does. I went so far as to do a nighttime photographic survey during demolition, but no images of Casper. But I felt something weird about number fifteen. Nobody liked to work in there. It felt creepy to all the guys, regardless of belief. We had been told about number fourteen as well, and when a stranger showed up six months into the project and asked whether fourteen was still haunted, we laughed and told him we didn’t know. We all kept up our guard after that.

But, while standing outside of number fifteen near the start of the project, I felt something cold and clammy move right past me. I spun around, thinking I was in someone’s way, but nothing was there.

“Did you see that?” one of my carpenters, to whom I had been talking, asked.

“No! Did you?!!”

“No, but I saw you see it!” We laughed nervously and changed the subject.

I personally think these things are extensions of our selves, but I still like the movie “Poltergeist.”

Treasure is where you find it. And have I found it.

While cleaning out the leftover junk from a tiny apartment in a carriage house in the Quarter before restoring it, I discovered two French Foreign Legion bayonets with numbered scabbards.

While scanning a wall for metal pipes in a home in Connecticut, I got WAY too big a signal; opening the wall, I found an ancient apple peeler with so many gears and hinges that it must have been designed by Rube Goldberg. The owner let me keep it, and it sits proudly on a bookshelf at home today. But why was it in the wall?

Sometimes the treasure can’t be taken away, as it belongs to the house.

I cut my restoration teeth restoring an 1835 farmhouse in upstate South Carolina (it had some sort of presence in it, I assure you; tell you about it next time), and on one of my yearly updates to the property, I removed some deteriorated siding on the rear parlor wall, discovering a previously covered-up window opening. No casement or sash, just the framed opening.

“I always thought there should have been a window there,” Peggy, the owner told me when I called her with the news. “How hard would it be to put in a new window with the same dimensions as the old one?”

“About twelve hundred dollars should do it,” I said. There were matching sashes in the barn, possibly the same ones that had been removed. I milled the casements, sill and facings to match the original, and that room now has windows on three sides like it did in 1835.

While digging a garden in the front yard of the same farm early in the project, I hit brick. Thinking it was an errant remnant of past chimney building, I tossed it aside. Then I found another right next to the first. I tossed my shovel aside and went for my mason’s pointing trowel. This, to you whom have not been archaeologists, is the primary tool of that profession. I carefully cut the soil away from this structure until I had uncovered three feet by eighteen inches. The bricks were aligned end to end, with a depression in the middle.

I stood up and eyeballed the direction it seemed to lead away from the front porch, and walking away from the house towards the railroad cut in the front yard, I smiled when I reached that fifteen-foot drop. Because there, having been cut through many decades before, was the same brick structure. Five bricks wide, with the same depression in the center. I scraped this one, too, and after uncovering three feet of it, I stood up and looked towards the house.

Then I got it.

“Of course!” I laughed. “Of course! Why didn’t I see it before?”

I hadn’t seen it before because I didn’t have the house as a center point. And to get the best view of my find, I had to climb down into the railroad cut and up the other side.

I turned around, and there, perfectly profiled by the railroad cut, was the cross-section of the original driveway of the house, complete with its brick gutter on the left side. The gray sandy loam of the farm was interrupted by a foot-deep, twelve-foot wide berm of hard clay and gravel, compacted into this hidden driveway only revealed by mischance and cross-section. Further research showed that this driveway had been built in the 1840s and abandoned around 1900 when the tracks were built.

I photographed the excavations and reported my finds to Peggy, who couldn’t wait to see the exposed brick. Cordoned off like a museum exhibit, it can still be seen on the Cason Farm in Hodges, South Carolina.

But by far, my favorite offchance find during a restoration was what dropped into my hands while demolishing a plaster ceiling in an 1873 row house in Washington D.C. in 1988.

What dropped into my hands was a rat’s nest, complete with the rat.

Before you go running to the bathroom to wash out your eyes from having read such a thing, let me assure you that Brother Rat had been dead for long enough to mummify it. Or, with a nod to the Egyptians, long enough to desiccate it and allow it to be preserved in the exact form it had in life.

Now, people, I can assure you that I have iron testicles. I chase tornadoes, explore virgin caves, and have no problem singing in front of strangers. I can carry a musical show for four hours if my voice holds out. I spent years hitchhiking across this country. I’ve had a black widow for a pet for three years. I let her go when she got too big.

I was not freaked at this experience. I felt the plaster and lath give way, and knew I’d got a mouthful of black dust and spider eggs and splinters and godknowswhatelse.

And guess what? I did. In two seconds, I was covered with the hidden dirt of a century.

My exclamations (a little too colorful to print here, I assure you) were heard throughout the third and second floors, and my fellow craftsmen came running to see what was wrong, if they could help, or if there was a funny story to be gleaned from my discomfiture. And they all laffed and laffed and laffed upon seeing my face and hair and shoulders completely draped in black dust, spider webs, and tattered paper.

But when the dust began to clear and they saw that I held something remarkable in my hands, they gasped.

“Get me a piece of plywood or drywall!” I sputtered, spitting centuries of dirt from my face. I stood there on the stepladder, shaking the dirt from my hair, trying to make it possible to open my eyes without going blind. I held something airy and ancient and colorful in my hands, and it was so light that I thought it’d blow away with my next breath.

“What IS that?” more than one worker asked.

“Its history, boys,” I smiled, my mouth crusted with black dust. “And you’re the first to see it in decades.”

It was true; I had so much dust in my eyes that I could hardly see a thing. But I knew what I had from feel and from the first glimpse of what had dropped before the dark dust cloud took over.

One of the carpenters held out a scrap of drywall with shaking hands, and I placed my find onto it carefully.

“Take it into the front room and put it on the table with the plans,” I said, wiping blackness from my eyes. “Somebody bring me another scrap! There’s more!”

I had soon emptied the two-foot space above the third floor of its rat nest, and alighting from the ladder, walked to the front room with the second half of the treasure. Word had spread of the find, and within a minute, fifteen guys stood agape at the table.

“How old is it?”

“Is that a rat?”

“What’s all that stuff?”

The rat was ten inches from tip to butt, excluding the tail, and its tail measured that again; this appendage was wrapped tightly around its side, and its face was turned up slightly. It appeared to be looking at me, and its grin revealed more of its teeth than I wanted to see. Tan skin stretched tautly across a long skeleton, and by its size, I surmised that this particular rat lived rather well.

But the real treasure was its nest; a hundred years of history filled the sticks and straw that made up its bulk. Apparently this home had a sewing room on the third floor, because the third most prominent ingredient was thread. Thread of all colors, thread of all sheens. It looked as if it had just been taken from the spool, nevermind the black dirt. Then there was a plethora of fabric cuttings, some merely rag edges and some as fine as crinoline. The rat was apparently egalitarian in its tastes.

And buttons! Oh, my! I had heard that rats are attracted to shiny baubles, but this was the first proof I’d seen. It had a thing for silver buttons, and the gaudier or more embossed, the better it liked them.

I dated the nest to 1893 at the oldest, mainly because the rat also had a taste for paper. Scraps of personal notes, bits of newspaper, postcards, and box tops littered the nest. Most of the dates were in the early 1890’s, but it was the nearly intact playbill that excited me most. I forget what the play or venue was, but the date was 1893.

The crew debated and declaimed, discoursed and discussed. Until the foreman came and sent us all back to work. Then he added his three cent’s worth.

“Damn! It’s a rat’s nest from a hundred years ago!”

That’s why he was the boss. Sharp as a spoon, he was.

That night, I presented the nest, complete with Brother Rat, to Alan, the owner of the house. Being a corporate lawyer, he was not impressed.

It was his loss.

I kept the rat. Still have it somewhere, though it may have gone to dust by now.

History stands still only when kept in a dark, dry place. But it’s nice when it’s discovered.

Then we can learn and talk about it.

What time capsules are waiting for YOU?

 

ADDENDUM

Since this colulumn was writ, I have found something even more remarkable.

While restoring the 1820 Estevan Hall in Helena, Arkansas in 2012, one of the demo crew came running downstairs. Everyone on each crew had been given explicit instructions to bring me any found objects, no matter how young or old.

"What about this?" he asked, caked with rock wool dust. He'd been removing old insulation from an attic behind a four-foot kneewall, and had been crouched for hours. I'm sure the tiny paper dust mask he wore wasn't helping keep the fiberglass out of his lungs, either.

He presented me with a strange looking chain found in the attic. It had a round link on the end, oblong links in the middle, and an embossed plate in the center. The whole thing was hand-forged.

 

 

"Looks like it'll just fit around someone's neck," Tim, my demo guy, said with a smile. He was referring to the local rumors (all apocryphal)  of slaves kept in chains in the basement before the War of Northern Aggression. "Is that a name on the plate in the middle?"

It was, but I couldn't read it.

"I doubt they made metal nameplates for slaves," I quipped, examining the thing closely. I still don't know what it was. Tim, newly energized from this find, went back up to finish.

"Keep your eyes open!" I yelled after him.

I hadn't been organizing the plans on the construction table for two minutes before he came down the stairs again. This time he was out of breath.

"I found some pictures," he panted.

"Well, bring 'em here!"

He shook his head.

"You'd better come up."

I followed him to the crawl door in the second floor wall. This part of the house had been added in the early 20th century, and the room had four-foot kneewalls. He pointed to an area about thirty feet from the door, then disappeared into the hole.

"Damn," I said, following with my point-and-shoot camera. I HATE crawling. I had hated it since a disastrous run-in with a deer on my Triumph motorcycle six months before, and my broken ribs creaked and complained as I got on my knees. I also began to hack and cough, what with the fiberglass dust in the air.

"This better be good for me to do all this," I sputtered to Tim. I figured he had found a few desiccated photographs with water spots and curled edges.

But at the end of the crawl, I was amply rewarded.

"Holy mother of God," I said. "Hold that one forward a little. Yeah, like that. Now move back...that's it."

I took only one picture. I could hardly breathe in all the dust.

"Stay here," I said. "I'm going to knock a hole in the wall so we can get them out." I crawled back to the door and looked around the room to figure where the pictures were; they were behind the back wall to the closet. Luckily, this room was sheathed with unsaturated Celotex (????), so knocking a hole in the wall was easy, and Tim passed the two framed portraits through with none of the bumping and scratching they would have endured if we used the crawl. There were five more small pictures in frames as well.

Once the whole collection was downstairs, the black dust and fiberglass was wiped from them. The two big portraits looked to be about 1840s vintage, as judged by the clothing, hair styles, and artistic execution. I immediately called the architect, who called the owner, and then I got the person in charge of building services for the Delta Cultural Center. SHE had the climate-controlled storage where the portraits would be kept safe until they were carefully cleaned.

 

It turns out that the portraits were of the builder's son and daughter-in-law, and I was pretty close in my rudimentary dating as mid-1840s. The others were framed photographs that were taken in the first part of the 20th century, and featured a number of familial scenes, but unfortunately nothing from the outside of the house, which is what we really needed for architectural verification of facades. They had probably been put behind the kneewall when the addition was built around 1919, but why they had been forgotten is a mystery.

The most interesting of the small pictures was one of the same man in the big portrait. Only in this picture he was fully white-headed. It was unmistakably the same man.

 

When the restoration of Estevan Hall is finished, it will become the Helena Civil War Parks Visitors Center. The two portraits are slated to hang prominently in the main room, but I hope they'll include the picture of Tim and his very-evident grin behind that dust mask. I think the way they were found was as interesting as the pictures themselves.

 

 

 

 

 "ASK THE EXPERT" COLULUMN

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE

SPRING 2013


Another offering to the Lovely Linda C. I think it was her idea, and not taken from a letter. Or maybe I just foisted the thing on her.
I was starting to make my getaway to New England, so it beats the hell out of me where it came from.




SO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A HISTORIC HOUSE

 

So you want to live in a historic house. There are considerations both physical and cultural to keep in mind.

First, if it's in a designated historic district, there may be local guidelines as to what you can do to alter it. People that put a lot of time and money into their homes' authenticity don't necessarily want a neighbor with modern fabric or design changes that might degrade the historic aspect of the neighborhood. That doesn't mean you can't put up gutters or replace your windows; it just means that alterations should look like what was there before.

Older neighborhoods are more  integral; privacy fences are few, and neighbors often interact with each other more than in suburbia, looking after each others' property as well as the whole neighborhood. It's a fairly hip crowd that takes on the responsibility of keeping up a historic house.

And older homes take more upkeep. If you have wood siding, it will need to be painted every ten years or so. Interior "box" gutters need to be maintained, or they'll leak and your eaves will disintegrate. Wood porches need a lot of attention; homeowners used to sweep the water off them right after a rain to preserve them. Older homes are more expensive to roof, as they are often taller and have a more intricate roof design or steeper pitch. Interior plaster is easily repaired, but a cracked plaster ceiling should be removed and replaced with drywall.

Older homes, however, can be made much more energy efficient with newer technologies. Most were built without insulation and seem quite drafty until insulation is added above, below, and blown into the walls. Replacement windows are sometimes installed, but a properly caulked original window casement with a new storm window will be nearly as efficient. Taller ceilings cry out for ceiling fans with downrods, and almost all older homes were built with outside-to-inside air circulation in mind. Modern homes do not circulate air nearly as well.

Older homes were often built with superior lumber that withstands stresses and termite attack better than newer wood, and as most were built with pier-and-beam foundations, they have crawlspaces instead of concrete slabs. This allows for systems to be inspected and updated easily. Lead paint is almost always present in older homes, but if it is encapsulated with new paint and not made airborne through sanding, it is not a hazard. The soils near the foundation should be tested for lead that came off the house in past years. Asbestos is sometimes a concern, but much more so in commercial construction. The binders in residential plaster were usually jute fibers and horsehair, not asbestos, and the most common places to find the nasty stuff is in old 12" square rigid tiles or in the thick [plaster that encasulates old boilers.

If you buy an older home, have it inspected by someone who knows old houses. Original electrical and plumbing systems are outdated and dangerous, but updating them is easier because of access in the attic and crawlspace. Most updated older homes have already had their knob-and-tube electrical wires and galvanized iron pipes replaced.

If there are wood floors, you will need carpets. Older homes often require more furniture, as they have larger spaces, and living in one sounds completely different than in a newer home, as sound seems to carry and reverberate more.

Older homes may take more attention, but they give back such charm that those who live in one often find it hard to go back to modern homes. It is also a fact that those in older homes tend to live there much longer than those in newer homes.

This might sound biased, but after all, I am The Old House Doctor.