Contrasting Hip Roofs

 In the last couple of months we have been doing structural repairs on two hip roof two story houses.  Though of almost the same age and located within 10 miles of each other the builders employed two very different systems of framing to create what superficially appear to be similar buildings. In this post I will use the roof systems of these houses to illustrate the approach each builder took.

Tubbs-Reed house

 The first building and the more typical is the Tubbs-Reed house located on Swan Island(Perkins Township), Maine. Built for Major Samuel Tubbs in the first decade of the 19th Century, it is a plain but well executed center chimney plan house. The building measures approximately 28' x 36'.

Peacock Tavern

 The second house is the Peacock Tavern built in 1807 on the Brunswick Road in Richmond, Maine. This is a highly unusual two story plank frame house of center hall and original ell kitchen plan.The left bay of the house in this photo is a parlor and ballroom added probably within ten years of the construction of the main building.The dimensions of the main portion of the original structure is approximately 24' x 36'.

Tie beams,hip and jack rafters and purlins of Tubbs-Reed house.

 The methods and quality of execution used in the roof frames of these buildings reflect two very different traditions, but I will let the details of the roofs speak for themselves. The roof of the Tubbs-Reed house is of rafter purlin construction and very neatly executed. The Peacock Tavern roof is common rafter and generally poorly executed.

Tie beams, hip and jack rafters of Peacock Tavern.

Dadoed tie beam over plate and tenoned flying plate at Tubbs-Reed.

Sistered hip rafter at Peacock Tavern. 

Common rafter to ridge connection at Peacock.

 Both roofs are 6/12 pitch and have a framed overhang at the eaves. In the Tubbs-Reed frame all the rafters line up with tie beams which pass by and are nicely joined to vertically offset plates. In contrast the ties and plate at The Peacock Tavern are in the same plane vertically and the rafter tails are connected with 1 1/4" pegs. Only the truss and hip rafters fall on tie beams. Common rafters land on 3x4 flying plates that run from tiebeam to tiebeam. The hip rafters were apparently cut too short originally and have 1" boards sistered to them to make up the length.Common rafters are butt cogged to the ridge pole.
 Kingposts at the Tubbs-Reed house are through dovetailed and wedged. Peacock is a simple mortise and tenon with two pegs.

Tubbs-Reed kingpost base

Peacock kingpost base

 In conclusion I am always surprised both by the continuity and quirkiness of the building traditions of our area. The differences illustrated by these two roof systems are obviously the result of builders approaching things from different traditions, skill levels and budgets of home owners. It's interesting to note that either by coincidence or as a direct result of the quality of the original construction the Tubbs-Reed roof is in beautiful condition, whereas the Peacock roof has obviously leaked like a sieve for generations.

accordion lath splitter

 When people find out I restore old buildings one of the inevitable comments goes something like: "you must find all kinds of cool stuff in the walls of those old places". The truth is finding anything interesting is surprisingly rare unless you're into rodent skeletons or outdated forms of insulation.
 That being said things do turn up, like this late 18th C lath splitter found sealed up in the cavity above a ceiling in an early house in Dresden, Me. The lath is 3/4" vertically sawn pine attached with 8d wrought nails.
 Accordion or splitboard lath was installed by nailing one end of a board then splitting , wedging, and nailing your way across an area to be plastered. In midcoast Maine accordion lath was used starting around 1790. Before then riven lath (lath split on all four sides) was used.

8" long x 1 3/8" wide x  1" thick

 The splitting wedge is made of white oak and very nicely fashioned. Oval in cross section and lightly chamfered on the strike end, it appears to have seen little use. I wonder if its owner ever realized where it disappeared to.

1936 house painting invoice

All that talk of lead in house paint is exaggerated, right?  Here's a copy of a 1936 invoice from Ansonia, CT that sheds some light on the practices of the day.  Yes, that's five hundred pounds of white lead to be mixed with the 24 gallons of oil, along with gasoline (to clean brushes, I'm guessing), lamp black and raw sienna in pigment form as well as a gallon of green paint - interesting that the green came pre-mixed.
We also find "metal roof strips" (zinc strips to inhibit moss growth? or replacement flashing to accompany the "cement & sand" on the previous line?) and two gallons of "roof paint" - maybe some sort of asphalt-based mix for recoating a metal roof on a bay window or other projection.
Mr. Wilson doesn't specify how many panes of glass he replaced, but the 38 pounds of putty suggests that the windows weren't in great shape, which, along with the three days spent repairing the blinds (shutters) gives the impression of a house that might not have been painted for some time....

CT carriage shed truss

This is a neat little truss in a small ca. 1875 Connecticut carriage shed (approx. 18' x 22' - I'll have a chance to get a better look & measurements later in the year).  A simple & well thought out frame, one where it seems that the builders were quite comfortable mixing traditional timber joinery with small sawn/nailed members: many of the rafters are 2x6s run on on the flat!

Looking north from a later addition - the original structure has two bays/three bents, with the clear-span tie/girt of the center bent supported by the iron rod visible here.  The top of the rod sits at the apex of two 4x4 members that run parallel to the rafters approx. 6" below the roof boards.

Another view in the same direction.  The three bents are framed identically, with the center tie supported by an iron rod and the exterior two held in place by their vertical boarding and a door stud.  The white-painted piece of scrap at the top of the iron rod (and its double on the other side) hold the top of the truss vertical.

The west side of the center bent.  Both eaves walls are framed identically: one bay a full-size door w/header (the farther bay here and below), the other with two braces up to the plate and two horizontal nailers.  The square wooden "washers" to the left mark the ends of the bolts holding the rail for the sliding door.

The east side of the center bent.  Note here & above that the angled supports for the tie rod appear to rest on a nailed-on piece of 1" scrap.  The eaves post in this bent is an older hewn hardwood timber, one of only a few reused pieces in the building.

Hanging lean-to

 Located in West Cumberland, Maine the barn we have recently been working on is part of a farmstead originally belonging to Capt. Joseph Blanchard. The house is a large 2 room deep, 2 story, center chimney federal. The other buildings on the property include a 22'x39' carriage shed and a 44'x60' circa 1840's dropped plate Western barn.
 While working on the barn Otis and I found evidence of a now demolished Lean-to (sometimes referred to as a linter) which ran the full length (60') of the eaves wall. This is not at all unusual to see in both Western (gable entry) or converted English (side entry) barns. As a consequence we gave little notice to the particulars of the lean-to's construction, but we did point it out to the barn's owners. The next day the customer brought out a lithograph view of the farmstead circa 1860 with the lean-to in place. To our surprise the lean-to had no posts.

The property as it looked in the 1860's.

 After taking a thorough look at the evidence on the building it seems quite certain the lean-to never had posts. We are also pretty sure it was cut and erected at the same time as the rest of the barn.
  The lean-to's dimensions were 60' long, 8' deep, 6'7"  from top of sill to top of tiebeam/eave, with a 9/12 roof pitch.

The barn as it looks today with dormers added in the 1940's to accommodate laying chickens.

Eaves wall post with half-lap for lean-to rafter.

Mortise and broken off tenon of  lean-to tiebeam.

Maxwell-Tarr House

To begin, here are a few more photos from the house we used for the blog's header.  The ca. 1850 Maxwell-Tarr House is (was?) located on Swan Island in the Kennebec River, an island owned by the State of Maine and administered by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife as the Steve Powell Wildlife Management Area.  For more information, go here.
A few of the island's historic structures remain; the Maxwell-Tarr House will obviously not be among them for long (if it's still standing at all - it was scheduled to be burned by IF&W as of September 2010, when these photos were taken).

View of parlor, showing chimney designed for woodstove/coal stove hookup.

Better view of chimney in front parlor.  Note giant dovetails on outside corners of base.

Trim detail on east eaves (front) of ell.

 Another view of the doorway above.  It's not clear from this photo, but the molded head (except for the flat cap) is integral with the square base that the clapboards butt against - they're molded/carved from the same piece of pine.

Unlike the other window & door headers, the header for the front door didn't have the integral backer.  It's still mostly molded from a single piece of pine.  Note that stiles were let into bottom edge of header (left side in picture).

Exterior of header.  See previous photo - molding on left & square base are separate pieces.  Probably 12"+ wide overall.

Clapboarded rear eaves wall.  Note skived ends, original red paint and circular saw marks - clapboards on "good sides" of house were planed.  The rear also received a much more basic window/door treatment than the front.

Front of house.  Doorway was on the left of collapsed wall and opened onto the front hall/stairway, with two windows to right in parlor.

Even the longest journey....

A few words before we really get this blog going.  Hopefully we'll keep at it and find a few readers along the way; time will tell....

This is intended to be a place for pictures & writing about some of the cool (to us, at least) stuff that we see in the course of our work & travel around Maine and New England.  Exemplary (and less than exemplary) timber frames, neat architectural details, cringe-worthy "farmer repairs" (concrete, anyone?), evidence of past landscapes and other goodies that we've always assumed that pretty much nobody else would find of any interest whatsoever.

Take a look and please feel free to leave us a comment.

Thanks,

Nate & Otis