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