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Construction

The Exterior Front

It’s been a while since my last entry, but that’s because we have been very busy getting the house ready enough for us to move back in. After a year of renovating, we were finally able to! I will soon post the state of things inside, but first I want to show the improvements we made on the exterior front. Curb appeal is a great way to quickly see the return on your money spent. In our case, we needed to fix all the holes my contractor had to make in the exterior wall during the interior renovation, so we decided to go for it.

The exterior front finished. The stoop and fence still need to be refurbished (later).
This is what the exterior front looked like when we bought the house.
The 1940 tax photo of our house pictured (middle).
This is the drawing I based on the 1940 tax photo. I wanted to bring back as many Victorian details as I could.

The Construction Phase

The most elaborate part of doing the work on the exterior front was building the scaffolding. Obviously it was required for safety, but there were a few hiccups along the way. Once up, the city stopped by and posted a partial stop work order because my contractor needed to add stairs and a few more safety rails to the scaffolding. Luckily we were able to strip off all the vinyl siding and install new plywood to the front facade before that happened. After adding the requirements and satisfying the city, we were able to continue about a month later.

Our house was covered with scaffolding for about three months.

One of the very first details we wanted to add back was the cornice. Ever since I laid eyes on this house I suspected whether the original cornice was still there hiding behind the terrible vinyl siding. Row houses like ours, covered in layers of siding, are common throughout my neighborhood. Almost all of them have an extra protrusion at the top, usually covering a cornice. Somehow it was easier to cover up than restore the cornice? I never understood why people do what they do to houses. Anyway, my contractor ripped that band-aide off the top only to discover the cornice beneath!

The cornice discovery below the siding- still intact!

We’re not sure if this is the original 130 year old cornice, but it appears to be in the 1940’s tax photo. It also matches a few of our neighbor’s cornices, so it’s been up there a while. We were also surprised that the cornice was in pretty good shape, especially being made of wood. My contractor carefully scraped the loose paint off, then repaired a few missing dentils and crown. He then finished it all off with an oil based primer and paint.

The cornice primed before final paint. We applied a vapor barrier to wall prior to the new siding install.

Siding and Portico

From the cornice, the guys worked their way down framing each window using primed pine and a Fypon head sill I found that had a great profile. Once the windows were framed and trimmed, we were ready to install the siding. We used James Hardie Hardieboard fiber cement siding. I decided to use the wide 7 1/4″ smooth finish because the width scaled well with the window trim. My partner and I had several color samples of the siding to choose from, but in the end we liked the black the best. For some reason, to us all the other colors didn’t look like the color they were going for. Once we chose the siding, I matched the black to paint all the trim the same.

The siding, window trim, portico, and cornice finished. I was happy to find that our cornice matched my neighbor’s cornice.

The last item we built was the portico. Apart from being a practical shield from the rain, porticos add the needed detail and character to an otherwise flat facade. My builder framed and built it from scratch, and used the brackets and fascia I found from Fypon. The portico detail was part of the overall front entrance overhaul. This was a key area of the house to restore since so much of it was altered. I drafted double doors that would have been there and incorporated back a few original details like the transom and three quarter round engaged columns at the panel insets.

The finished portico ready for brackets and paint.
The brackets being prepped and painted.

Transom and Entrance

The transom was one of the few original details we found in the house, so I was very happy I could still use it. It needed a piece of glass to close it in. I was able to find a 1/4″ thick English restoration glass, perfect for that location. I installed the glass using silicone and a flex moulding profile I found similar to the original.

The original transom re-installed after framing the entrance opening.
The double doors went in next. I found a reasonably priced company to manufacture the three quarter lite mahogany doors to size.
My contractor custom built the panel mould and framed the transom. The three quarter round engaged columns are original to the house.
The finished transom…
…all it needs is the address. I can’t afford gold leaf hand painted numbers which would be period correct, so gold vinyl will have to do for now.

So there it is, all new for 1889!