Work has finally begun on the remaining exterior restoration of the Stone House. On Wednesday, the 5th of August, a crew from Vintage, Inc. began to remove the concrete walkways at the north gable end of the house. They also started preparing the bulkhead entrance behind the stone side of the house for a part of the project that will excavate a link between the cellars under the two sides of the building. One might ask what excavating a passage between the cellars under two side of the building has to do with restoring the exterior of the structure. On May 12, 2026 we posted an article on the bulkhead entrances of the Stone House. In it we addressed the bulkhead entrance to the cellar under the log side of the structure. (See photo below.) Located at the base of the north gable end of the log addition, this bulkhead entrance did not exist in 1830. In fact, the cellar under the log side of the house did not exist in that period either. As stated previously in that post, the bulkhead entrance at the north gable end of the log addition will be removed as part of the restoration plan. This is why we are excavating a passage between the two separate cellars. It will allow us to access the cellar under the log side of the building after its current entrance is closed off. 

On the 7th of August the excavation of the passage linking the two cellars began. The work was facilitated by the fact that generations of groundhogs had burrowed through the same area to create tunnels for travel between the different chambers of their den under the Stone House. The crew began the project under the stone side, where the builder, George Cabbage, did not connect the front foundation wall of  the structure with the foundation wall under the original hearth of the stone side fireplace. (See photo to the below.) Instead, he left the packed clay subsoil between the two parallel foundation walls  in place. Perhaps this was a labor-saving choice made by Mr. Cabbage back in the early 1760s. It ultimately benefited us in our efforts to restore the Stone House. Unfortunately, the groundhogs also have profited from Mr. Cabbage’s decision not to connect the two original foundation walls in that northwest corner of the cellar under the Stone House.

On the 10th of August the disassembly of the porch in front of the log side of the house began. The work crew started with the balustrade, balusters, and some of the loose decorative brackets at the tops of the posts. Then came the careful removal of the standing seam roof and the sheathing boards over the rafters. (See photos below.) The cut nails we are finding clearly point to a mid-nineteenth-century construction date, after rolled metal roofs became common in the area. The majority of this porch is being salvaged by another local preservation contractor. As the work progresses, we will keep you posted.

We are happy to report that the final plans for the exterior restoration of the Stone House are essentially complete. All of the most difficult and detailed work has been finished by structural engineer Alicia McCormick of Shepherdstown, West Virginia and Ken Livingston (along with his colleagues) at Main Street Architecture in Berryville, Virginia. As we have said before, the most challenging part of this phase of the project has been designing the rear porch on the stone side of the building. This is because that porch needs to serve as a buttress for the eastern masonry wall that it will lean against. We have addressed aspects of this porch/buttress design in the spring issues of this newsletter for the last two years. When we began drafting these plans in 2024, we started to grapple with the task of concealing the modern steel framing and hardware inside the masonry and wood that would be visible to viewers of this porch. These completed drawings illustrated in this article supply the specifications that contractors will need to build that porch and incorporate it into the other work required for the exterior restoration plan.

One thing that these plans show that will not be visible after the restoration work is complete is the underground footings of this porch/buttress. These footings will not only go deeper into the ground than what would have been common historically, they also will vary in depth  from one end of the porch to the other. Additionally, they will have wider bases to accommodate the potential forces that will be transferred through the frame of the porch above into the ground below through these footings. The east wall is leaning significantly at its northern end. This can be seen in the drawings. (See bottom image.) This porch/buttress will prevent it from leaning any further.

The only remaining details that need to be worked out are the specifications for how we will make the front door on the log side of the house compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. While historic structures like the Stone House are not exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), they are allowed more flexibility with alternative accessibility requirements. This is particularly the case when strict compliance with the standards laid out in the law would threaten or harm the historical integrity and significance of the building. To learn more about how the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to historic structures, see Preservation Brief 32: Making Historic Properties Accessible by Thomas C. Jester and Sharon C. Park, AIA published by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The door and jamb frame around the front entrance on the log side of the structure are not original to the house or the circa 1830 period to which we are restoring the building. In turn, it will be removed and saved as artifacts before an appropriate period reproduction door and jamb frame are installed. It will be the proper width to comply with ADA accessibility code. Adjustments will be made to the ground level grade in front of that doorway and the adjacent public sidewalk level. This will allow for the use of a portable aluminum ramp to be stored on site and installed when needed to accommodate disabled visitors.

The questions we have struggled to answer as we develop the exterior restoration plans for the Stone House concern design details. Most of the time the original evidence was destroyed long ago, and we are only left with surviving examples in other structures of the period or historic images. Sometimes we get lucky. We previously have discussed the miraculous survival of the beaded weatherboards attached with original hand-forged nails under the roof of the circa 1869 shed addition behind the log side of the house. They told us how the log side of the house was sided in the 1830 period. Those weatherboards were coated in whitewash, except in one area above the rear doorway in the northeastern corner of the log addition. There the whitewash had been eroded away, leaving the outline of the apex of a gable roof for a porch that once covered the doorway beneath. (See area circled in image below.) We plan to reconstruct the porch based on this evidence. One of the design detail questions we have had to answer is what the posts for this porch roof looked like.

Here is another example of how we got lucky. While we were carefully dismantling the shed addition behind the log side of the house, we discovered that an old porch post had been recycled and used as a wall stud in that shed addition. (See image below.) It appears that when they demolished the rear porch to make way for the shed addition, the builders took one of the posts from the porch and incorporated it in the north wall of that addition next to a window opening. This porch post is approximately 3.8125 inches square with round beaded corners. While many of the other aspects of the design of this porch behind the log side of the house will be conjectural, we will be able to reproduce our period porch posts based on this original one that miraculously has survived.

We also have reason to feel fortunate about the second floor windows for the log side of the house. The original six-over- six pane double-hung sash windows were featured in a late nineteenth-century photograph of the log side of the house. (See image below.)

As we have studied the six-over-six pane double-hung sash windows that are installed in the garage next to the log side of the house (see image below), we have come to the conclusion that they originally came from the second floor of the log side of the Stone House. The windows that currently are installed in the second floor of the log side of the house date to the middle of the twentieth century. It appears that when the Argenbrights installed the current windows, they reused two sets of the older windows in the front of the their garage next door. These old window sashes, with their remaining old wavy glass panes, will be removed and safely stored. We will then use them as models for the new reproduction second floor windows on the log side of the house.

We have some progress to report on our effort to come up with a design for the rear porch that will serve as a buttress for the east wall of the stone side of the house. The challenge with this undertaking has always been a balancing act. There are three components to balance. By far, the most demanding of the three is the structural requirements for the buttress. The porch must hold the east wall in its current position. This is going to require a steel frame that is built against the wall and welded together in sections to conform to the irregularities of the exterior stone masonry. It will need to have angle brackets and lean-to braces at the base of the uprights that will hold the wall in place. (See image below.)

The other two components of our balancing act are the archeological evidence we discovered behind the stone side of the house and circa 1830 historical architectural forms. Many of our newsletter readers will recall our articles in 2020 when we addressed the archeological discovery of postholes in the places we might expect to find them for wood uprights set in the ground as part of a foundation for a rear porch. The postholes contained backfill with artifacts dating to the first half of the 1800s. The problem is that wood posts set in the ground will rot and will not work with the steel frame we need to support our troubled eastern stone-masonry wall.

Thus, the third component of our balancing act comes into play. We are using circa 1830 historical architectural forms to design a porch with brick-masonry piers to hide our steel frame. It is a historically sensitive conjectural compromise designed to save the original east wall of the Stone House. To conceal the angle brackets and lean-to braces at the base of the uprights that will hold the wall in place, we will be using latticework. (See image above.) We know that latticework was used as early as the 1700s. An eighteenth-century door from Delaware with hand-forged nails in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg is surviving proof of this fact. (See photo below.) As we move forward with our design project we will continue to balance these three components and share the results with you.

We are happy to report that we have gutters on the Stone House. In an earlier post on the 31st of October 2020 we addressed historical gutters and the brackets that were used in the period to hold them in place. On the 8th of October 2021 we posted on how we installed the gutter brackets prior to the installation of the shingles. With the crown and eaves painted, we finally were able to start getting those gutters installed on the 25th of November 2024. We would like to thank James Loveless of the firm Loveless & Mabe Inside Out Repairs & Guttering, LLC for his assistance and patience over the last four years as we completed the work that needed to be done prior to this final part of the project being finished. This phase concludes what we have affectionately called the “Lid Job” for the Stone House Restoration Project.

Photo above courtesy of James Loveless

We used wires looped around each end of the cups in the gutter brackets to hold the gutters in place. The gutter sections were soldered together as were the downspout sections at each corner. This method will ensure that the gutters will stay in place during weather events with high winds.

This gutter system employs the basic technologies that were available in the 1830 period, with a few exceptions. We used mild steel instead of wrought iron to make the gutter brackets. The gutters themselves are copper coated with FreedomGrey® by Revere. This will ensure they last longer than galvanized steel coated with the same material. For all intents and purposes, they look just like the terne metal (sheet iron coated with an alloy of lead and tin) gutters that were commonly used in that period. To prevent bimetal corrosion between the gutters and the brackets, we had the brackets powder coated. We also used wire with black rubber insulation as a buffer between the gutters and the steel wires.

Additionally, we have an update to report on the progress we have made with our rear porch/buttress design project. On the 6th of September 2024 Ken Livingston of Main Street Architecture in Berryville, VA and Alicia McCormick of McCormick Engineering of Shepherdstown, WV made a site visit to study the east wall of the stone side of the structure. Ms. McCormick made a second site visit on the 25th of October 2024 to assess issues with the floor joists that rest in masonry pockets of that east wall. We look forward to sharing more about these plans for the porch/buttress when they are complete.

On October 3rd Vintage, Inc. began the priming of the soffit and crown of the Stone House. (See image below.) This is no ordinary paint job. As we explained in our previous issue, the crown molding, soffit, and top weatherboard on the log side of the Stone House are original and date to when the log side was raised to its current height in 1804. Because of this we have been extra careful with the way we treat these features.

In previous issues we have made mention of our use of linseed oil paint on the shingles we installed over the two sides of the Stone House, and we discussed its benefits and historical applications. In this post we will go into more depth on the subject of linseed oil paint and the reasons why this paint job will not only protect our original wood features but also survive the test of time. 

Many of us who are in the historic architecture preservation business have been coming to the consensus that modern paints are the cause of serious deterioration in exterior woodwork on historic properties. The fact that the historic woodwork in question was originally harvested from old-growth forests during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries makes this discovery even more distressing. The evidence is showing that for over a hundred years during the time that linseed oil paints were being used, this exterior woodwork remained in relatively good condition even though it was being exposed to the elements. During the 1930s we start to see true linseed oil-based paints being infused and eventually replaced by synthetic resin alkyd paints derived from petroleum-based chemical ingredients. As the environmental and cleanup concerns mounted over these alkyd paints, acrylic paints were chosen as a “better” alternative. With their faster drying time and easier cleanup, latex or acrylic paints quickly became the new standard. These paints are essentially plastic that encapsulates a wood surface. This sounds great until you realize that water eventually finds a way behind that plastic coating and gets trapped. Trapped moisture in any wood, no matter what its species or quality, causes rot. As the wood rots the paint begins to flake. The painted surfaces that do not flake wear out from ultraviolet light damage. In five years, you are back to scraping, sanding, and painting again. This gets expensive. Never mind the fact that you are also having to sometimes replace rotted wood. One of the few benefits of plastic paints is that they stretch as the wood behind them expands and contracts, shifts, or settles.  Even so, these plastic paints do not penetrate the undelaying wood surface, which remains hygroscopic (able to absorb moisture from the environment). As a result, the wood becomes vulnerable to deterioration from within.

The benefits of linseed oil paint make it clear why it has been used for architectural applications since ancient Roman times. Linseed oil has lower surface tension than water. This makes linseed oil paint able to penetrate farther under the wood surface. As a rule, this type of paint is absorbed deeper into the wood than water-based paints are able to reach. Moreover, linseed oil itself naturally repels water. Linseed oil paints do not form a watertight surface like plastic paints. Instead, they allow what little moisture that does get into the wood to evaporate out through the painted surface. Because of this water never gets trapped under the painted surface of the wood. Unlike acrylic and alkyd paints which require scraping, chemical stripping, and sanding as they crack and flake off, linseed oil painted surfaces are much more maintainable. As the linseed oil dries out of the painted surface, typically over the course of around five years, the pigment takes on a matte or chalky appearance. Even at this point the wood surface is still protected by the oil remaining in its subsurface. The cosmetic quality of the painted surface can be renewed by brushing on a thin coat of pure boiled linseed oil or adding a thin new coat of the same linseed oil paint. Because linseed oil paint does not loosen, crack, flake, or peel, it does not need to be scraped, stripped, or sanded before a new coat of it is applied. Nevertheless, when you apply linseed oil paint over surfaces previously painted with acrylic and alkyd paints (as we are doing with this project), it is best to prepare the surface by removing as much of the old paint layers as possible. To learn more about linseed oil paints and if they might be right for your projects, see “Resurrecting Linseed Oil Paint” by Justin Fink in the October 2024 issue of Fine Homebuilding. Our thanks to David Logan of Vintage, Inc. for sharing his knowledge on this subject.                 

On May 28th Mr. James Magill, proprietor of Eco Valley Blasting of Woodstock, Virginia, began the surface preparation treatment of the surviving sections of crown molding and soffits on the Stone House. (See photo below.)

To understand the process we are undertaking, we first need to explain the ethics of historic preservation as they relate to our restoration of the Stone House. One guiding principle of an historic restoration project is to preserve as much of the structure’s original fabric as possible. This is especially the case with the parts of the structure that relate to the time period that is the focus of the restoration plan. During our forensic investigation of the exterior of the structure, we discovered that the crown molding, soffit, and the top weatherboard under it on the log side were original to the time when that side of the house was raised to its current height in 1804. Consequently, these features needed to be preserved at all cost. Unfortunately, some of the crown molding had already suffered rot damage many years ago, and those sections had to be replaced with new molding that was an exact copy of the original molding. The original sections of molding, soffit, and top weatherboard that remained had suffered from exposure to the elements and had layers of modern paint over the historical base layers of whitewash and/or white paint. (See image below.)

To ensure the survival of these original sections of crown molding and weatherboards, we will be painting them with a high-quality, linseed oil-based paint. In order to make certain that the new coats of paint will properly penetrate and adhere to the remaining sections of original molding, we need to remove as much of the old paint as possible. Anyone who has any experience with painting knows that it does not matter how good your new paint is. Proper surface preparation is the key to making sure the new coats of paint remain affixed to the surfaces they are supposed to protect. Earlier, our main preservation contractor, Mr. David Logan, proprietor of Vintage, Inc., had conducted experiments to determine the best approach to removing the old paint and preparing the surfaces. He concluded that the most effective way to remove the paint without causing damage to the historical molding was a combination of careful scraping, chemical stripping, and soft-abrasive blasting. After receiving approval from us, he then hired Mr. James Magill to conduct the work.

On June 7th Mr. Magill began to utilize garnet-dust blasting to remove the paint/whitewash that his previous efforts with scraping and using a chemical stripper had failed to eliminate. Wearing protective gear, Mr. Magill carefully sprayed the garnet dust at high velocity over the nooks and crannies of the soffit and crown molding. (See photo above.) There are advantages of using garnet dust. It is safer because it is nontoxic and less abrasive than silica sand. It also produces less dust and can do more with less volume, so it is more cost effective.

Our main reason for wanting to prepare and paint the crown and soffit molding at this time is because our next step in the project will be the installation of the gutters. After the gutters are installed, access to the crown and soffit molding will be limited and more difficult. In the meantime our focus is on the preservation of this original woodwork under our new roof.

Now that we are done with the roof, our next phase of work will involve the restoration of the exterior walls as well as window and door openings on both sides of the structure. We have engaged the services of Main Street Architecture in Berryville, Virginia to produce the plans for this next part of the restoration project. The most important component of this next phase of design work will be the plans for a rear porch that will act as a buttress for the east wall behind the stone side of the house. As some readers may recall, during our archeological investigations in the summer of 2016, we discovered the foundation walls of the detached kitchen that once stood primarily behind the log side of the structure. The south end of that detached kitchen was actually behind the stone side. As we explained in our 2017 summer issue of our newsletter (and in a previous corresponding post), the southwest corner of that detached kitchen was occupying the same space as a later timber-frame shed addition that had been on the rear of the stone side of the house. That discovery made it clear that the timber-frame shed addition postdated our restoration period of 1830, as we knew that the detached kitchen was standing prior to 1843, when it was mentioned in a deed that subdivided the property. With this finding came the realization that there had to have been a porch on the rear of the stone side of the house because of the height of the threshold for the rear door behind the stone side of the house and the ground level of the grade under that doorway. Suddenly a posthole that was discovered by students from James Madison University under the direction of Dr. Dennis Blanton during the archeological investigations he conducted in the late winter of 2015 made sense.

In April of 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to have an impact on our operations, we published an article about the digs that we had commissioned Rivanna Archaeological Services to undertake in unexcavated areas behind the stone side of the house. During that investigation we discovered more postholes that were clear evidence of a rear porch behind that stone side of the structure. These postholes and other structural evidence in the rear-wall masonry indicated that the porch in question had run along the rear wall of the stone side toward the northeast corner, where that stone wall abutted the rear eastern wall of the log addition. (See architectural drawing above and below provided by Main Street Architecture.)

With the historical existence of the porch now well established, we are in a position to deal with a very serious structural problem in a very practical way. As we addressed in that same newsletter of the spring of 2020, the rear eastern masonry wall behind the stone side is leaning back away from its center of gravity. We currently have a temporary buttress supporting that wall so that it remains stabilized. That temporary buttress will need to be carefully replaced by a steel frame designed in such a way as to double as the bones of the historically appropriate reconstruction of the rear porch. The trick will be designing this rear porch/buttress in a way that will meet the structural-engineering requirements dictated by the laws of physics, while allowing it to look like a porch dating to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The practical demands of this structure are complex. The steel frame will need to be diminutive enough to allow it to be sheathed completely in wood framing that appears historically accurate. At the same time, the steel will need to be thick enough to support the masonry wall that will lean against it. We have been studying surviving historical porches as well as depictions of porches in historical photographs, paintings, and drawings. In the coming months we will keep you posted on our progress with this job.

On Monday, the 9th of October, the painting of the shingles over the log side of the Stone House began. In our post titled “Roof Completed Over the Stone Side” from December of 2021 we addressed the historical and practical reasons for painting the shingles on the roof over the Stone House. In this article we will discuss the mixture of paint and copper naphthenate we are using to coat and preserve our shingles.

The base of this paint is Ottosson Linseed Oil Paint in the Iron Oxide Minimum color. The preservative qualities of linseed oil when applied to wood have been known for centuries. It seals the grain, repels water, and protects it against the harmful impacts of humidity and dirt. At the same time it allows the wood to breathe and acts as a repellant to insects and fungi. Linseed oil is extracted by pressing the dried, ripened seeds of the flax plant. Until the mid-twentieth century when synthetic resin, acrylic, and latex paints become more available, linseed oil-based paints were the ones most commonly used for coating wood surfaces. Linseed oil paint should not be confused with paints that used lead oxide as a pigment and as an ingredient for wood preservation. Lead paint is a whole other topic which we will not discuss here. One of the greatest benefits of linseed oil-based paints is longevity. It can last fifteen or more years without maintenance. It does have some limitations and drawbacks, but for our purpose of coating and preserving hand-split red oak shingles, it is truly a remarkable product. For more on linseed oil paint see “Linseed Oil Paints and Mastics Applications and Limitations” by Peter Kaczmar on the buildingconservation.com website, which is maintained by Cathedral Communications Limited in Tisbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom.

The other ingredient in our paint is copper naphthenate. Sometimes nicknamed CuNap, it is a wood preservative that makes it less palatable to wood-destroying organisms. Naphthenate is one of the carboxylic acids naturally occurring in crude oil, and CuNap is the copper salt of naphthenic acid. It is what the greenish tint in pressure-treated wood comes from. As we have said previously, it is a modern compromise to help ensure the longevity of our very expensive split-wood shingle roof.

The formula we use to mix these two ingredients was given to us by our consultant, Mr. James Huston, who is retired from the Pennsylvania Historic and Museums Commission. Mr. Huston had years of experience in his career installing and caring for side-lap shingle roofs like the one over the Stone House. The mix we are using is one part copper naphthenate to around three parts of linseed oil paint. This ensures that the red oxide color is not diluted or made to appear less like the red oxide paints used historically to coat wood-shingle roofs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We are applying two coats to the roof over the log side and one fresh coat to the roof over the stone side. The stone side roof had received two coats shortly after it was installed in 2021. With the shingles over both sides of the house painted, our next step will be to install the gutters. After that we will begin the final phases of the exterior restoration of the house. We hope they will go more quickly than this roofing phase has gone. Thanks is extended to our supporters for their patience.