We had hoped to be reporting in this update on the completion of the installation of the roof over the log side of the Stone House. For the majority of time we have been working on this project our progress was held back by the slow pace of the shingle production. It takes a long time to make 4,900 shingles by hand when you have a shortage of hands that are willing and capable of that kind of work. As we reported in our last post, we now have all the shingles we need to install the roof over the log side of the building. This time we are held up again by a shortage of what might be called “low-tech” skilled labor. This term low-tech may sound sarcastic and disdainful but in fact it is quite the opposite. The kind of laborers needed for low-tech preservation trade work are an exceptionally rare group of people who are required to acquire and hone very specialized hand skills. Hand-guided and hand-powered tools are considered low tech in our modern world of power tools and machinery that is designed to get jobs done quickly and efficiently. Prefabricated, mass-produced, and interchangeable building materials are now the standard in the building trades. David William Pye (18 November 1914 – 1 January 1993), was Professor of Furniture Design at The Royal College of Art in London, UK from 1964 to 1974. He identified and contrasted the two basic types of workmanship that are required for all trades: the workmanship of risk verses the workmanship of certainty. Pye defined the workmanship of risk as “workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity, and care which the maker exercises as he works.” The progress of technology throughout history has been a sustained effort to move away from the workmanship of risk toward the workmanship of certainty. To say it plainly, historic preservation trade work requires people to have knowledge and skills that are considered by the for-profit construction business world to be largely obsolete technologies. The installation of side-lap handmade split shingles might be considered the epitome of the workmanship of risk.

The photos that accompany this article were taken in late September 2021 when our roof installation contractor, The County Homestead, was working on the roof over the stone side of the building. Our Manager of Collections & Programs, Rick Kriebel, worked for this company in 2015. He recounted the following: “The first job I had out of grad school was working for The Country Homestead, our current contractors to install the roof. They had a longstanding agreement with the State of Pennsylvania to hire interns every summer and train them in historic construction methods; I was one of two interns that year. I quickly learned that I am even worse at working with my hands than I thought. By the end of the summer half of my duties were some variant of gofering. The other intern had a job lined up somewhere else, and left before the internship was over. Most of the crew were guys with a construction background who learned historic methods on the job. Six years later, when The Country Homestead came to install the first half of the roof I expected to see some old colleagues, but the only ones still around were the owners. Everyone else had left for some reason or another.”

This anecdote illustrates the challenge of the building preservation trades. Mr. Frank Stroik, the proprietor of The Country Homestead, had all his work crew leave at the end of the summer of 2022 to pursue other opportunities. At the time of this post, he is looking to hire and train new workers. If you or someone you know is interested in this kind of low-tech work, please give us a call and we can get you or your friend in touch with Mr. Stroik. In the meantime Mr. Stroik is hoping to have his work crew back up to full strength by the spring on 2023 and plans to come and finish the job of shingling the Stone House roof at that time.

In the Holiday 2021 issue of our newsletter, we happily announced that we could finally help people envision what the Stone House looked like in 1830. We shared a digitally created mock-up of a painting that is being donated by our Stephens City Main Street neighbor, Mr. Joe Gainer. (See image below.) As a talented graphic artist, Mr. Gainer graduated from the Maryland College of Art & Design and worked for thirty years as a graphic illustrator for the Department of Defense. He was inspired by the works of Norman Rockwell and the old masters. Mr. Gainer has experimented with a number of painting, drawing, and sculpting mediums throughout his career and just recently started working in oils.

In this post we will explore the reasons why we believe the Stone House looked the way Mr. Gainer has depicted it in this image. While there are no period photos or paintings of the Stone House from that time, we do have evidence remaining in the structure itself, as well as surviving architectural artifacts from other buildings in town that date to that time period. As we have explained before in previous articles, the surviving weatherboards that we discovered under the roof of the shed addition behind the log side of the structure had remnants of whitewash buildup on their outer surfaces. We also have previously related how we discovered that re-laid stones in the reconstructed rear wall of the stone side of the house also had surfaces that were coated in whitewash. Those stones with whitewashed faces had been preserved behind a dado panel of the southernmost room of the house. We therefore can conclude that all the exterior wall surfaces on both sides of the house were originally whitewashed.

The color palette employed on the exterior window shutters and doors is more speculative but nonetheless based on historical precedents. In addition to historical documents that mention the common use of dark green paint on shutters, and its continued use on traditional shutters today, we also have a surviving period example of a locally made shutter in our museum’s collection. (See photo below.) It, too, has its original green paint. It is this shutter that we will be using as our pattern for all the reproduction shutters that we will be making and installing on the Stone House. Mr. Gainer also used this shutter from our museum’s collection as his model for the picture.

Mr. Gainer similarly used another piece from our collection as his model for the front doors in his picture. Our restoration plan for the house calls for the front exterior doors to be reproduced based on this circa 1800 piece that came from the house located at 5342 Main Street in Stephens City. (See photo below.) The original two-tone, greenish-gray paint job survives on this remarkable six-panel door.
Archeological and structural evidence indicates that there were most likely no covered porches on the front of the house in the 1830 period. Instead, we know there was a stone block stoop in front of the stone side and probably something similar on the log side. We look forward to exhibiting Mr. Gainer’s painting in our museum once it is finished. Viewers can then learn more about it and read about the other items and people it depicts.

With the painting of the newly installed shingles over the stone side of the Stone House, we have completed a milestone phase of the Stone House Restoration Project. As we explained in our last issue, the shingles have been painted with a red linseed oil paint mixed with copper naphthenate. In this article we will address the historical evidence for red paint on early-American wood shingle roofs and explain more about how copper naphthenate is a modern compromise to extend the life of the shingles themselves.

Historically, the red paint used on wood shingles was made of red iron oxide and linseed oil. Iron(III), also known as ferric oxide, is an inorganic compound with the formula Fe2O3. Basically, the historical paint was iron rust mixed with the oil from flax seeds. The paint we are using for our project is Ottosson Linseed Oil Paint, Iron Oxide Minimum color #LFRM. It is mixed with one part copper naphthenate to around three parts of the linseed oil paint. Copper naphthenate is a wood preservative that is the copper salt of naphthenic acid. It makes wood and other cellulosic materials inedible to insects and fungi. Historically, copper naphthenate was not available in the period to which we are restoring the house. Nevertheless, people of that time may have noticed that wood shingles abutting copper flashing did not deteriorate as fast as the other shingles on the same roof. The copper naphthenate will help to ensure a longer lifespan for this expensive reproduction roof.

Our consultant for this roof project is Mr. James Houston. He is retired from the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission, where he was involved with roofing projects like our roof on the Stone House at historic sites such as the Daniel Boone Homestead and the Ephrata Cloister. Mr. Houston salvaged period examples of side-lap shingles from a structure in Frederick, Maryland that had surviving red oxide paint on them. (See photo below.) In 2008 Mr. Houston, along with his former colleague Mr. John N. Fugelso, published an article in the APT Bulletin: Journal of Preservation Technology titled “Fabricating and Installing Side-Lap Roof Shingles in Eastern Pennsylvania.” In that article they address the historical use of various methods that were employed to prolong the lives of different wood shingle roofs. They note that even George Washington had the wood shingle roof at Mount Vernon painted red. In coastal regions fish oil mixed with brick dust was applied to shingles to achieve a similar effect.

For those readers who live in our neighborhood, please make a point of coming to see the newly completed roof over the stone side of the Stone House. We hope to have the rest of the shingles delivered soon so that the roof over the log side can be finished by this time next year.

One of the greatest challenges we face in the business of historic preservation is controlling unwanted moisture in and around our structures. Water will find a way down. When it gets down and is trapped in between things made of wood, it can cause serious deterioration and rot. We have found evidence in the Stone House that there has been a history of serious water leaks where the roof over the stone side meets the south gable wall of the log addition. Sheet metal flashing has been the method used to prevent and repair leaks in this part of the house for over a hundred years. This has certainly been the case ever since the metal roof was installed over the stone side of the house. Before the advent of rolled metal roofs, wood shingles were tucked under weatherboards in places like this, where a roof met an exterior wall. The weatherboards were cut in relief to the profile of the shingles. This would leave a sawtooth pattern on the bottom edge of the weatherboards. We have an example of this kind of woodwork in the attic of the Steele & Bro. Store. (See image below.)

In this instance the weatherboards of a former exterior wall were left in place and were encapsulated under a new metal roofline that was installed above. Even though the old wood shingle roof and its supporting structure was demolished in the 1880s, its profile remains in the surviving weatherboards.

We are using this method of tucking our wood shingles under the bottom edge of relief-cut weatherboards on the south gable of the log addition. To minimize potential damage to the wood shingles over the stone side of the structure, we began by having our roofing contractor Frank Stroik, and his crew at Country Homestead, install a few courses of the side-lap wood shingles in that place where they abut the south gable wall of the log addition, leaving the remainder of the roof structure over the stone side covered with temporary tarps. This made it possible for Vintage Inc.’s crew to install the weatherboards above without requiring them to walk on any new wood shingles. After the abutting shingles were installed, they were painted with a red linseed oil paint mixed with copper naphthenate. There is historical evidence for red paint on wood shingle roofs, but the copper naphthenate is a modern compromise to extend the life of the shingles themselves. When the rest of the shingles are installed, they will also be painted with the same mixture.

The installation of the weatherboards over the shingles required careful measuring and the leveling of each board in relation to its vertical alignment. Every effort was made to ensure that the gap between the top of the shingles and the bottom of the weatherboards is about the width of a carpenter’s pencil. This allows both the shingles and the weatherboards to “breathe” and prevent water from getting trapped.

This method of weatherboard and shingle installation works because water does not run uphill. By sealing the end grain of the weatherboards and the shingles with paint, we are also significantly reducing the capillary action and absorption factor of the boards themselves. In our next installment we will unveil the finished roof over the stone side of the house. We have been looking forward to this for years.

We completed the work of fitting the gutter brackets to their respective places along the bottom edge of the roof sheathing boards. It is last thing we needed to do before installing the shingles on the stone side of the Stone House. This project was not as easy as we had thought it would be on the rear side of the building. This is mainly because the roof rafters and eaves on the back side of the building are very irregular. They have suffered the most over the nearly two hundred and sixty years of the structure’s lifetime. Additionally, when the ell addition was built on the rear of the stone side of the house in the early twentieth century, the workers removed the part of the soffit that was in the way. Everything that was missing had to be painstakingly restored while preserving the remaining building fabric. Consequently, the eaves and the sheathing boards above, to which the gutter brackets are attached on the rear side, are not completely straight or level. This is in contrast to the front of the stone side of the building. The work of attaching the gutter brackets to the front of the stone side was accomplished with the help of Dennis Clem, the proprietor of Cedar Creek Blacksmithing. Some of you may have seen the posts on our social media pages featuring photos of Mr. Clem while he was working.

Mr. Clem had to bow out from the work on the rear side due to scheduling constraints. As noted above, the work of fitting the brackets to the rear side has proven to be very time consuming. Our President Butch Fravel took over the project for the rear of the stone side. Mr. Fravel found that the irregularities of the rear side eaves and sheathing boards made the task very challenging. As the detail from the architectural drawing below illustrates, the angle of the bend below the shank that is attached to the sheathing board would theoretically remain constant while the amount of the drop below that bend would vary to insure the gradual slope of the gutter toward its downspout.

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Because of the irregularities in the placement of the sheathing boards, the angle of the bend, as well as the amount of drop below the bend, varied from one bracket to the next. The number of compound angles and the variables associated with them required approaching each bracket with new measurements. Some brackets had to be rebent and adjusted more than twice to get them in the right places. Mr. Fravel used a settling torch and traditional blacksmithing tools to accomplish the work. (See image below.)

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Once we were sure that all the gutter brackets were fitted properly to their respective places on the sheathing boards, we then took them to be powder coated on the 16^th of September. That work was done by Coatings USA LLC in Front Royal. This will ensure that the brackets will not rust and deteriorate as quickly as they would otherwise. After the brackets were powder coated, they were reinstalled in their respective places. Each bracket is uniquely marked with a lettering system that will be used to denote where they belong in their respective slots on the bottom sheathing boards. In our next instilment we will report on the installation of the shingles.

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On the 26th of April we received our first load of shingles for the Stone House roof. Many of our readers may recall the previous post on 5th of February 2019 titled “Long Biaxially Tapered Side-Lap Shingles.” As explained in that article, these shingles “are biaxially tapered, or wedge-shaped in profile, because they are split out of large red oak logs and then finished by shaving them smooth with a drawknife.” They are also free of sapwood and core heartwood. The only way to manufacture these shingles is by hand. They are not sawn into shape. They are split along the natural lines of the wood’s grain. This helps them not to warp or “cup” after they are installed and exposed to the elements. Because they are made by hand, they represent many hundreds of hours of hand-skilled labor. The skills and obsolete technologies used to manufacture these shingles are no longer commonly understood and practiced by those in the carpentry business, finding contractors who can make them can be a challenge. Fortunately, our consultants Doug Reed and James Houston were able to help us connect with a man named David Dauerty who has a great deal of experience making this type of shingle. Mr. Dauerty personally delivered the first load of our order for the Stone House on that day. (See photo below.)

Mr. Dauerty also delivered a punch bench that will be used in the installation process. This device ensures that the nail holes are correctly placed on the shingles. The pre-punched holes prevent the shingles themselves from splitting during their installation on the roof lath. (See photo below.)

This load of shingles will be enough to cover the stone side of the Stone House. Once we have the remaining part of the order from Mr. Dauerty, we will finish shingling the roof over the log addition of the house. The next steps we will be taking this summer will involve the necessary work of removing the old metal roof and installing the gutter brackets which will be mounted to the rafters and roof lath before the shingles go on above. This is an exciting time in the history of the Stone House, and we will share our progress on our social media pages, in our next newsletter, and on our website. Stay tuned!

Before the decision was made, we struggled with the evidence. The question seemed relatively simple: “Should we install gutters on the Stone House?” The earliest photograph we have of the log side of the house seems to show that there were no gutters installed on that side of the structure at that time. Nevertheless, that does not prove there were no gutters installed at an earlier time, nor does it preclude the possibility of there being gutters on other parts of the house at that time, or at an earlier time in the history of the structure.

Historical written sources and physical evidence of gutters on circa 1830 houses in western Virginia are hard to find. It is likely that those who had gutters on their homes in Newtown/Stephensburg during that period had installed wood gutter systems that employed boards fixed in a V-shape. Some wealthier homeowners may have had these V-shaped wood gutters lined inside with tinplate iron sheet metal. At first, only the wealthiest members of society could afford gutters made entirely of tinplate iron sheets. Terne sheet metal is a form of tinplate that is thin iron or steel coated with an alloy of lead and tin. The earliest half-round metal gutters were made of terne sheet. They were also rolled on both edges. (See the image below.) Our historic structure consultant Doug Reed has a collection of antique gutters and downspout segments that he has saved over the course of his career working on old buildings. We would like to thank him for sharing this collection with us and allowing us to take the photograph featured here.

The way gutters were held in place on buildings in the 1830 period included wrought iron brackets. Our President Linden Fravel had seen examples of period wrought iron gutter brackets during a visit to Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In turn, we contacted their Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts to request photographs of examples from their collection. Among the examples they had was a gutter bracket designed to be mounted under the shingles and attached to the side of a roof rafter. (See images below.)

In the end we decided that in the interest of preserving original building fabric and protecting the restored parts of the structure, it would be best to install period-appropriate gutters on the Stone House. Those reproduction gutters have arrived. (See image below.) We are having gutter brackets (similar to the one pictured here) made by Williamsburg blacksmith Mark Sperry.

As we await the delivery of our 4,900 handmade shingles, there is good news and progress to report. In the course of the work to prepare for the installation of those shingles we are restoring features that will touch on or interface with that new roof. This includes the tops of the north and south gable ends with their rake boards, beaded weatherboards, and windows. The weatherboards we installed on these gable ends are copies of the original weatherboards we discovered under the roof of the circa 1869 shed addition behind the log side of the house. The windows are based on the evidence recovered by Doug Reed during his forensic investigation of those areas of the house. They are also based on other surviving historical examples of windows from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that have survived locally in this town and region. Nails and nail holes in original studs were the only clues we had to work with for the south gable window. With the north gable window we were fortunate to combine nail hole evidence with “ghost” lines on the original studs. These lines showed weathering and oxidation shadows where the original window frame and its trim used to be.

We are also restoring the soffits, fascia, and crowns at this time because of their relationship with the roof. One of the biggest challenges with the soffits and crowns is the way the building’s walls have settled and warped over the last two-hundred-plus years. While they were originally built plumb and square, they are now quite out of line in some places. This is particularly the case with the east wall of the stone side of the house. The evidence we have discovered implies that there was significant work done to this east wall of the stone side of the building during the just after first quarter of the nineteenth century. This is also the wall that we have had to construct buttresses alongside to bolster it until we can build a lean-to porch against it as a permanent solution. The bulges and lack of straightness across the top of this east wall are most visible where the crown and soffit meet the top of the stone. (See photo below.)

We also have restored our chimneys, and there is an interesting story about the main chimney top in the center of the house. Historically chimney tops needed maintenance every 30 to 50 years. Hot, dry smoke meeting cold, wet air produces acidic condensation that dissolves mortar. Combined with the freeze-thaw cycle, this moisture causes masonry to deteriorate. For this reason we were fairly certain that the brick top of the main chimney had been reworked since 1830. During our initial investigations we could not tell if that main chimney top had originally been completed in brick or stone when the roof over the log addition was raised in 1805. When our mason Edward Ashby and his men were removing the old brick chimney top, they discovered that the bricks transitioned to stone unevenly below the roofline up to the ridge. (See photo to the below.)

If it had been originally executed in brick, the masons would have simply started from a level stone surface. This uneven transition was a clear indication that the original top of the 1805 chimney was built in stone and that sometime later (probably during Henry Dinges’ 1869 renovations to the log side of the house) that stone top was replaced in brick. Please check out our posts on our social media pages for more photos of the work that has been completed.