BUILDING A REPRODUCTION OF AN EARLY HOUSE

My main interest is in Federal and Georgian houses, both formal and country.  Many of the things I talk about apply to all old houses.  Later Victorian, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate houses, etc., have many similar issues, but I intend to speak about my first love here...all the rest may be treated as I have the opportunity to study the specifics. Early houses are familiar to me because I have had the opportunity to study and work on them.  Of course I grew up in a big Victorian, so I am not totally unfamiliar.

First you must understand that we are living in the 21st century, and building codes enforcement people do not have a sense of humor, or any sympathy for your dumb ass desires.

People in the 18th century were smaller.  That does not mean that the men were 5 foot 2, but the average was much smaller than today's average.  Also, they did not work with 2x4s and 1/2" plaster board.  Materials were heavier and thicker, so if you were doing 8 foot posts in your walls, your layers of materials that led to the finished ceiling mounted up, lowering the ceiling a bit.  Chairs were lower, so chair rails were lower....well you get the point.

Your codes people are not going  to let you copy a house from the 18th or 19th century exactly, in any location where codes mean anything to them.

There are locations in the world though, where it is unlikely that the city will give a damn.  I know of rural places where the codes people are only interested in whether you are wiring up to state code, and that you have a good and approved way to handle waste water.

They recognize that you can use a composting toilet to dispose of toilet waste, and that there are alternative methods of getting your water and getting rid of your water and that is just about the end of their interference.

If you can find one of these places then you can build one of these simple houses in the old way without too many compromises. 

If you cannot, then you will have to modify your plans to suit all modern codes. Your windows will not be made in the same way.  Your foundation will be different.  You will have to have higher ceilings, windows that will be a certain size and shape.  Materials will have to be of certain dimensions and you must use minimum R values in the insulation of the walls, roof and cellar.  Then they will be looking at your heating source.... and so it will go.

There are many rules that make good sense, but many are subject to alternative solutions...and that is what I like about rural and reasonable towns.

I love using candles and oil lamps etc. for my lighting.  I like composting toilets... If you want a traditional look, put your composting toilet in an outhouse with a solid floor.  I only use electricity to charge my phone and computer, and that is the way I want it to stay.  My carbon footprint is pretty small.  Over here, it is very common to shop for every meal and so refrigeration is a non-issue. and I only drive to a bigger town once a month or so.  Even my gasoline(benzina) consumption is minimal.

You may wish to make concessions for your comfort, like a gas stove or a modern heat source, but such creature comforts can easily be put into a back room or "ell" if you want your home to retain its pure design.

You really should insulate well, and that can be done without too many compromises.  If you do not, your feet will never be warm again in winter and you will sweat out every summer.  Fortunately there are plenty of modern insulation methods that should do the job efficiently.

In my little stone house in the mountains I heat to temperature in the morning.  It goes most of the day without heat.(unless I am sitting there for some reason)  Then I heat it well when I come home to read or sit with friends.  At bed time...which is fairly early now... I heat it up and turn off the heat till morning except in the bitterest cold.  Good insulation has served me well, even with poorly fitting windows.

That reminds me to mention something I have probably said before.  Before Jimmy Carter and the first great fuel shortage, it was mandatory to have a complete change of air in the house every 8 hours.  When prices went up, houses tightened up and mold started growing inside houses all over the country!

I like my gas heat...It needs air to burn properly and my loose, ancient windows serve me well, keeping be breathing easily.

The gas flame and the fireplaces all lend a beautiful glow to the rooms...flickering their light on the 500 year old chestnut beams and stone interior walls...the exterior walls have a thin insulation.

I used an old method.  Cellulose ground up and mixed with an adhesive was sprayed on the stone... smoothed slightly and spray painted. It will probably be a nightmare to remove, but who cares what happens to my successors!  Oops...I sound like a senator from a coal state or a CEO, don't I.

So, where do I begin....

Very early houses, my favorite being a Cape Cod, were as small as they could be to enclose a rectangular space.  A cube shape is one of the best...and a sphere is perfect, but neither will give you much period charm.

Capes were very efficient.  Most are not too terribly far off a square and the lowish roof contained floor space with the roof covering the square with few cubic feet to heat...Low eaves you know.
I like to build a roof with a 12/12 pitch, but there can be a lot of wasted heat in a high peak.  Tiny houses are no problem as they do not end up with that much headroom.

I love the ticket booth at Blithewold in Rhode Island, but I guess it would be impractical.

 

I guess the Cape is the best choice for maximum space and efficiency...so I will discuss that first.

 

Most 18th century houses...OOPS...all 18th century houses were POST AND BEAM...

The best frames were of oak.  But many regions have a serious shortage of oak, so, perhaps hemlock would do.  Many early homes were of pine, but if you must use a softwood, it might be better to use something that does not mind a little damp without deteriorating.  Cedar might be good, but I doubt if long floor or roof beams will stay very straight for long with gravity dragging them down.  More complex joist patterns might help this.

 

 

Local people might tell you what is traditional in your area, and search for tables on the Internet that tell you how long a span you can get from a certain size beam in various species..  Nevertheless, Oak is the frame of choice.  There will be those who will criticize various woods, but if you check what the spans can be, use what you can get, possibly cutting them for yourself.  (Members that will be inside the house with no possible contact with the weather, might be anything you want as long as they won't sag)

 

 

 

This frame has raised corner posts that give more headroom on the second floor...a later choice than my favorites. and a continuous top plate so probably stick built or front and back bents. probably a barn.

 

My early house in Maine had floor joists made of un-peeled(8-10 inch) pine logs 22 feet long, still in place after 235 years...they needed a little support in the middle, but they still held up.

If post and beam construction is not in the cards, just use modern lumber, and make false corner beam boxes, and use them to hide wiring, plumbing, air conditioning and heat ducts.

 

Post and beam construction might be built stick by stick to make the frame, but most frames were made in "BENTS".

 

Basically, the entire gable end of the building in a cape would be constructed in a single piece(minus the sill).  Then the interior walls would be constructed in a similar way, but with a configuration made to allow doors and rooms to pass through them.  Usually there would be four bents.  The gable, made with even the wall studs attached or notched into them, a bottomless pentagon with a point at the top.  Then one pentagon on the near side of the central fireplace/chimney stack.  Another similar one on the far side of the chimney(the stair hall, fireplaces etc., would be sandwiched between these two) and the far gable end pentagon beyond that.

 

Sill plates went all around the foundation(this could be field stone, or just a big stone under each post.) We might even substitute a rectangle of doubled, pressure treated 2x material, under the sill plate/beams. The sill plates would be the entire perimeter obviously(pegged together at the joints by tenons from the vertical posts of the bents), with two main beams crossing from front to back of the building under the two central bents.

 

Horizontal top plate beams would notch into each bent at the eaves and ridge(sometimes no ridge, but I think you would regret that) and fit between the bents as they are successively raised to vertical.

The vertical posts had tenons that fit into mortises in the sills.

 

A good book on post and beam construction will help a lot, but you would be surprised how different modern frames can be from old ones.

 

I have told you about it before, but I suggest you look for a book called: "The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 1625-1725".  by Abbot Lowell Cummings which I describe in more detail elsewhere in this blog.

 

The very best thing about a post and beam cape is that you can build most of it completely alone till you get to the roof joists as none of the members are terribly long.  With a "come along" or winch or car and a pulley, you might even get those up alone.  The bents are terribly heavy, but if you do not have a winch, you can build the bents piece by piece standing up instead of lifting the whole thing up after assembly.  Again...you need some kind of winch. (piece by piece you end up lifting the top plates and cross beams and those are heavy, but you have the rest of the frame to help you to lift.)

 

If you have access to very long logs, build an A of two logs,(or a three legged tepee) chained or tied together(consult your boy scout manual from the fifties) and use that A to lift heavy loads into place with a winch. This is great if you do not have an over head point of attachment to lift heavy loads like a very large tree.

 

Your only tricky part in building piece by piece is fitting in the corner braces...more on this later.

 

 

It is tough finding very long trees suitable for sills and top plates, so the size of this house is limited.  The alternative is to join beams end to end with scarf joints to allow more length.  Building piece by piece allows for more length as well.  A house 40 by 36 was a pretty big example.  Also any larger made for a short squat looking house as the height of ceilings did not increase proportionately.  You do not want it to look like a toadstool just emerging from the ground.

 

Ceiling heights did  not often exceed 7 feet, and big Summer Beams(big beams that ran from fireplace bent to gable bent parallel to the front.  These were not always used.) might only be 6 feet 5 to 7 inches. early houses felt higher if no ceiling was applied to the joists.  The  bare skeleton gave more visual height though the dark wood overhead did not help.

 

Old houses rarely had a lot of exposed wood on the inside.  They were very practical people and knew that white plaster would reflect light and make for lighter rooms.  Later, exposed wood would be painted, sometimes in light colors as time went on.  Only wood of extremely high quality would remain exposed almost always at least painted.  As time went on, papers and colored walls were possible and of course lighting improved to help the dark rooms. 

Some paint colors were very elegant...Grays, peaches, forest and pine greens...but others could be real eye openers especially startling cerulean blues!

 

Many of the colors we think of as Colonial have been copied from colors that have been uncovered after being on walls for a couple of centuries...dirty, faded, greasy.  Mount Vernon corrected some of their colors and threw people into a tizzy when they saw them...

 

To be continued.....