Lynchburg Day Trip, Part Two ... Porch Research

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you probably already know that one of my long-term projects is researching and recreating millwork elements for our front porch.  Our house was built as a gingerbread Gothic Revival ... during a renovation in 1967, all of the trim was stripped and replaced with colonial-style flat trim.  The front porch lost its Gothic Victorian gingerbread long before that.

I believe that this is the oldest photo that we have of our house, taken in the 1930s.  Notice the ladder leaning against the side of the house.  I have another photo that shows painters working on the front door surround.  My theory is that the front porch railing and tapered box columns were new at this point.

Our porch currently looks like this.  We rebuilt it in 2005, replacing rotting framing, posts, floor, and trim.  It has been in this state for so long because we found no clues about what it may have looked like originally.  Whatever we do is going to be our interpretation and recreation of an 1800s porch ... a fact that has made me very nervous.

Cedar 4x4 support posts, and a railing made from 2x4s and 36" grade stakes.

Last winter, one day while I was pondering my porch problem, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.  I don't remember exactly what terms I used in my search, but whatever it was helped me find buried treasure ... this photo of the John Marshall Warwick house in Lynchburg!

Source

The Pinterest pin linked to an album of photos on Flickr, where I found this photo of the house's facade.  (There are nine photos in the album.  Click HERE if you want to see them for yourself.)

Source

Our second stop during our Lynchburg day trip last weekend was to see this house in person.  It definitely did not disappoint.

This porch has everything that I have considered using on the redesign of our porch ... double front columns, sawn balusters for the porch railing, fretwork corner brackets ... even a curved iron handrail on the stairs.  

What this porch brings to the design of our porch is the use of those little double corbels on the fascia board over each column.  

I'm more energized than ever about the prospect of finally putting pretty stuff back onto our front porch.  Can't work on it now, though, because spring is the time for garden work.  Any time I use for porch work takes away from other things that I need to be doing at this time of year.  That's okay.  Now that I have finally seen a porch that matches the feeling that I want our porch to have, I will file this away until the time is right to act on it.  This porch design keeps getting better as I wait to work on it, as I discover new ideas and refine the ideas that I already plan to use.  I may not be physically working to rebuild the pretty parts of our porch yet, but this project is definitely running in the background of my imagination.

(Want to see earlier posts where I show how the design of our porch has evolved?  Click the HERE to see all posts labeled "Porch".)

Pondering Porch Patterns

It has been cold and windy all week, the ground is covered with snow, and I have been limited to working on things indoors.  Couldn't even do stuff in the basement workshop, because it's not heated and the temperature in there dropped to 48 degrees.  I'm not one to sit, so I puttered with things in the warmer parts of the house and I schemed about long-delayed projects that I can work on when spring finally arrives.

One of those things is our front porch.  Long-time readers of this blog are well acquainted with the fact that our front porch is structurally sound, having been mostly rebuilt in 2005.  The posts, railing, and other ornamentation on the porch at that time weren't the originals, and we found absolutely no clue as to what the details might have looked like in the beginning.  It's been stressful for me to try to design something that fits with the house in its current state, and that will be appropriate for what it may have looked like when it was new in 1848.

This photo of our house was taken in the 1950s, before it was stripped of its Gothic gingerbread decoration.  The porch posts you see are not the originals.

This may be the earliest photo I have of our house.  I think it was taken in the 1930s.

1933

1940s or 50s

Our house was extensively remodeled and added onto in 1967.  The dormer and all of the gingerbread trim was removed and replaced with plain trim ... to 'simplify' the house, according to an article in the local paper that was published at the time.  (that article is HERE)  Notice that the porch now has single posts at each front corner, instead of the earlier double posts.

1960s

1970s

1980s

Our porch looks mostly like this right now.

Imagine that the front door and ceiling are painted blue, which they weren't in this photo from 2011.  The utilitarian cedar posts and 'temporary' railing are still exactly as you see.

The first bit of inspiration for its redesign came from the porch on this house in Keyser, West Virginia.  A friend kindly traced the gingerbread corner brackets for me.  The cut outs in the brackets are a lot like an element in the design of the original gable trim on our house.

Inspiration porch in West Virginia.

Cardboard cut outs of pattern for corner brackets.

The brackets are perfect!  It has been a struggle for me to come up with a design for the porch railing.  I have my heart set on Victorian sawn brackets.  I fiddled with a couple of designs at one time, but nothing felt right to me.

photoshop facsimile of our porch with the gingerbread brackets and sawn balusters that I posted in 2011.  The brackets are awesome, but I couldn't get comfortable with that baluster design.

Last week, in a fit of cabin fever from being snowed in, I sorted through my photos and I came across this:

2002 photo of Idlewild porch railing.

It was a photo that I took of the front porch railing at Idlewild, an abandoned Gothic Revival mansion surrounded by a modern subdivision in the city of Fredericksburg.

File photo from Free Lance Star.

photo of Idlewild porch that I took in 2002.

2002

While I was at Idlewild taking photos that first time in 2002, I brought along posterboard and markers, and I traced the porch balusters ... thinking that I might be able to use the design for something at some point.  It's a good thing that I did because, in the succeeding thirteen years, Idlewild has been neglected and abused, set on fire twice by arsonists, vandalized, and shaken almost to the point of ruin by the earthquake in 2011.  What was once a grand, restorable home is now all but lost.

photo taken by a firefighter during the blaze in 2002

2008 photo

2008 photo

December 2014

As you can see from the photo below, it's a good thing that I traced the porch balusters when I did, because they are all gone now.  Whether they were removed for preservation or stolen, I don't know.

December 2014 photo

The Idlewild balusters are only 25 inches high, far too low for a legal, safe railing on our porch.  I decided to use my rough 2002 tracing and see if I liked the design if I stretched them to 30 inches.

Cleaned up posterboard pattern of the original Idlewild baluster, based on my 2002 tracing.

To stretch the pattern, I cut it into one-inch strips, gluing each strip 1/4th of an inch apart onto another piece of posterboard.  

I cut out the new pattern, clamped it into place on the front porch, took a photo, and played with Photoshop again.  The facsimile railing on the left represents three whole balusters in the space between the posts.  The one on the right is arranged like the balusters were at Idlewild, with half balusters attached to the posts and whole ones between.

Un-photoshopped photo of the baluster pattern, cut out of posterboard, taped to a yardstick and weighted with clothespins.

Through the magic of Photoshop, I can see what the railing would look like with these balusters in two different arrangements.

I like the one on the right best.  It looks like my long search for a final design for our porch may finally be over.  I love the way the balusters look in the Idlewild configuration.  It reminds me of the lacy appearance of the original trim on our house.

As far as I'm concerned, I consider the hardest part of this project to be complete.  Design is finished, materials are sourced but not yet ordered.  In this world of composite and vinyl, it took a while for me to find reasonably priced true one-inch thick boards that I can order when I'm ready to sit down at the band saw to start cutting the brackets and balusters.  (not gonna happen any time soon, and I'm okay with that.)

Fiddling with Photoshop ... the Front of Our House

There were no cars parked in front of our house yesterday morning when I went out to check for hurricane damage.  (One of The Husband's things on his storm preparation list was to move our cars away from potential falling limbs, because we have large trees in our front yard.)  With no cars in the way, and the sun shining, I took the opportunity to get a really good, straight ahead photo of the front of our house ... then I came in and went to work with Photoshop to visualize my plans to improve our curb appeal.

This is the photo I took, showing the unedited truth of what our house looks like when we pull in the driveway.  It looks good ... but a bit bare.

Here is the imaginary 'after' photo ... showing boxwood bushes, my design for gingerbread for the front porch, and the new color of the front door.  (Highlighted words are links to previous posts)

It's a lot better, isn't it? 

As soon as the ground dries out enough for me to dig the holes for the new bushes, I will go to the nursery and pick them up  (The bushes are already paid for.  I tagged them and left them at the nursery until we were ready to plant them.)

It's going to take a while to make the actual house look like my rendering.  This has been quite a process ... and it's wonderful to finally see the results ... even if it only exists in Photoshop right now.

Porch Progress

Last weekend, my friend Kim gave me a cardboard tracing of the brackets from the West Virginia porch that I fell in love with this spring.  This morning, I tidied up the tracing and cut two facsimile brackets out of posterboard and taped them in place to see how they look.

I think that we are DEFINITELY on the right track.  The design needs a little tweak here and there, but the scale of the brackets is perfect for our porch.

What do YOU think?

If you want to see how the porch design has progressed to this point, click HERE, and HERE, for previous posts.

Progress on the Design of Our Front Porch

Do you remember this inspiration photo?

I first introduced you to this lovely West Virginia early Victorian porch in THIS post from March.  I love the feeling of the ornamentation on this porch, and I am using it as inspiration for the design of the brackets and balusters for our front porch ... which currently looks like this:

The framing, the ceiling, and the floor are new ... and the 4 x 4 cedar posts will be wrapped with wood and painted.

The West Virginia house is in the hometown of a dear friend of ours, and our friend knows the lady who owns the house.  On his last trip there, he and his wife visited her, bringing with them Sharpie markers and foam core board, and they traced the balusters for me.  They would have traced the brackets, too ... but the brackets are larger than the foam core, so these will have to wait until a return trip later this month.

I traced the outline of the baluster onto paper, sharpening the contours which were obscured by 150+ years of paint and wear, and this is what I got:

It's good, but not quite good enough.  Our porch is 10 feet off the ground, so building code requires that our railing be 36 inches high.  This baluster is 24 inches tall.  We could build up the railing with wider bottom boards and taller framing underneath the handrail, but I was afraid that this would look chunky and contrived.

As I let the dogs out this morning, I spotted this on our deck leaning against the barbeque:

It is an antique balluster that The Husband and I bought at Luckett's Fair a few years ago.  When we bought it, I figured that I could use it as a pattern for something, or strip it and put hooks on it for hats.  As I looked at it this morning, my thoughts started to whirl ... this baluster is 30 inches high ... the shape is very similar to the one from West Virginia ... Hmmmmm.

I brought the baluster into the house, traced it, added some of the cut-out details from the West Virginia design, and I came up with this:

I absolutely love this design!  It's taller, which will make it easier for us to construct a railing that meets code requirements.  The curved cut-outs echo the lacy design of the West Virginia porch, and the longer length makes it seem a lot more graceful.  Here is a comparison to show what the two balusters look like side by side, taped to a yard stick and clamped 36 inches from the porch floor.

You have to use your imagination and picture a whole row of ballusters sitting on framing with a handrail on top. 

Folks, I think we have a winner!

More Inspiration for the Front Porch

I'm still busily collecting information and inspiration for the final design of the ornamentation for our front porch, and I thought today would be a good day to share some of what I'm thinking about.

This is to remind you of what our porch currently looks like.

In the photo above, all of the flooring and trim and the beadboard ceiling are new.  All that's left to do is to decide on a design for the posts and railing and brackets and the rest of the decoration.  Unfortunately, no evidence exists to give me any clue about what our porch looked like originally, so we are making this up as we go along.

In my LAST POST about this, one lovely reader reminded me about the Historic American Building Survey collection online at the Library of Congress web site.  I dug through hundreds of photographs looking for details that I could use as inspiration, and I found this wonderful porch on a house in California.

Photo of the Andrew Landrum House from HABS site.

I love how the brackets and posts are ornately decorated, but the decorations are not the first thing that catches my eye.  It's the way each element is used in perfect proportion that I love about this porch. 

HABS photo

My favorite porch so far is one that I saw on a trip to West Virginia earlier this month.  If I could teleport the decorative elements from this porch to my house, I would do it in an instant.  It is totally, completely perfect!!  Perfect enough, in fact, that I would make a return trip if I had the time to trace the brackets and balusters and use them as is on our house ... this is saying a lot, because I rarely copy anything.

Isn't this gorgeous????

I love the chamfered posts, and the brackets are perfect.  The barge boards that were original to our house had a motif on them that is similar to the three-winged design on these brackets.  They seem more Gothic than Victorian, and that's exactly what I'm hunting for.

If I decide to copy some brackets or balusters (that aren't already available commercially) I ran across a web site yesterday for Victorian Woodshop, a woodworking shop in northern California that specializes in reasonably priced Victorian brackets and other ornaments ... and he does custom orders and historic reproductions!!  I imagine he will be getting an order from me, when I finally decide what I want. 

I'm Dreaming of Porches

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the renovation of the front entry of our house.  As it is now, the porch isn't anywhere close to the homey, welcoming place I dream it could become. 

Here is what it looks like, as of this morning.

Temporary cedar posts and a seriously ugly, but code-compliant and safe, railing made from 2x4s and 36" grade stakes.

We rebuilt most of the porch in 2005, because most of the structure of the old porch was deteriorating. The roof itself was solid, as was the floor framing, but everything in between (the beams, roof joists, posts and flooring) was replaced. The columns and post brackets that were there were not appropriate to our Gothic Revival house. We replaced the posts with plain cedar 4x4s, to hold up the porch temporarily until we could decide on a new post, bracket, and railing design. 'Temporary' has lasted for almost six years so far.

I took this photo with my ancient digital camera in 2002, on our first visit to the house with our realtor.  The handyman hired to spruce up the property did a good job of using wood filler to hide the rot on the front posts.

Water had infiltrated the ceiling because there was no flashing where the roof met the brick structure.  Those 'lovely' brackets were styrofoam.

This is my favorite photo that I have taken of our house.  It is the view I saw one day in the sideview mirror of my Jeep.   I took this photo right before we started to rebuild the porch.

Notice how the porch posts are a little bit bow-legged from rot.

This morning, to celebrate the Inspiration Party at Modern Country Style, let's see what kind of ideas I have to finally finish our porch.

This is the oldest photo we have of our house.  We figure that it was taken sometime around 1940.  Notice how our house still wears its Gothic barge boards on the gables and the dormer (the dormer and the trim were removed in 1967.)  These are not the original porch posts or railing.  The ladder on the right was being used by painters (I have another photo of painters working on the front door), and I am guessing that the porch was new at this point.

In order to design new ornamentation for our porch, I am trying to look to similar houses in the area for inspiration.  The only other Gothic Revival house in our area is Idlewild, which was built about 12 miles from here in the 1860s.  It sat abandoned and deteriorating on a large tract of land slated for development. 

Photo from the Free Lance-Star newspaper in the 1990s.

Most of its ornamentation was still intact when I took these photos in 2002.

(Pretend you don't see that No Trespassing sign.)

Look at the level of detail in this porch!

I love the design of the balusters.

While The Husband and I were there photographing, we found a heap of ornaments that had been gathered into a pile.

I can't believe this stuff hadn't been stolen!

I came on this mission fully prepared with a Sharpie marker and some poster board.  We picked through this pile to find balusters and brackets in good condition, and we traced templates.

It's a good thing that we made this visit to Idlewild when we did, because this is what it looked like early one morning a few months later.

Photo taken by a firefighter and published in the Free Lance-Star.

I got a phone call from a friend of mine, telling me that Idlewild was on fire.  I immediately felt nauseous.  It was arson, and no one has yet been charged with the crime.

Photo published in the Free Lance-Star.

This beautiful building was now a charred shell.  Engineers determined that the walls were sound, and that the building was restorable.  Idlewild is owned by the City of Fredericksburg, who paid to remove the debris from the inside, sifting it to make sure that nothing important was lost, and to reinforce the remaining structure to keep it from further deterioration now that the roof and most of the floors are gone.

Photo from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Some of the beautiful porch ormaments are still in place, and can be used by a future owner to replicate what is lost.

Through the tireless efforts of volunteer researchers, and the cooperation of the planning department of the City of Fredericksburg, Idlewild was recently listed on the Virginia Landmarks Registry and the National Register of Historic Places.  The city's goal is to sell the property to someone who will restore it.  Our current economic climate makes this very difficult.

My dream for Idlewild is that it will one day rise from the ashes,  and once again be the beautiful, graceful manor house that it was in the past.

For our porch, I plan to use my tracings and photographs of Idlewild as inspiration to create a graceful Gothic porch to crown the facade of our old house.