Sourcing Craft Skills For Heritage Restoration

Long after initial repair and repainting, the bungalow is weathering well

“Hiring someone else to do things has its own set of problems. For one thing, most contractors are set in their ways, and a lot of them don’t understand old houses. And even people in the trades have bought into the ‘no-maintenance’ crap to some extent, and like many people they are motivated by money, so the guy you hire to clean the gutters will try to talk you into replacing them instead (more money for him) or whoever you call to fix the windows will try to sell you replacement windows (also more money for them.) And people just seem to have gotten out of the habit of fixing things. …In either case, it’s important to educate yourself, whether you plan to do any work yourself or not. Armed with information about the way things used to be done, or ought to be done, in the house will be useful when you are told “nobody does that any more” or “nobody makes those now- you need to get X.” Jane Powell, celebrated bungalow author

Summer 1988: house and grounds as they appeared in the year of purchase

 

 

Many factors work against heritage homes keeping their original look and feeling, foremost a lack of awareness on the part of homeowners and poor craft skills among contractors. Few of us today are even handy, let alone knowledgeable about heritage carpentry or the mysteries of knob and tube wiring. The easiest, quickest choice is to agree to have it torn out and replaced by contemporary models. After all, our contractors work in the idiom of the day, prizing speed of execution and invariably using the cheapest materials. But you simply can’t keep faith with the details of an older house if your starting point is current materials and skills. On bungalows, accurate proportioning and appropriate materials largely constitute the details.

When I bought the Hubert Savage bungalow back in 1988, I had no inkling there were special skills needed to repair something in the spirit of original work. All I knew was that the house itself had character, inside and out, and that I was determined to keep it intact. This was a brave choice, as it always is, somewhat foolhardy and definitely (as I would soon learn) not for the faint of heart! My choice of a 75-year-old wooden house positioned me to learn the hard way about the modern building culture’s disregard for the special needs of older houses. Fortunately for mine, I didn’t get too far down that path before correcting course – but it could so easily have been otherwise!

 

1999: 11 years on, repair is finally under way

 

 

I’d been seeking a house with pedigree, what’s often referred to as ‘a character home’ in local parlance: meaning exposed wood, a fireplace in a generous living room, some built-ins and maybe a window seat. Also, in my awareness, a house whose appearance beguiled the eye rather than flipping it the bird, as so many stucco boxes now do. I didn’t know this often meant 'Arts-and-Crafts,' yet. But when I first saw the Savage bungalow at an open house in the week it first came on the market, I knew it was for me before I had even made it through the front door. I was seduced by its distinctive cross-gabled façade and its welcoming verandah with heavy timbers and high stone piers. Perched high on a rocky, treed site, it just oozed curb appeal (even though there were still no curbs, this being original suburbia) and charm: a small, artistic house in a picturesque setting. The would-be gardener in me was also thoroughly taken with the possibilities of the site, which seemed inexhaustible.

 

Rotten trim boards and siding near ground being replaced after ninety years

Touring the inside with a gaggle of other potential buyers, I immediately noticed some of the same incongruous updating that had put me off in other character homes. Typically such ‘remuddlings’ (as Jane Powell calls them) vie baldly with the original program, inducing pessimism about ever succeeding in putting it right again. If you find yourself doubting the money and effort it would take to undo some garish twist of decor, the message is that you likely aren’t really sold on the underlying structure. Here I felt strangely indifferent to the mistakes, cavalier even about setting them right. 

 

Stripped down, ready for the new pieces: a scary point in restoration

Trim, skirting, water table and siding renewed, shingle roof finally going up

 

 

Of course, kitchen and bathroom had been redone on the cheap (Cubbon Home Centre quality) with some jarring faux effects: remember ‘cultured marble’ countertops, that unlovely amalgam of cement and glossy plastic finish? Motel shower tub (no shower in sight). Errors of judgment (wall-to-wall shag carpets in the rear of the house), crude alterations (wall ripped out of the back porch, scars unhealed) and tacky repairs (plywood panel and lion's head knocker in the Craftsman front door) rounded out a list of accumulated sins thoughtlessly visited on an innocent older house. And there was, of course, long-deferred maintenance inside and out, with some ominous unknowns like a missing crawlspace door. I winced at these challenges yet still wasn’t put off, because the house had such great bones and so much of its original detailing was intact. Despite manifold affronts to its character, I saw an aesthetic whole worthy of restoring to its original glory. Throwing caution to the winds, I put an offer on the place that evening.

 

 

Thirteen years later, renovation and paint are aging well - or so we thought

 

 

 

Lack of experience with older buildings – really, with buildings of any kind – meant I hadn’t a clue what I was actually getting into, almost guaranteeing that my initial efforts would go amiss. And they did! Optimistically, I hired a man advertising himself as a ‘retired craftsman’ to fix a few things at the outset of my tenure, such as the crumbling firebox in the living room. He turned out to be a total imposter, and I had to send him away and then quickly try to undo the impressive damage he managed to wreak in just a few hours on the job (like slathering grey woodstove cement all over loose firebox bricks and their decorative cheeks, for example).

Trouble in paradise: a drooping soffit signals hidden rot missed initially

Sinking feelings accompany a new forced journey into the great unknown

 

 

One thing I understood from the outset was that water had to be kept out of the building, so my second foray in renewal was getting the rotted gutters and missing downspouts at the rear of the house fixed before the next rainy season. I resolved to use more-qualified personnel this time out. Rejecting metal replacements – a latent purist from the start – I opted instead to source clear cedar guttering from Vintage Woodworks. Watching a European carpenter put them up in what appeared to be a professional manner, I began to realize just how much finesse it takes to install custom historic components. It would turn out though, a few years on, that even this journeyman carpenter didn't know the finer points of installing wooden gutters (like treating the insides with pitch in order to protect them from rot, and aligning cut angles perfectly in order to ensure proper drainage). These failings would lead slowly but surely to premature replacement of these gutters, a half century sooner than should have been necessary.

 

Master carpenter Vern Krahn, skilled at replicating wooden components

 

The journeyman carpenter who replaced my wooden gutters also repaired a crude wall opening that accommodated a cat door, affording easy access to local tomcats. This required sourcing some of the elegant bevelled siding that reinforces the Savage bungalow's distinctive horizontal lines. After he’d finished the job, it was apparent that the new pieces of wood were of marginally smaller dimension than the originals, a fact that tended to broadcast the repair rather than blending it seamlessly with the background. This misstep forced further learning on my part: about the necessity of replacing 'like' with 'like', and the fact that 'like' usually isn’t available off the shelf, and finally by extension, that it was necessary to locate the skill-set that enables 'like' to be custom-made to precise scale. This also gradually brought about the realization that all assumptions had to be clarified carefully in advance of any work happening.

 

 

Fitting replacement blocks on the barge boards: precise work in a difficult location

 

 

My awareness of carpentry to that point was sketchy at best: framing for putting up new buildings, trim carpentry for finishing (in short, notions drawn from my experience of the modern building culture). It turned out there’s a third form of carpentry that includes both elements plus all the craft-skills typically missing in between – namely, an ability to exactly fashion replacement components and so replicate original work, referred to as ‘joinery’. For upkeep and restoration of older wooden buildings, you simply must have a carpenter with architectural joinery skills, which is a very rare beast (and getting rarer). And this person ideally also has knowledge of historic building processes, so is a heritage carpenter to boot, which is even rarer still.

 

 

Now restored: seamless repair ready for painting to mask the intervention

 

 

So began my reflections on the special ways needed to work with older buildings. Turns out it takes as much planning and investigating as it does doing. Fortunately I’d recently become Saanich Council Liaison to the municipal heritage advisory committee, which began my schooling in the mysteries of renewing and recycling older structures. This led me in turn to formally designate my own bungalow (heritage-listed already) in order to protect it from unilateral changes by other owners down the line. Designation is in effect a special type of zoning that removes a homeowner's ability to willy nilly alter the exterior form of a heritage structure, without securing approval from the heritage advisory committee. This gives some assurance that what's being proposed is more likely to fit with what already exists. Taking this step fortified my personal resolve to gather the knowledge needed to repair and restore with true fidelity to the art expressed in the original.

 

 

 

Summer 2011: Vern working at repairing soffits and replacing gutters

 

Another thing I discovered as Liaison to the heritage committee was that the City of Victoria maintains a list of craftspeople it deems qualified to work on heritage restoration projects. This proved a really helpful resource, as it led me to seasoned master carpenter David Helland. David not only visited our house to directly assess its needs, but also brought a photo album of his previous heritage work. This in turn allowed me to actually review his work in the field, which reassured me about his abilities. When the time finally came to tackle the exterior of the bungalow, David had the ability to precisely manufacture any wooden component required for restoration, from the elegant drop siding to the projecting water table. This afforded me confidence that he could bring off the process off to a high standard, which he very capably did!

 

 

Six gable tips and the runs of guttering near them all needed intervention

Replacing 'like' with 'like': quality restoration work

 

 

Of course, there are skills other than joinery that go into the mix for certain specialized components, like putting up a new cedar shingle roof. The natural temptation is to think that anyone who shingles can put up a cedar roof, but that’s a mistake. Also, that one grade of sawn shingle is like any other, which is absolutely not the case (like everything, there are different grades and the one needed is Perfection shingles). Again I unearthed someone seasoned in the craft with the help of the Victoria list and solicited a bid – his wasn’t the lowest by far, but opting for the low bid usually leads straight to a corner-cutting contractor and a cheap and nasty job! 

 

 

U-shaped wood guttering ready for placement

Difficult worksite, one drawback of picturesque siting

 

 

 

Master roofer Bill Haley brought a lifetime of experience to the project and did an ace job of overseeing the return of the roof to its original look. Bill had the presence of mind to photograph certain fine details before stripping the accumulated layers of old roofing off (there were three layers, including the original wooden shingles) giving a precise record of things like the tiny lift blocks at the barge board tips. This proved invaluable, because when three layers of roofing masking an underlying structure are removed, such small details can easily disappear with them. Without these pictures, one might have rebuilt them without the riser blocks and lost the slightly oriental shift they impart to a Tudor look – a distinctive regional Arts-and-Crafts touch consistent with west coast bungalow design.

 

Tweaking the job: a warped barge board being coaxed into position with a clamp

 

 

 

A similar find was needed in order to deal with chimney repairs, and later with rebuilding the fireboxes (the fireplace’s inner hearth). There were a few spalling bricks (chunks of the face popping off), some inconsistent repointing and anomalous brick replacements, and as is frequently the case, earlier repairs had cost some of the chimney details, in the form of corbels that were were removed (quite likely because it's more expensive and takes more skill to step brickwork decoratively). Fortunately my second master carpenter, Vern Krahn, referred me to master mason Udo Heineman, who even at eighty years of age was able to take the chimney down to the roofline and then rebuild it to its original glory, working alone!

 

Chimney details restored after roof replacement

 

 

There are challenges particular to specific trades that at times can seem insurmountable. For example electricians, who have a tendency to rip open wall surfaces to facilitate easy rewiring in older houses. This can do significant damage to interior heritage details, without really detailed planning and careful oversight. The alternative is a person willing to take more time and develop real creativity. I was most fortunate to locate retired electrician Monty Gill, who was truly inventive at pulling wires without damaging walls, but this it turns out is a rarity.

 

 

Good restoration protects original details, or duplicates them precisely

 

 

I could go on and on about the process and skills that go into good restoration work. The point, however, is that it’s not anything like regular construction, or renovating a house where conserving the original look, footprint and floor plan don’t figure into the equation. Bungalows (and heritage homes of all eras) require a much more discerning approach that's based on applying the right skills, along with quality materials (old growth fir) and a lot of care and patience in execution. And a worthy outcome requires really good communication as the project advances.

As Canadian architectural critic Witold Rybczynksi says, every building speaks in a distinct language, so those who work on it need to master that language in order that what they repair be fully consistent with it. To do that effectively, they have to be able to read the original language. This is also the discipline in which careful work roots any innovation extending the original structure.

Here are some simple rules that increase the likelihood of attaining compatible results:  Resist the temptation to do it all at once, as desirable as that outcome may seem. Hurrying to get it all done at once leads to mistakes you’ll later regret, and to less than optimal outcomes. Biting off more than you can chew deprives you of the advantage of 'the learning effect', leading directly to mental indigestion. So learn from each step along the way, because you’ll nearly always see things you missed afterwards, and that will affect how you approach whatever job you tackle next. Find that heritage list of skilled artisans and review the actual working record of the names on it; try to pick someone who cares about heritage, and understands that your building’s restoration matters to you and to the broader community.

Read about successful projects and look at any you have access to. Study the details of your own place and document them with photographs (just like Bill Haley did). Recognize that the homeowner is in fact the general contractor, and that a general contractor oversees the entire process and assures that each step happens in the proper sequence. There is much to be gained from choices that are made in the course of the job - but if you aren't around for them, they'll be made by others and the results may not be optimal. Put more positively, if you stay with the job as it progresses, you'll get to shape it while it's in motion. If you aren't paying attention to it, you need to have a great deal of confidence in the person who is!


My experience over the past twenty-five years has been an excellent one. Though some may have marvelled at my ability to tolerate an incomplete state of affairs, the waiting and delay have more often than not led to better outcomes, as projects are more thoughtfully worked through in advance of execution. Patience is certainly an important ingredient. Openness to learning is another. This is a big step for people who are not raised to be skilled, or even competent, in working with wood and other housing materials. It involves recovery of a relationship to building and the culture of building, and along the way, if we remain open to growth and a journey, we may surprise ourselves with the quality of work we can achieve. 

 

It pays any owner of a heritage asset to conceive of himself as the general contractor on the job. This means developing a thorough knowledge of the work involved in doing anything, including ensuring that one has retained the right skills to bring the job to completion. I didn't realize at the time I first commissioned work on a heritage house - although I certainly do now - that this is a textbook instance of what in management literature is known as the 'principal-agent problem'. This problem occurs whenever a party contracts with an agent to carry out work on their behalf, and that agent responds to incentives that are not in the best interests of the contracting party. That's why it's so important to develop a concrete idea of the works needing doing, how they should be brought off, and why the heritage list of skilled trades is such an important resource. Armed with these tools, nothing stops you from getting work done to the highest standard, even if you aren't particularly handy yourself!

Books For Looks

Restoring Your Historic House, by Scott T. Hanson, available online