Below is how the property looked in 2016. The home had been broken up into apartments. There was actually a waiting list to get an apartment. By 1880, Mark Dunham had become fabulously wealthy, and decided to build a mansion on his property. Dunham wanted to integrate French chateau designs with modern American architectural trends. The […]
The porch had its balustrade replaced with wrought iron. We had an old picture to guide us in making a new one. I made a full-scale mockup to show what it should look like. The project was too big for me so the owner gave my mockup to a woodworker to make. He did a […]
A contractor friend of mine was hired to rebuild an old house porch. One of the column bases was rotten, so he asked me to duplicate it. I can easily make round column bases on my lathe. The new column bases are shown at right. He also asked me […]
The owner of this home replaced the porch step rails with new, inappropriate details as seen below. There was no traditional newel post, and the balusters were nailed on the outside of the rail like modern deck builders do it. The Preservation Specialist asked the owner to redo the stair balustrade, and the owner asked […]
In 2008 a woman came to the Design Review Committee with plans to add a porch to her old house. It would have had one originally, but it was long gone. Her proposed design was not appropriate. My wife was on the committee and suggested to the woman that the new porch recently built across […]
Many parts of the porch at 150 S. Gifford were rotten or missing as seen at right. The owner was given several code violations forcing him to repair or rebuild it. I proposed several different actual designs for the new balustrade. The one below came from a porch on Laurel St. This is one from […]
In my old house woodworking business I often get asked to duplicate old house trim baseblocks. I do not think the old timers used a molding machine or shaper to make them as you cannot mold perpendicular to the grain. I tried it once by putting the wood on a sled to hold short pieces […]
This is how the house looked in 1981. It was overgrown and not maintained. The bank holding the mortgage foreclosed several times as decent owners could never be found. The bank asked the Gifford Park Association to oversee a rehab to make it decent to attract a good new owner. They did it and new […]
About 10 years ago I made replacement porch rails for 722 Douglas in Elgin. It is an intricate rail so I had a knife made to duplicate it exactly. Below is the profile. luckily I kept the knife so I could make the rail again. It is made in two pieces and then glued together. […]