I thought I'd post some recent photos of the progress of our 1871 Second Empire Cottage Restoration located in eth Knox Hill area of Fairmount in Cincinnati. The big event has been the removal of the old late 30's siding to reveal the original clapboards on the east and south facades of the house. The original siding is in remarkably good condition as opposed to the North Side which required almost total replacement.

 

I have also been working on the Corbel restoration. We were able to locate 4 matching salvage corbels which were in pretty rough shape, With alot of work they look as good as new and will be ready to install soon.

 

Front Porch work continues as well and the roof structure is next but I have to install the brackets and finish the box gutter restoration (easier access before the porch roof goes on.)

 

Painting is progressing now along the east facade of the house. The colors are all Valspar "National Trust Preservation colors"

I just wanted to say nice work.

 

It is seeing people like you do these projects that gets my overinflated sense of ability into trouble...

 

Some recent updates: Painting of the east facade is done and I have begun construction of the front porch roof. I have attatched a jpeg of what the finished porch design will look like. I used elements from the front window pediment along with detailing from the lower porch rail elements.

 

Overall the porch design is based on Woodard "City and Country house plan book of 1877 and should be fairly consistent with our house built in 1871.

 

Work is progressing on the inside with removal of some old closets and stripping paint off woodwork.

Very nice! Thanks for posting.

things are coming along nicely!

Looks great!  Restoring an old house is a ton of hard work, just make sure you do it right. Your on the right path so far!

Thanks , the Cincinnati Enquirer did a piece on our house restoration, historic preservation issues and efforts to turn around our neighborhood.

 

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090726/NEWS01/907270347/

 

We have recieved very positive feedback from the preservation community and also have been contacted by the grandson of the original owner of the house, who apparently has some old photos that may aid in our restoration,

 

wonderful story!!

Looking good "Consultant". Is heat-gunning the method you've been using for stripping all of your trim, or having you tried chemicals as well? I'm especially curious what you may have had success with on interior trim (just because there is usually so much).

Although I do not recomend a heat gun on an old house (unless you have been doing this kind of work for MANY years, as I have) however that is what I am using for heavy built up areas like door frames. Fortunately since the house had shingling put over the original siding  in 1938, we only had the original paintjob and a couple of coats of whitewash over that. As for the interior , I am using a combination of heat gun and chemical stripper after that for cleanup.

 

Because of changes and updates over 138 years we have different kinds of wood.The trim is rather plain (it was built as a weekend cottage) as were most of the homes in our neighborhood, so I will be faux graining the woodwork. Interestingly the picture rail in the front parlor is gold leafed and I am having to "hand pick and peel" a coat of latex paint off that. The hanging rail has to come down and be reloccated a few inches lower because of the Bradbury&Bradbury Frieze that we are putting at the top of the formal parlor. We are doing authentic period wallpapers and stenciling (walls and ceilings) throughout the house, as well as reproduction period ceiling medallions and electro-gasoliers. The exception to staying period, will  be the new kitchen and baths which will have an old feel but have all the modern appliances.

 

Very nice.  Please post those "before" photos that the grandson gives you!

We already have one tidbit of history, When he stopped by the first time ( I wasn't there) he left a business card with our neighbor. Its a business/bid card from the late 1870's with the house address on it and the business address of the company.

 

From my research, Antone Nagele was a German Immigrant and stone cutter extrodinare who worked on a number of high end buildings in Cincinnati. he came to Cincinnati in the 1840's as a child and died in 1910 and had 6 children.

 

This explains the stone found all over the place . We have the remains of a sunken garden which we are restoring. The house has only one of the remaining retaining wall columns (there were 4) which is a carved stone or terre cotta piece that looks like an architectural piece, 'adaptively reused" as a column post. At some point someone "leveled' the sidewalk going up to the house by pouring concrete over huge slabs of stone used to make the walk. We found gas pipes running to each column and apparently they had gas lights as the top cap of the column is drilled and still has the pipe in it for the gas light. I may try to pull molds off the remaining column, clean up the details and and recast the columns in tinted concrete. No way could anyone afford to have them redone in stone!

 

Apparently Anton brought his work, and I suspect mistakes, home with him and reused them on the house. Our stone Foundation walls are 24 inches thick! When you think of the time, and expense, to haul all that stone up huge hills to build a cottage, using only draft horses and wagons, it is pretty incredible. Of course the house still has the gas light piping throughout. We plan on using some restored Electofied gasoliers. We found some stencilling in the Formal Parlors so they put some time and money on the interior as well.

 

We plan on the interior being in the aesthetic/ Rennaisance revival motifs circa 1870's which goes with my furniture collection.

Having a thick stone foundation was actually the standard for a well built home in those days, and is therefore quite common here in Cincinnati. The use of concrete for a residential project would be pretty rare until the 20s or 30s. It is definitely fun to think of the associated labor moving all this raw material though! Down in OTR we have some brewery foundations that are 40-50' deep!! And of course are made of stone. It always amazes me to think of how cheap labor must have been in constructing buildings before the 20th century.

Thought I'd update progress it has been a while!

 

One of our "big finds" was the original wall stencil designs from 1871. We have duplicated those and are redoing the front formal parlor walls in a more period appropriate colorway with faux grained and marbled walls in the dado area.

 

We have also added salvaged beadboard in the stairway and are reconfiguring the basement stairs. The opening will hosue a stained glass window to let light into what will eventually be afirst floow  1/2 bath under the stair landing.

 

We have added a Renaissance revival arch from formal parlor to formal dining and of course that has to be trimmed out. Kitchen has been gutted and we hope to start reconstruction on that soon as well.

 

In short busy, busy , busy!

 

Looking good.  Thanks for the update!

This place is going to be amazing.  I just love those wall stencils. 

Thanks Jimmy, we actually plan on offering the stencils for sale to help others do period restoration work, and defray some of our own high restoration costs. I have duplicated the originals and am expanding  based on the original designs, to include corner blocks and some accessory bandings.

 

The big project (oh my aching back) will be stenciling the ceiling. The top "frieze' stencil will be 'flipped' up onto the ceiling and of course there will be several bandings a main ceiling fill and I will be installing a plaster center medallion which we have based on an original Cincinnati design from another house where we recieved permission to make molds of. We will be installing a reproduction 4 light electro-gasolier in the center.

 

Stencilling a 16 x 16 foot ceiling room will be, "fun"?

how is the vbml bs coming along?

 

Well the inspector came out and the house met the 13 points, NO surprise there.

 

He handed us the waiver paperwork, we had it reviewed .

 

The city expects owners to provide detailed financial committment information including bank statements , line of credit etc.  We were advised  that was a serious over reach of authority by city govenment, they do not have that kind of authority under a number of State or Federal laws, and we were strongly advised against turning over that kind of financial info to a city agency when there is zero guarantee about who sees it or how it is kept secure. Not to mention the violation of State and Federal privacy laws as it pertains to private property rights.

 

City also wants owners to provide copy of 300K in liability insurance, YET the city has no ordinance requiring ALL property owners to have liabaility insurance therefore compelling a property owner under VBML to provide such proof is clearly discriminatory, creates a secondary class in application and likely violates State and Federal law as well.

 

Had some other collegues of mine, including a retired Federal Appelate Court judge, review the ordinance, the way the city 'picks and chooses what parts of the ordinance they want to follow, the failure to provide continuty of enforcement and remedy of civil action against prior owners who failed to renew the VBML (if they had done that it would have shown up on title search, before we bought the house).

 

In short, everyone's  opinion  was that the VBML is perhaps one of the most badly written ordinances they had ever seen. The city enforcement is clearly discriminatory and city inspections failed to follow the ordinance properly in the first place and they were all frankly amazed that the city was even trying to enforce an ordinance that violated dozens of State and Federal laws and appeared to facilitate institutional "redlining' of poorer neighborhoods.

 

They were equally amazed that the city has been able to get away with it for this long!

 

Of course I already knew all this, but it was nice to have several more opinions.

 

It's the kind of case the Washington DC Insitute of Justice (who handeled that eminent domain case in the city of Norwood and won against the city) would have a 'field day" with!

 

So that's where we are at at the moment. May get really interesting.

:clap:

You really have done more then your homework. 

Gfi, I cant tell you how many properties I have documented in areas like Fairmount, Prices Hill etc that have gone to VBML over a broken window. Inspectors when they write repair orders have to do regular followups and it is far easier when they do a VBML to do less inspection. One Annual (which by the way they dont do that either) a year at the time of renewal.

 

In a neighborhood like mine a VBML is a "death sentence" for a property. If the owner is poor they just walk away. It doesn't take long for the city to go from VBML, to Condemn, to nuisance, to bulldozer.

 

Banks will not touch a property if a VBML is against it. I've already talked with 1 guy who was buying a foreclosure (not a cheap foreclosure either) and because of the VBML the bank will not loan against it. In their eyes its a encumbrance (even if it doesnt show on title search) and they wont committ.So that hosue will likely sit, be vandalized and eventually demoed and he will go across the river and buy in Newport or Covington.

 

Any way you look at it, a VBML results in redlining. If you have enough VBMLs in a neighborhood, those properties are worthless because no one will buy then, or, if they would they can't get financing, there are no comps and you couldnt get a loan. Not every neighborhood has a 3CDC who has the kind of money to "spec restore" and bring up values and provide comps.

 

There are not a lot of people like us who can "self fund" their restoration projects and if anyone thinks I am going to hand over financial information and bank statements to city employees as part of a VBML waiver process who can't guarantee who has access to it? Well they really are stupid!. If you want me to prove liability insuranec, fine, but you better make the slumlord  property owner next door a foot away do the same thing.

 

What started out as good law with good intentions. To get "hard core" property owners and speculators to maintain their property to a minimum standard, protect first responders, and basically 'shake loose' property and get it into good hands, has been "perverted" by city inspectors as way to lighten their case load and reduce inspections , PLUS its a revenue stream for the city.

 

The foreclosure crisis, and the fact inspectors can't easliy 'track down' a property owner means that VBML are getting slapped right and left.

 

It is wrong and should be stopped.

^ Just curious ... have you written to the city and made phone calls with your concerns?

 

 

Cincinnatus, aside from my normal duties as Neighborhood Association president dealing with the city, I have 182 emails with various city officials and hours on the phone since March of this year. I gave my attorneys 412 pages of printed emails from and to city inspection services on this issue.

 

Not to mention I have a historic preservation blog where I have devoted hundreds of hours to detailing the problems with the way the city deals with VBML and their "blight=bulldozer" mentality.

 

What is so ironic about that is we are exactly they type of people the community council wants to see in Cincinnati and the biggest roadblocks is from the city vacant building inspections which, for the record, is the most disorganized, unprofessional city inspection services I have ever dealt with and as a historic restoration consultant I have worked with dozens of cities over the last 20 years,( including training inspectors), so I know how these departments are supposed to work. I understand now why Newport and Covington are booming and OTR and other urban neighborhoods are languishing.

 

I seriously doubt we will put our business in OTR at this point, I refuse to deal with the city red tape. Our Historic design studio, Our restoration resource store, our historic art gallery and our antique business will likely be located across the river in Newport and we will invest our money there. I feel bad about that because I prefer OTR and we wanted to locate near Findlay market , I think we could have made a major impact there, but frankly its not worth the hassel.

 

In short the taxpayers are not getting their monies worth but unfortunately if you are local you do not know how things really work in other cities. We need to make big changes and we need to expect better of our city officials. Otherwise we will look like Detroit in another decade. The city is planning on spending 1.1 million on demo next year alone.

Drove around and found this awesome cottage yesterday.  Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the kind words GFI. realized I havent posted any updates in a while so here is the restoration of the front formal parlor.

 

We discovered the original neo grec stenciling under several layers of paint and after stripping down to the original finish we then recreated the stenciling in a new colorway and I added the sky mural and stenciled ceiling to complete the room. I also installed and custom painted the ceiling medallion.

 

The cast iron fireplace is salvaged and I restored the stenciling and faux finish on it and the Overmantle mirror is one that I custom built and stenciled (I've been building these for clients for a while and decided to reward my self). I also created teh 'faux slate' hearthboard

 

It matches the drapery cornice which I also custom built and stencilled.

 

In case anyone is interested I now sell the parlor stencils. All proceeds go to the restoration.

 

Usually I am doing this kind of stenciling and custom carpentry for other people it was nice to do something for myself for change.

 

At this point I am stripping paint off the floors. promise to keep everyone updated.

Awesome, Paul! Perhaps a "before" photo should be added just to show how extensive this transformation is. Too bad there are no Cincinnati based TV home improvement shows; your home restoration would make for a very fascinating story. And to think: this is just the first room you've done in the old house. It sure will have the "wow" factor going when it's all completed. This is tangible, irrefutable evidence that even the most common of Cincinnati's historic homes can sparkle in the right hands. Noteworthy here are the stencil patterns you used being totally originals in this room from the 1870's that you discovered behind many old layers of paint.  It makes me cringe to see the monthly dangerous-nuisance-demo building list from the city; so much WASTED potential! I've even seen former architect designed mansions unbelievably placed on the city demo list. The craftsmanship and materials used in these homes of the past are extremely expensive to procure today and are now reserved for millionaires' castles. Forget MDF, vinyl, or simulated wood grains...this is the real thing. For a mere pittance, the same old world craftmanship can still be had in Cincinnati's treasure trove of faded historic homes but hard work and perseverance to bring back their luster are the trade off. From the present looks of this house, it's certainly worth the effort.