Restoring Wood Elements in Old Houses
Restoring architectural elements damaged over time requires ingenuity and labor but it isn’t necessarily difficult. Two recent projects—one pro, one DIY—show how perseverance brings wood ornamentation beautifully back to useful life.
As Nate Skiles examined the ornamental broken pediment on a Philadelphia row house last renovated around 1900, rotted wood came away in his hand. The three-dimensional finial at the center was caked with layers of paint, but it wasn’t hard to see that it too was in rough shape. The entire pediment had been exposed to full sun for at least a century, and water from a nearby gutter poured over it whenever it rained. Everything had been wet for ages. Although Skiles specializes in restoring historic shutters as the owner of Main Line Shutters, he agreed to take on the pediment and other decorative elements on the façade, knowing it would entail hours of labor to retain as much original material as possible.
In a Los Angeles neighborhood 3,000 miles away, the front porch and upper porch gallery on Gina Bellous’ 1895 Queen Anne were in dire condition. Bellous hired skilled carpenters to rebuild the failing porch but reserved a laborious project for herself: the repair and reconditioning of 41 original balusters that remained.
While Skiles brought a tradesman’s skills and expertise to the pediment project, Bellous restored her balusters with a DIY sensibility. Both restorers used two-part epoxies to make repairs to decorative elements that are major style markers for each house. In both cases, progress was slow and required both experimentation and patience to bring these historic wood treasures back to life.
Old House Online Mary Ellen Polson August 24, 2022
