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The style of our house is a mix between a Queen Anne and a Neoclassical Revival, sometimes referred to as a "Free Classic." This style marked the end of the Victorian era when the Revival period was gaining momentum and Queen Anne architecture was waning. The Neoclassical Revivals and Colonial Revivals were influenced greatly by an event that happened in 1893: the Chicago World's Fair, the Columbian Exposition, where a classical "city of white" was erected and influenced many creative people at the time.

When we arrived at Ocean Manor the exterior of the house was in rather poor condition. Several years of neglect were worsened by a history of painters who apparently loved their angle grinders and caulk guns a bit too much. We knew that a serious restoration would need be done, and it would take more than a season. Here are some images of Ocean Manor before we began exterior work:
The very first action taken upon arrival unquestionably had to be the replacement of the roof. When embarking upon the restoration of a house, the first and foremost action is to take care of water infiltration. There is nothing that will expedite decay faster than a compromised exterior. Three layers of dilapidated shingles covered the the house. The top layer was a very light gray. The image below shows the roofers at work. The shingles we selected are 50 year architectural shingles by GAF in the color Pewterwood. The image in the center shows the old asphalt shingles on the left and the new shingles on the right side of the east gable. The last image shows two vents installed by the roofers. These two vents are on the side of the house facing the ocean. I wish the roofers had taken into consideration the fact that northeast winds from the ocean in the winter time would tend to drive rain up into the vents. Instead, the roofers favored the street view of the house in determining the placement. After the roof was complete, two projects began, painting the house and installing new clapboards on the east gable... The original plan was to use the homemade paint remover to remove the century-long buildup of paint from the house. As the summer wore on, I realized that my homemade paint remover design, for all its advantages, would simply be too slow to do this house. Therefore, I invested in the Metabo paint remover with plans to strip the exterior with that. I had spent a lot of time researching on the net and trying to decide between the Metabo and the Paint Shaver Pro. There were not a lot of good comparison articles to go by, so I made the best guess from what was out there and got the Metabo. If you are unfamiliar with these tools, they are electric planers made especially for removing paint. They have carbide blades that rotate much like a Norelco razor without the shields. The claim to fame is that they are fast - a square foot stripped in about 15 seconds. The Metabo did what it was advertised to do, and it did it well, but I found that it was impractical to use due to its cumbersome weight. It is one thing to use the machine by itself, but add 20 feet of vacuum hose dangling down to the ground, plus the extension cord, then a full face shield and respirator; it's hot and tiring. After an hour you're soaked to the skin, sore not only from the effort to support it but especially the effort to work it against the house. Plus you go deaf.

I'd rather replace the clapboards.

So that became the plan. We elected to re-side the east gable first. We would only re-side a section per year, scraping the rest of the house in the usual time-honored tradition, and sanding it to smooth out the scrape-craters and provide a holding surface for the paint. This is a good compromise; we can get the house painted (thus protected) and in a few years, the house will be completely resided. In the mean time, it won't look too bad. This image shows the small bay section stripped bare with the Metabo. The scaffolding is set up to begin re-siding the east gable, second storey. Re-siding a section would be much easier than stripping the whole house, but it is not without its challenges, especially in this house. If you look closely at the pictures at the top of this page you will notice that the corners where the clapboards meet on the second storey have no corner boards; the clapboards simply meet together. On the first storey, the clapboards butt against nice corner boards in every section, and I say nice because those first story clapboards are much easier to replace than the second storey ones. The first step was to remove the existing siding. The existing siding was in rough shape at the corners. It is apparently the original siding on the house. It is pine from a lumber mill in Maine. I know this because occasionally a board would have the manufacturer's stamp on the back. I had always wondered why this original siding was installed with unnecessary joints. For example between two windows 5 feet apart, the siding was installed in pieces short enough to require two boards per course, requiring a butted seam on each course. This practice seems to have been used between any combination of doors and windows which were a very short distance apart. I wondered if there was some reason that a butt seam would be beneficial, and why longer pieces weren't used. When removing the siding from the section I am working on, the answer to this became head-slap apparent. It seems the builder of the house bought all his siding in 4 foot bundles, therefore, he sided the entire house with pieces no longer than four feet, requiring butted seams in even relatively short spans. This of course, raised the question as to whether I would mimic that design practice, and saw my bundles of cedar into short sections. I thought about it for a millisecond and opted not to. The less seams in siding the better; fewer potential problems. If the original builders had longer boards, they would have used them. Even a Victorian carpenter would not introduce a seam unless he had to. The first image below shows the section of the house with much of the siding removed. Underneath the siding, a greenish paper was nailed to horizontal tongue and groove fir boards. The window in the image had a decorative scrolled carving affixed below it like the one in the paint scheme image below. This carving had to be removed before the siding could come off. The carving itself is in poor condition and I may have to replicate it. The same carving on the front of the house is in much better shape. Interestingly, once I had removed the siding, I noticed a large drawing of a completely different decoration on the paper. This decoration was drawn below the window, full size. This decoration was different. The image in the middle shows it clearly. Apparently, the builders were considering this. It is a large oval wheel with six spokes and a hub in the middle. It is as wide as the window, about four feet or so. This decoration would have been much more prominent than the art-nouveau flower placards that exist now (one on each side of the house). What happened? Did they change their minds? Did they sit on their own scaffolding 109 years ago and scratch their heads? Maybe the mill ran out of wagon wheel decorations and substituted a sale on the flower placards. For comparison, I drew the unused wagon wheel decoration over an image of the section, this image is on the right. The existing decoration (the flowers), and the unused one (the wagon wheel), don't seem to co-exist well, so I believe it is unlikely that someone removed all the 'wheels' from the house at some point, although I will examine the siding very closely when I do the next section and see if there are any filled nail holes that might indicate the wagon wheels existed. Another consideration is that the flower decorations match in theme with the stained glass windows in the house, so maybe the stained glass windows were the deciding factor. Would the builders ever have dreamed that I’d be musing over this a century later to a planet-wide audience? I doubt it.
It made sense that if I was going to reside this section, I would need to do the narrow sections comprising the entire "bump out." In other words I would reside the face section shown in the wagon wheel image above, around the left corner to the house, and around the right corner to the house. The reason was the corners themselves- as I mentioned above, there are no corner boards here. The original builders used a method I will call "alternating overlap" for lack of a better term. (If you know of a term, email me). Here is a detail of this method: If I had just resided the face, I would have had to mate new cedar with old warped, cracked, and twisted clapboards at the corners. Even without having sided so much as a doghouse before, I knew that these corners must be tight and right, or I'd be inviting problems. In hindsight, my first siding experience should have been on the first storey, where existing corner trim would have meant easy straight cuts and rapid installation, but here at OMH we like to tackle the "mission impossible" type tasks first. I guess we're gluttons for punishment. The first step was to stare at it for an hour and figure out how I was going to proceed. Toward the end of the hour I convinced myself that the siding was not going to install itself and that I had better get something going. The first courses of clapboards were the hardest. The image to the left below shows the first few courses in place. I am using stainless steel ring shank nails to affix the clapboards. To gauge the courses, I created a story pole, on which I marked the courses' locations. Using the story pole after each course is nailed on, I can mark the location of the next course and snap a chalk line across the face of the house. Underneath the new clapboards you can see fresh new Tyvek house wrap. This I wrapped completely around the corners. Before applying the Tyvek, I removed all protruding nails and other aberrations in order to make a smooth surface. I also remove un-used nails, such as the ones holding the old house paper on, rather than pounding them in, this will reduce thermal bridging. I also treated some ends of the planking with a 50/50 mix of turpentine and linseed oil, especially around the corners, as you can see in the next image. The original green paper was deteriorated away at the corners. This is where the condition of the clapboards was the worst. Luckily, the planking was in good shape, though I gave it a drink of the 50/50 mix anyway. In the future, I will not use the 50/50 mixture, as I have found that penetrating epoxies are a much better solution. Also, I will not use ring shank nails because it is very difficult to remove them without destroying the clapboard. If you want to replace a damaged clapboard, you must remove the nail from the clapboard above, without destroying the clapboard above. Ring shank nails will guarantee that the clapboards are held tight for a long time, but woe unto the person who needs to replace a damaged clapboard held in with ring shanks. Maybe this is why the Victorians used cut nails (on our house anyway). You can see here that the tender exposed ends of that sub-planking here depends on good tight clapboard corners (and Tyvek). The corners themselves were (and are) the most difficult part of this job. In order to create the corners, first, the "face" board, the clapboard that merits being the overlapper, is installed without being cut, so that it extends out into space a few inches, then, the subservient clapboard which meets it, is cut to size and length, and installed. Only then can the face board be trimmed flush with a fine-toothed Chinese pull saw. For the next course, the subservient clapboard becomes the face board, and so on. This process is repeated up the wall. The images below summarize. First, the face board comes out from the house. It is installed long. The adjoining side awaits its final piece. Second, the subservient piece is cut and nailed, then the face board is trimmed flush with a Chinese pull saw. I have found that the angle of the cut for the subservient piece to be between 4 and 5 degrees. It is also important that the top edge of the subservient board be pressed tight against the wall when sawing, otherwise when the next course is nailed on the cut will not be flush. When all is said and done, corners are flush and tight. Here are some images of the job progressing. If you've read this far, you've probably noticed some funky colors appearing on the house. As the re-siding project above was underway, we began scraping and painting other sections of the house. We had put much thought into the house colors; what we like, and what's appropriate for the exterior. I'm horrible at colors, and this was one of the toughest decision so far. Using Gail Winkler's book "Victorian Exterior Decoration", and Visio, I drew one section of the front elevation. I came up with a set of schemes (below) to consider -all historically correct colors, with for the most part, correct placement. The earth tone schemes tend to relate to the Queen Anne's and the white trimmed schemes are more toward the Neo-Classical. The dark gray areas are just the window panes. I wanted a neutral color to keep them out of the equation. The storm window frames are black. Numbers 3 & 4 are historically accurate in both color and placement for a late Queen Anne. Numbers 5 & 6 are accurate for a Neoclassical. Numbers 1 & 2 use accurate Queen Anne colors and painting style, yet are a bit liberal in color placement. Number 7 is an attempted hybrid between Queen Anne colors and Neo-Classical colors. Number 8 is what's referred to as "boutique" style, which throws historical schemes out the window in favor of a "painted lady" look, like the row houses in San Francisco. In an earlier version of this website, I posted a poll offering all eight schemes. You collectively chose number two as your favorite. This was our favorite as well, and the scheme we elected to paint. I printed it out to take to the local paint dealer. The odd thing is, in the printout, the second story came out bluish rather than the greenish gray shade in the picture above. We rather liked the bluish tint; it was a bit less Christmasy. So we went with it. We started painting fast and furious, getting a section done every few days. In addition to having our color scheme tweaked a bit due to my inaccurate printer, it was also tweaked a little more by the fact that the colors we chose had to be matched by eye, down at the paint store. It looked like a match in the can, but once we got a few sections on the house it wasn't what we had intended. The terra cotta was dark red, and the "blue" was, well, too blue. We realized that our best bet was to forego using our little printout as a color chip, and to select real color chips that are similar and have known formulas. This eliminated the "eye matching." In the process, we had to switch from California paints to C2 paints. I wasn't thrilled about the prospect, because I hold California paint in high regard, but I was thrilled about the new colors, which matched the color chips exactly. A search of the net finds that C2 exterior paints are well liked, especially for their coverage. I guess we'll see how well they hold up over the years. The C2 palette has 496 colors to choose from, and someone came up with cutesy names for all 496 of them. Ours, chosen to match our original "concept" are a closely guarded secret. These last three images show the east side of the house more or less completely painted. As you may have noticed, it took a lot of trial and error to get the colors harmonious. The third image shows a final tweak to the "gray", going from a blue-based gray to a green-based gray. This was the Piéce de résistance of the color scheme, and the subtle change made all three colors work nicely together. The next season, we were able to get started on the front of the house. Let's take a closer look at the process. The image below shows the scaffolding erected. Scraping has begun up at the very peak. Working on this section included the restoration of the Palladian window. As the image shows, I removed the lower sash of the Palladian and used the opening as a handy tie off point for the scaffolding. The half round upper sash of the Palladian is still in place in the image. Let's go up on the scaffolding and have a closer look at the job. The images below show the condition of the trim work around the Palladian. Pretty bad huh? The paint was thick and alligatoring. Some clapboards were cracked, exposed wood was weathered, dentils were chipped. In addition, the terne metal roof was getting rusty and in fact had a hole down near the meeting with the barge board. Sounds like a job for a couple of crazy house preservationists. After close examination, it became apparent that it wasn't going to restore itself, so we got right to work. The first step was to begin removing the paint from the Palladian. There is no fast or easy way to do this on such a detailed piece. For the flutes in the pilasters I used a special scraper which I ground down to a rounded tip. It took several hours with heat guns. The images below show the work in progress. At the same time, the upper sash of the Palladian is removed and the panes are delicately removed and labeled so that the sash itself could be restored. Once the Palladian was stripped clean of all paint. I removed the broken dentil molding. I saved each piece so that in the future I might have the exact duplicate milled. (for now I have used something approximate) The entire window was sanded smooth and then primed. The first image below shows the primed window. You can also see that the cracked clapboards have been removed. The second image shows the window painted its first coat of paint. The clapboards have been replaced. Finally, the rest of the trim in the gable was sanded smooth, and washed. All seems were caulked with paintable Silicone. I repaired the terne roof then sanded it clean and primed it with rusty-metal-primer, afterwards, coats of Rust-Oleum bronze were applied. New dentil molding was affixed to the Palladian and primed. And all was painted according to the original dog-eared printout on our 'fridge. The collected images below show the aspects of finishing this section. The half-moon shaped Palladian sash needed to be restored. As you have read above, I removed each of the panes from the sash. One pane was cracked and most of the putty was brittle and falling off. I brought the sash to the work table and removed all the paint using an infrared stripper and sand paper. Once the sash was bare, I consolidated it using Rot Doctor epoxy. This step consisted of mixing together the two-part formula and brushing it onto the sash. Consolidating epoxies absorb into the wood, strengthening it and stopping organisms from feeding on the wood. Once consolidated, I used wood filler epoxy in several places to rebuild a few nicks in the wood. At this point I could begin re-glazing. I've shown the process below for one particular pane. Here I'm replacing the cracked one. I replaced it with a piece cut from some wavy glass stock I had lying around. This way there would not be one pane with a different appearance. Here I am creating a bed of glazing compound in the rabbet. The bed will cushion and insulate the glass. Once the bed is created, the pane is pressed gently in place. Glazier's points are then pressed into the muntins using a putty knife. The glazier's points serve as the primary mechanical fastener holding the panes into the sash. In this pane, one point is used per side. With the pane firmly affixed, the edges are filled with compound. The final and most difficult step is to use the knife to press the putty into the corner, while making a clean fillet. The sash is then left to dry for several weeks. Once dry, I painted the sash black, gave the panes a thorough cleaning, and returned it to its proper place in the window. (Shown here, the bottom sash is out for the same repair) Continuing the journey, we turned the corner in the summer of 2006 and began work on the west facing side of the house. The first section of the west side had two obstacles to contend with: one was the corner of the house where the clapboards were in pretty rough shape, the other was the oval stained glass window whose compass corbels would need to be restored. Some "before" images of the section are shown here: You can see that the clapboards forming the corner were in pretty bad shape. I replaced them all using the skills learned the previous year replacing the clapboards on the other side. The compass corbels on the oval stained glass window were caked with flaking paint. Here are some images of bringing the sections back to life... The oval window was the biggest challenge here. I gently removed each corbel and set aside for repair and repainting. The exterior pane of glass had to be removed so that we could strip the paint from the oval molding. It turned out that the exterior pane was held on only by latex caulk. Once the oval trim was stripped, primed, and repainted, I made two small hook-holders for the pane, similar to mirror hangers. These hangers, screwed to the trim at the 4 and 8 o'clock positions, support the weight of the pane. In re-caulking the pane, I used silicone-II and left ventilation holes near the bottom. Here is an image of the molding being liberated of its paint And finally, two images of the section compete. If you look closely at the second image, you can see the hangers at the bottom of the oval window. These support the exterior pane, which is covered in four places by the compass corbels. With that section complete, it was time to move over a bit and tackle the west peak. At this stage of the game we had done the other two peaks, so we were getting pretty good at them. The scaffolding went up and work commenced: This peak received special attention; as shown above, it was completely stripped whereas the others were partially stripped. My new found enjoyment of heights allowed a deeper, more exacting effort with this peak. The last image above shows the paint being removed from the trim in the pediment. As the paint came off, the primer went on while the wood was dry and clean. At the same time, the lower storeys were prepped and painted: The first image below shows the gold paint coming along. The umbrella really came in handy as the sun got very hot up there. The second image shows the pillastered window with the dentils removed from the top edge. The third image shows the same window with the fan and demilune molding above. If you look carefully, you can see that the first two rows of clapboards have been removed. I found these in rather poor condition so I elected to replace them. The pediment is finally starting to take shape. Here, the two levels of clapboards have been replaced and primed. The terne roof has been wire wheeled clean, primed, and painted with Rust O Leum treatment. At some point I'll replace the terne metal with either TCS-II or copper, but that wont happen until I am removing the aluminum gutters and installing proper wood gutter. It will be another section to this page. You can see that the dentil molding has been replaced, and most everything is painted and complete. At this point, we had done two thirds of the west side. It was now the beginning of October 2006, and there was precious little time left in the painting season. So after sinking a few cold ones, we immediately got to work on the remaining sections... Or alternately, The Return of the Ice Door. As the days shortened, we prepped and painted the last section of the house that we would attempt that season, the section I refer to as the ice door section. This is the rear west corner, first storey, exterior to the scullery. Compared to the lofty challenges faced earlier, this seemed like it would be a nice easy section to finish up on. It is low to the ground so it did not require much scaffolding work. Also, the siding was in pretty good shape, unlike some other areas I've dealt with. The odd thing about this section was that it contained the original ice delivery door for the house. When we gutted the scullery, we confirmed a framed opening in the wall leading to the outside world. That, and the repairs on the exterior clap boards clearly indicated there originally was a small door. The question always was: what was the door used for? Over the years many visitors such as yourself have written in suggesting various functions. By far the most popular is that of a door for the delivery of ice or milk. This seems to make perfect sense. The opening is to the scullery, where an ice box is thought to have stood. There are remnants of a lead drain pipe poking out of the foundation under this door (to drain the ice box). There is also a ghost mark on the foundation where concrete may have existed, perhaps stairs, as this door is much higher than anyone could ever reach. Here are mages of the inner and outer sides: The cut-outs you see in the original clapboards on the exterior clearly indicate the opening originally had a sill. Given all these indications it seemed apparent an ice door we had. At some point, it was abandoned, its sill removed and new clapboards were cut to finish it over like the rest of the exterior wall. Whenever we prepare a section for painting, I like to replace any cracked or damaged clapboards as part of the process. It was my intention here to replace the clapboards that were notched for the sill, as well as two or three of the newer "fill" clapboards which had not held up as well as the older original ones (what else is new). I grabbed my clapboard tools and with my folding ruler, proceeded to get some dimensions for the few pieces I'd replace. As I was measuring, I stopped and leaned back; I was having a Bilbo moment. Clear as day I could hear his line from the Fellowship, murmured slowly and defiantly as he gazed at his precious. I looked at the door again. Why shouldn't I !

The afternoon instantly became a bit more exciting. No longer was I doing the drudgery of paint prep work. I was going to restore me an ice door. The first step was to remove the clapboards covering the original door. Removing the clapboards revealed the hole covered by two small boards. One of these boards, interestingly enough, was heart cypress, and must have been cut from a bit of mop-board from the scullery. It was pretty easy to make the sill. It's width was clearly indicated by the cuts in the original clapboards into which it fit. I made it from fir, with a slope and protrusion similar to the existing window sills on either side. I don't believe the original was sloped, as it was never an extrusion into the wall like most sills are. It was simply affixed to the exterior sheathing like mine would be. I decided to give mine slope, like a proper sill. Here it is shown affixed with three inch screws, and copper flashing. In the image above, all the new clapboards are removed, and the clapboards remaining are original to the house and define the original opening. Using this information I estimated the size and widths of the original styles and rail. These I cut from fir as well, matching the bottom of the styles to the slope of the sill. You can see I added the actual door in the photo above. The rails and style are rabbeted to hold it very nicely. It is made from half inch stock completely sheathed in copper. The top style is flashed with copper which extends up under the new clapboard. The next step was to fill the screw holes and countersunk nails with filler. Some very fine caulking was done around the sides with GE's very best Silicone-II. Finally, the section was painted. I considered leaving the door its natural copper, but elected to prime it with Rust-O-Leum metal primer then paint. The final step was affixing a handle. I found one in the basement which, oddly enough, looks like it may have come off the door originally. And it was done, our very own ice door. Here is the entire side of the house, as we left it for the winter. In the summer of 2007 we spent most of our time on other projects, which left little time for house painting. We did manage to complete the restoration of the attic sashes. These are the sashes for the east and west gables, which are pairs very small two-over-two, and the bottom sash of the front Palladian window which is a single light. These we shopped out to our local Window Woman for restoration. The results are beautiful, shown here in these images:
Yet to come...
-Painting the North face
-Restoration of the front porch
-Restoration of the veranda
-Restoration of the Green Man
-Restoration of the Oval Stained Glass
-Repointing the foundation