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In a Victorian house restoration, the kitchen sometimes seems to be the most problematic. No where else do the desire for historical charm and the need for modern convenience stand to clash so forcefully. Kitchen restorations take a lot of thought. We've spent countless hours pondering the possibilities. This page will track our kitchen as it evolves.

In today's world, the kitchen tends to be the social center of the house. In Victorian times it was quite the opposite. In upper-middle to wealthy homes, the kitchen was a room seen mostly by domestic servants. As such, it was sparsely decorated if decorated at all. Kitchens tended to be very utilitarian and isolated from the rest of the house. It was considered very bad taste for dinner guests to see, hear, or even smell activities taking place in the kitchen. Even the lady of the house, if fortunate enough, stayed away from the kitchen, leaving that domain to the domestic help. A census shows that in 1920 the lady of our house employed a maid named Mary, who likely spent many hours in our kitchen. Victorian architects took care to incorporate "kitchen isolation" into their house plans. Often, the kitchen would be comprised of a few small rooms, each with its own function. These might include the kitchen, pantry, scullery, larder, and a small bathroom. At the very least, even if the kitchen was a single room, a door, usually on swinging hinges, separated the it from the dining area, the room where in Victorian times guests would gather to eat. The kitchen has become, to a degree, exempt from the requirements that other restored rooms follow. This is because kitchens unlike other rooms, must perform as well as posture. Other rooms are not so bound to technology, and therefore their furnishings and fittings can be more accurate. Most people are willing to forego a more exacting restoration of the kitchen in favor of the convenience of modern technology. It is proclaimed that kitchens in an older house must be "charming in an interpretive way" due to the unavoidable clash between the Viking refrigerator and the crown-molded cabinets encircling it. In starting this room, it was my belief that a more historically accurate restoration, if carefully planned, would not necessarily leave us inconvenienced, and whose charm would manifest itself through true substance and simplicity; the kitchen would be unfitted. Let's continue with our restoration. With Colleen's cautious approbation, I made unfitted Victorian simplicity the defining philosophy of the kitchen proper. The question to which I would apply my effort is: How historically accurate (charming) can we take our kitchen and still have a practical and functional kitchen for use today? We'll let you judge as we progress...click on thumbnails to view larger images.

This floor plan shows how our kitchen fits in with the adjoining rooms. These three rooms are what I have come to refer to as the "kitchen complex"; that area of the house where the servants would have presided. The kitchen proper, the largest room, held the cook stove. The scullery (sometimes called a pantry) was typically a room which held the sink. Vegetables would be cleaned and prepared in the scullery. It would also hold the ice box. The half-bath gave the domestic help a convenient (and unseen) place of their own. It would not be proper for them to use the family's bathroom regularly. Before indoor plumbing, instead of an off-kitchen half-bath (or more correctly, a water closet) there would likely have been a larder. When we first arrived at Ocean Manor, the kitchen proper looked like this... Definitely ready for a restoration. The first thing we did was remove the peeling linoleum. We were not sure what was underneath it. Turned out there were four layers of flooring. It was like working through paleontological layers; we'd remove one layer, just to find an older layer. These images show the work in progress: We started by removing the layer of linoleum, which was glued to a layer of plywood. Once we had removed the linoleum, we had to remove thousands of nails holding the plywood down. It was nailed every inch or so along all edges of every sheet. In the field it was nailed every 4 inches square. Once we got through the plywood, we found a layer of vinyl tiles. We ripped up the tiles to discover they had been glued to a layer of fiber board. To remove the fiber board we had to remove a thousand more nails. Under the fiber board was a layer of linoleum (most likely original to the house). Under this linoleum was the top floor of planks. The last image above shows the original top floor finally exposed. Once all the floor layers were removed, it was time to have a go at the ceiling. The ceiling, as shown in the images above, was a suspended ceiling of square fiber tiles. The original ceiling still existed two feet above it. With crowbar and Sawzall, the removal of the drop ceiling commenced. At the start it was like a great big game of Don't Break the Ice, with the object being to leave the center chandelier operational for as long as possible. An interesting surprise was the mid-century wallpaper exposed above the suspended ceiling. Also evident were previous colors used in the kitchen. These details inspired us to continue investigating the historical changes to the kitchen as we restored -changes that will be noted as we progress here in this chronicle. With the suspended ceiling out, we could begin the process of stripping the wood trim. This was a job that happened slowly, in tandem with the other things happening in the kitchen. It was sort of an "I-don't-feel-like-heavy-work-today-I-think-I'll-just-strip-some-paint" kind of activity. Below, the chair rail shows some exposed wood a-la heat gun. For the most part, the paint came off the trim very easily as the trim had originally been shellacked. As far as the image on the right goes, I always wear a respirator when gunning paint, and you should too. I don't know why I wasn't wearing one there. I think I was just trying out a smaller heat gun made for model airplanes called a Monokote gun. It was about this time that we discovered that the house had no insulation. I had drilled a small hole in the wall near one of the windows and shone a flashlight into it. I saw the interior side of the exterior sheathing. No insulation. Nada. None. Zippo. This, in conjunction with other issues, like major plumbing and electrical work, compelled us to remove the walls in this room, the half-bath, and the scullery. Removing the walls brought up the question of removing the trim. Obviously, putting up new drywall would be much easier without the trim in place. I removed the trim from the north window, a task which taught me that the trim is better left alone. The trim is hundred year old heart-cypress. It's very brittle. I was able to remove a window's worth without destroying it, but it was a tedious task. I opted to leave the rest alone, except for the chair rail, which would need be removed if we were to remove the walls. Removal of the chair rail was done very carefully so that the pieces could be replaced once the room was ready. When removing the chair rail, we could clearly see the original wallpaper underneath, as shown here It's very interesting that the original paper was a faux oak grain. The builders might have decided it would be easier to paper first then install the chair rail afterwards. This way they could do the job with fewer cuts and measuring to the paper. It's also possible that the wall was not intended to have a chair rail. The chair rail could have been an afterthought. Maybe JF Holt, the first owner, saw his kitchen coming along and decided at that point, he wanted a chair rail. I suppose it's also possible that the chair rail could have been added much later, after a few cycles of wallpaper, but the rail is not only of the same wood, but shares the same grain personality, so I suspect the rail went in at the beginning. Either way, once the rail was in place, the paper underneath was doomed to remain as nobody in their right mind would remove the chair rail simply to re-wallpaper. I was able to scan some of the original wallpaper and import it into a scale drawing of the wall using a CAD program called Visio. The result (below) was that for first time in decades, perhaps a century, anyone had seen the room as it originally existed: At this time, we removed the circa 1970s stove and cabinets shown above. Behind these, a large sheet of plywood on the wall covered evidence of earlier stoves, as shown here The large square in the image above was an opening for a stove pipe to exhaust into the chimney behind.You can see some small boards covering the actual opening. Around the opening are ghost images of trim that once surrounded the port. You can clearly see the trim was mitered at the corners. It was probably the same profile as the rest of the trim. There is also a ghost mark where chair rail once existed, and original wallpaper, like that shown above, on the wall lining the ghost mark of the chair rail. The 1970s contractor's layout lines are seen above on the wall, marking where he would place the range vent and the cabinets. And finally, below the missing chair rail, a shade of battleship gray; another in a long line of kitchen makeovers. Below that, a ghost mark is seen of the original mop board.

The disco-era installation of the suspended ceiling had all but destroyed the original plaster ceiling above. Before we could take down the walls we would need to remove it. With crowbar and hammer, we took it down. A word of warning: Shop Vacs do not like to breathe plaster dust. Ours died that day. It didn't go easy; it started to whine, then sputtered about for a bit. Finally, it started to emit a burning stench, a coughing smoke, then it expired. When working overhead, the Shop Vac should be placed under a table to keep the crumbs from falling into its motor vents. With the ceiling liberated, we could see the original light location and its gas feed. All indications are that the house was electrified and gasified together from the outset. In the 1890s, electricity was newfangled and less reliable than today. People were less apt to trust this new invention and being as such, most houses in the 1890s (in our area) were built featuring both electric and gas lighting, often in the same fixture. An interesting feature of this house is that single thin extra wiring was run to all the fixtures. These are the single wires seen running just above the strapping. The knob and tube wires are white. The extra wires seem to be an intended redundancy in case the knob and tube fails. This is the only thing I can make of it. If you have seen this before or know the true reasoning, please send along an email. In the image you can also see a bit of soot staining above where the gas ceiling fixture would have been.

With the ceiling out and the chair rail removed, it was time to do the walls. This is the dirtiest work of all. The fan is blowing the dust out of the window, but it never seems to catch up. With the walls gone, we could have a look around; check the condition of the sills and girts and studs. We could check for any signs of leaks past or present. I also noted at this time that the house was constructed using a sort of hybrid platform framing/timber framing method including the use of oak trunnels. (I'll talk more about this on the Water Closet page) The first image above shows the stove area. Visible now is the stove exhaust flue. It's mostly original gray, but now a bit of aqua blue is seen around the bezel. Perhaps this was an earlier color. The small rope entering the flue travels up to the top of the chimney where it secures a makeshift cap I placed to keep the rain out. The framing around the chimney is now seen. The framing also encloses a small broom closet to the left of the chimney. Another interesting feature is the small opening up near the ceiling. This was a square framed opening into the second of the chimney's two flues. I believe this was used as a room exhaust; sort of like a vent fan today. Maybe it even had an electric fan driving it originally. The inside of this particular flue had no soot whereas the stove's flue was quite black. The image on the right shows a nice little discovery. With my head in the ceiling joists cleaning out some of the plaster crumbs off one of the end girts, I found some scraps of old newspaper. Judging by where it was, it must have been left there when the house was built. Because the date of construction hadn't been definitively settled yet, this was a nice little find. Fortunately, there was a date on the newspaper, unfortunately, the last digit of the date had a hole in it (see pic). I couldn't tell if the date was 1890 or 1896! It could have been either, and both those particular years were candidates that I'd gotten from research. The house is officially listed as being built in 1891, however, the house was all but certainly built in 1896. So that last digit was critical. To make it more complicated, the date was chopped off in such a way that the day of the week was cropped off, only the last three letters: "...day" were left! That narrowed it down to seven. Luck would win though, in another piece the date of an event was listed "Wednesday June 24th." All I had to do was find calendars from those two years, and hopefully only one would have June 24th on a Wednesday. It turned out to be 1896.

With the walls out and the cold of winter seeping through, we decided to get the insulation installed. Here several bays are left empty so that the electrics can be run. In the image to the left you can also see the knee braces. These diagonal framing members are used to give the house more rigidity. At Ocean Manor, knee braces were used in both first and second storey corners.

It was about this time that we made a far-reaching decision: we decided to remove the kitchen chimney. The decision to remove it was not an easy one. It was one of those situations where your practical side competes with your preservationist side. This chimney had a leaking problem, and is the one I made the cap for. Once we realized the chimney was leaking from within, I examined the mortar more closely in the attic. A screwdriver could easily be pushed right through the mortar joints into the flue. It seemed that its own weight and perfect plumb stacking were the only things keeping it from tumbling. The question became, what do we do? Spend the money to rebuild the chimney from the attic floor up? That seemed pointless as this particular chimney (we have another) would never be used and would always be entombed within the walls on the lower floors. Unless, of course, we would decide to use an actual wood cook stove in the kitchen or to heat laundry water in the basement. I can assert with good authority that Colleen isn't willing to live quite that extreme Victorian realism. This chimney, though once a vital and industrious entity within the house, would need to take one for the team. The first step was to fully document the chimney and its dimensions. As part of this, many images were taken which include measurements. One of those is shown here: I have no images of the chimney's removal in the kitchen area, but it's removal in the room above can be seen on the Library page. I do have an entry from my journal describing the scene in the kitchen when we had gotten the chimney down to that level. I have included it here...

The constant drone of the Shop Vac seemed to agitate the particles of plaster, mortar, and dust which filled the kitchen air, stirring them into a frenzied festivity unseen since the day they were set solid in their respective functions. The work light's twin halogen bulbs blazed like small suns, their brightness obscuring the untargeted penumbral corners of the room, yet magnifying every airborne reveler in their path creating the illusion of a miniature snowstorm. In the center of this spot-lit tempest we clambered on all fours amongst the refuse; the larger earthbound pieces of what had once been a chimney: bricks, brick chunks, mortar shards, and dust dust dust, everywhere dust.

As this storm surged, I gathered handfuls of mortar shards from what seemed an endless amassment around the remaining stalk of the chimney, dumping them into my handy Homer bucket. Each pass fed the tempest; each pass enlivened the storm. Colleen brandished the Vac's wand, attempting to liberate the bare floor from its dusty cover, siphon the storm from the air, and guard the mouth of the Homer bucket all at the same time. We were within a foot of our destination. Four weeks and forty feet of chimney had brought us to this point down here in the kitchen.

The brutal August heat, sweltering humidity, and proximate halogen furnace bore down on us with such belligerence that one could, with little imagination required, assume we had secured gainful employment in hell (the hot section). In such circumstance, the body directs its pores to cast open their gates, flooding the epidermis in a misguided attempt at comfort. The airborne hullabaloo, sensing this reaction, effects countermeasure via kamikaze adhesion. Thus the body becomes flypaper, if you will, for what seems like every vile wretched particle awoken from slumber. Arms become powdered, hair becomes gray -that's the pleasant part. Not satisfied with exposed skin, the filth works into the clothes; under, around, into pockets, everywhere. Every cold, flu, virus and infection that anyone in the house has had for the last hundred years...every thing that has rotted, festered, decomposed, and putrefied in the house over the last hundred years...every mold spore, fungi follicle, microbe, mildew strain and microorganism that has seen fit to propagate in the damp nether regions of the house over the last hundred years...all these things, plus mouse turds become part of you.

We continued our work, in a most mechanical fashion, no words spoken, as none could be spoken. Even if we could talk above the drone of the Shop Vac, our respirators inhibit verbal communication. The 'flapper valve' in the face shield resonates with speech, the outcome sounding not unlike Darth Vader with a sore throat. After the first hour one realizes the only word coherent is the word "What!?" Lacking the telepathic aid of the Force, communication regresses to little more then grunts, groans, and growls accompanied by finger pointing, much like the monkeys in 2001, albeit our own monolith was in pieces at our feet.

I shifted to reach more detritus toward the rear of the pile. Six small beads of perspiration my brow coalesced, at this moment, into a unified droplet, which, with newfound alacrity, began its march downward, carving a clean channel through the adhered muck, carrying its payload of dissolved dust into my eye. Something in the present handful of mortar made a slight metallic sound. It was a very slight clink, but noticeable nonetheless. I motioned for Colleen to come witness, and with the comportment of a celebrated archaeologist, began splaying the current double-handful out on the floor. What emerged from the dust was the first physical evidence of the house's first owner. A small silver identification medallion with his name engraved. Mr. James Frank Holt was indeed the first owner of the house. It is nice to have an item of his personal possession, however trivial it may have been. Apparently, this medallion fell from the attic, down along the chimney until reaching its final resting place where it lay undisturbed for decades. I wonder if it might have fallen in 1896 when he moved into this, his newly built house. Or perhaps it was dropped sometime during his life. He died in 1918. At this time, his daughter was living here, and he (apparently) was in New Hampshire. The city of Chesterfield, is a curiosity. This house is not in NH, so maybe he moved here from New Hampshire. Perhaps he stood in the attic one day unpacking his suitcase, to which this medallion might likely have been attached, saw how the tag was now unfit for his new address, and indifferently tossed it down the crack between the chimney and the surrounding floor. It seems the best answers to mysteries are the answers that also pose new and interesting questions. The back of the medallion reads: "Pat. Dec 29 1868" Apparently, this particular medallion was in widespread use. A reasonably thorough search of the (over 400) patents issued on that date has not revealed the manufacturer. I did manage to Google out a similar medal found in another state. The finder posed the question of its use to an expert, who replied:

"...Often sold by mail order, personal identification tags like this one were common not only during the last half of the 19th century, but at least as late as the 1930s..."

The back of the medallion has a Masonic symbol stamped into it. I believe "FAO" stamped onto the front may signify "Fraternal Ancient Order"

With the chimney down and the enclosing jog removed, I could begin installing blocking for wainscoting. We elected to change the appearance a bit by using beadboard wainscoting rather than going back to the original plaster above and below the chair rail. Our new plan (not including wallpaper) is shown here on the left, the original 1896 room is shown for comparison on the right: Today we are tempted to see beadboard as a decorative embellishment, however in the 19th century and well into the 20th century it was a functional lower wall covering more robust than plaster in areas that were at risk from the hazards of daily chores such as servants carrying buckets and firewood. In order to install the vertical boards, I'd need some horizontal blocking in the stud bays to affix them to. The first pass blocking looked as below: The laser line is set to the bottom of the one remaining section of untouched chair rail shown in the third image (we decided to leave that bit alone). The blocking is then installed between the stud bays. In this case I used three inch "deck" screws to secure it.

At the same time, I cut three inch thick squares of extruded polystyrene to insulate the cavities above the girts. This is cut very easily with a Japanese ryoba saw. Also, the electrical boxes are placed and nailed fast. With talk and preparation for beadboard happening, the question of how we'd finish the kitchen woodwork arose. To answer that question, we turned to finding out beyond doubt if the original finish in the kitchen was really shellac. There had always been a question which I had never resolved concerning the original state of the trim work. On several pieces such as those shown above, I had been able to remove the paint very easily with a heat gun to reveal shellac underneath. On several other pieces in the same room, work with a heat gun showed that the trim below had no shellac coating and was, apparently, painted from the outset. I really wanted to know how it was finished originally. This knowledge might have affected how we chose to refinish it, but also, because removing the paint from the trim would eliminate the possibility of research in the future, we needed to document the answer now. The image below shows three doors in the kitchen. The door on the right was shellacked and I was able to easily remove the paint down to the shellac. The doors on the left have no shellac base and thus cannot be stripped easily. The image on the right shows the un-shellacked trim, whose base coat is a tan painted directly onto the bare wood. In fact, the paint is so difficult to remove on the left doors that I had to sand it off. One thing I hadn't done yet was remove the key plate of any of the doors. A very good way to find out original paint colors of a room is to remove a key plate from one of the doors, because few people, if any, will actually remove it when repainting. Therefore, the original paint is usually still there underneath. Since it hasn't been exposed to daylight, it hasn't suffered fading and other harmful agents.

Removing a plate in the kitchen, I found shellac. This and much of the trim was indicating a shellacked kitchen in 1896. But why was some of the door trim apparently indicating original paint? A paint history analysis answered the question definitively.

A paint history analysis involves sanding down through the layers to expose each coat. This can be done with a palm sander and some 220 grit paper. Often some light oil is used as well. The trick is to sand a small spot down to the wood, about the size of a dime. The edges are feathered out gradually so that each layer is exposed, revealing the colors used over the years. In my case, I chose several spots. The image below show one test spot done on a shellacked area. You can easily see five distinct layers of paint, although I believe the final color, white, was done several times. It is interesting to try to imagine the room in any of the earlier colors, especially the gray. What the analysis cannot tell us is when the colors were changed, which would be even more interesting.It appeared that the second-to-latest color above, the tan, matched the bottom coat of the un-shellacked sections, the coat directly on the wood: It seemed hardly possible that the un-shellacked sections were never painted until this second to last paint color was applied. Therefore, I theorized that someone began a quest to remove all the paint and shellac from all the trim in the kitchen, and had intended to start fresh with new shellac or the tan paint. This person must have done two doors worth, gave up stripping, and painted over everything. To be absolutely certain, I wanted to find any spot on the un shellacked piece of trim, which had a trace of the earlier colors. I found such a spot, as shown in the image below. On the face of the trim, you can see the wood poking through the tan and white. On the side of the board, the full history of colors is shown. Case settled: someone reworked a few doors, the kitchen was not originally painted, it was shellacked cypress. We intended to follow the original shellacked scheme, but changed our mind in favor of a painted scheme. This would make for a brighter kitchen and a change from the rest of the house, which is all shellac.

With the color mystery solved and the electric roughed in, it was time to get back to the blocking for the wainscoting. By this time, I had grown discontented with the traditional blocking method advocated by many and shown above. I'm not fond of toe-nailing anything (or toe-screwing for that matter). I find it makes for a weak connection and is not robust when the toe nailed board takes a battering from hammering. I spent many hours considering alternatives and came up with another solution, seen here: A five inch wide pine plank is secured to the wall at chair rail level. The chair rail will cover it. Screwed behind to the plank are 8" tall sections of 3/4" plywood. This leaves an inch and a half exposed plywood to act as backing on the top and bottom for drywall and beadboard respectively, and they both sit on the same plane as the face of the studs! I did not want the beadboard furred out from the wall over a layer of drywall or plywood. This way, the chair rail is replaced where it originally was and the window aprons and moldings could be left untouched. When complete, it would look as if the beadboard belonged there from the beginning, and not appear as a later addition shoehorned in. A good way to screw the backer plywood to the plank is to clamp the sections before using the screw gun. The screws used were 1.5" course thread "deck" screws. Any doubts I had as to the robustness or solidity of this solution were quickly put to rest. It's like a rock. The image above shows the concept applied to the bottom of the beadboard as well. You can see that somewhere along the way, I decided to remove the original baseboard. It seemed to me that since we were going for a painted kitchen rather than the original shellacked cypress, there was little reason to spend the hours stripping and re-painting the original baseboard. It was easier to carefully remove it and store it. This way if someone in the future wants to restore the kitchen to the original appearance, the baseboards will need not suffer having been stripped twice. The bottom is done in the same manner as the chair rail, except a wider plank is affixed horizontally to the studs. Behind this, the plywood backers are screwed. The diagonal stud is a "knee brace"; a common method for constructing corners of houses. These knee braces are one aspect that give Victorian houses their celebrated structural integrity. You can see in that image above how the beadboard will lay nicely between the horizontal planks. The finish baseboard will be applied over the lower plank. This lower plank does not extend all the way to the floor; it does not need to; the finish baseboard will touch the sub-floor.

The image on the left below shows more wall as prepared. You can see that the window stool has not been removed. The window trim was removed at an earlier date when I thought it was necessary to do so. Removing this particular trim prompted me to re-think removing trim altogether, and now I don't. The bottom of the insulation is devoid of kraft paper because the insulation was there first, before I conceived this beadboard approach. As I worked I realized I need not remove the kraft paper. The image above right shows the end at the water closet doorway. You might notice that I stripped the paint from the side of the case molding next to where the beadboard would be installed. This is done because it is much easier to do now than after the beadboard is installed. You can also see some markings on the horizontal planks. These are little notes to mark where things are; once the drywall is installed above and the beadboard installed below, these notes will be the only visible indicators of where the studs are. The scribble on the very end mentions the gap in the blocking slightly above, so that I don't put a drywall screw in the spot later on. To visualize what it would look like, I placed a piece of original chair rail and baseboard in their proper positions, along with a few pieces of beadboard, as shown below: Now it was time to begin installing the beadboard. All along, I wanted to use something robust and real, not beadboard plywood or that bad quality stuff the big box stores pawn off as bead board. (Appearance must always be backed by substance.) I found some very respectable 3 quarter inch beadboard at a local lumber mill made from southern yellow pine. This beadboard has a nice heavy and solid feel to it. Below you can see the methodology for keeping things plumb. I devised a plumb-bob from some string, a weight, and a piece of wood. Each beadboard is checked for plumb-ness as it is installed. Below I am holding the plumb-bob against a new piece of bead board. This is an interior wall, which explains the absence of a vapor barrier here: In the event that the piece was not quite plumb, a sawzall blade and/or putty knife slipped into the crack adjusted the piece to perfection: At first I checked plumb-ness for each new piece, after a while I found it only necessary to check once every 5 pieces or so; things kept pretty much true. The next picture shows the kitchen south wall coming along, as well as an interesting mistake I made. Can you spot it? The mistake was that the grain of the beadboards are grouped by board; you can see that the boards installed above are cut from three different planks. I should have randomized the installation. Had I been intending to stain this, it would have been a problem. Because we are painting it, we can let it slide.

The following images show the scope of the job: I realized along the way that since the bottom two inches of the beadboard would be covered by top-molding on the mop board, I could face nail the bottoms; two nails per board, in addition to a toe-nail making it a robust installation. When the chair rail is installed it will cover the top quarter inch of the beadboard and the bottom half inch of the drywall.

The result of this method means the beadboard does not "bury" the window and door moldings. It all looks very natural and original to which this image below can attest. The apron, stool, and trim of this window were not removed at all. The bead board being installed on the same plane as the original plaster, and being the same thickness, mates with the moldings in a proper fashion, and will be as if originally installed when the house was built: We started pushing around some ideas for the stove area. We both really wanted to have subway tiles behind the stove. It would add character to the kitchen as well as being historically appropriate. I sketched some concepts in Visio. We tweaked it, and the final visualization came out as so Then we could take what was on the computer screen, and make it reality. Below we prepare the tile area behind the stove location for the tile. For tile backing, we used Durok cement board. Here the sheets are being installed. The images above show several interesting things. You'll notice that I am insulating the interior walls. I do this to reduce noise transmission around the house. For interior insulation I use plastic encapsulated R13. This keeps the fiberglass dust to a minimum. For exterior insulation you may have noticed I use kraft-paper faced. This is because I believe the kraft paper is a poor vapor retarder, and I want a poor vapor retarder because I install a proper vapor retarder in the form of 6 mil plastic sheet on exterior walls. I do not want the dreaded "double vapor barrier." I have added vertical blocking in the stud bays over each door. This will serve as a nailer for the additional vertical case molding to be installed over each door. This molding will divide the tile section from the wallpaper section as seen in the concept sketch above. You may also notice that there is a vertical piece of molding and a rosette missing from the right hand door. These pieces were bisected when the original builders were building the bump-out to encase the chimney. This molding has since been replaced and the rosette restored and replaced. We'll talk a bit about that a bit below. If you look at the floor plan (top of this page) you can see how this wall had a bump-out. This bump-out encased a chimney; the one we took down. You can also see the framing I had to do where the chimney went up through the ceiling. There are two electrical boxes for wall sconces, which will light each side of the stove. And lastly, the moldings themselves, I had earlier stripped of their many years of paint.

After the bead-board and Durok were complete, I installed the baseboards (mop boards). I decided that, because the baseboard would be painted, there was little point in stripping, re-painting, and re-installing the original baseboards. It is much easier to install new baseboard than to strip the original. The original will be stored safely for possible future re-remodel (like, way in the future). I wanted the baseboard to have the exact dimensions as the old, and have the exact same top molding. I also wanted the new baseboard to be hardwood, and since they were to be painted, poplar was a good choice. It will stand up to the occasional knocks better than pine. In the interim, we've placed some drywall. Here Colleen prepares a draft barrier for the baseboard to be installed behind her. The baseboard itself is eight inches high. I had to rip it to width from wider plank on a table saw. In this next image, the baseboard has been installed. The draft barrier is a strip of 6 mil plastic sheet installed behind the baseboard. The barrier's top is aligned to the top of the baseboard and the bottom juts out over the floor. You can see it poking out from under the baseboard in this image: You can also see that the bottom of the bead board is face nailed, and that one or two don't reach the baseboard. That is ok because the baseboard molding will cover it.

Once the baseboard was installed the molding could be installed. I had a local mill replicate the exact profile and dimensions of the original, in poplar. This way, like the baseboard, we would not have to strip thick paint off the original, it could be safely stored away for future, or to replace damaged un-painted baseboard molding in un-painted parts of the house. Houston we have a problem...

I didn't remember when installing the baseboard that the original baseboard was thicker than the 3/4" poplar replacement. Since the top molding was an exact replica, the top molding protruded from the wall further than the baseboard. It was quite noticeable, and had to be rectified. The baseboard had to come off, and be shimmed out an eighth inch. If it's worth doin', it's worth doin' right. Here you can see the shims, stapled over the location of the studs, which accomplish this. The image also shows the draft barrier as well as some additional pink insulation stuffed under the backing board, just for good measure. With the shims in place, the baseboard went back on, and the top molding thereafter. Two and a half inch finish nails hold both the baseboard and molding, and are set slightly below the surface with a nail set. Later I would fill the nail holes with wood filler and sand them smooth. These images show the finished baseboard look, and gives a preview of the chair rail and tiles, which we'll talk about next, starting with the tiles. The first order of business for doing the tiles was to get everything set up. Ready to rock n roll. All the tiles were stacked for easy access. Water and rags at the ready. Trowel and tile cutter waiting. These tiles call for polymer fortified thinset mortar for installation, and I didn't want it drying out while I was trying to get my act together: The next order of business was to prepare the spacers. I elected to use 1/16th inch spacers for this job as I wanted the tiles to be set as close together as possible. This would mimic Victorian installation practice. The image below shows the 16th inch spacers and modification I did to each in order to use them for a subway pattern. Many people prefer to use the spacers with one leg poked down between the tiles. Used in this fashion, I wouldn't have had to modify them. But I prefer to embed the spacers in the plane of the tile, slightly below the tile's surface. I find this an easier method on a vertical wall; the spacers don't fall out when you're adjusting things. The small pile to the right have been "subway modified" with a sharp blade: The next step was to lay out the first level of tile to find the center-line. This image shows the first level taped in place: With everything ready, it was time to mix up the mortar. I used a bucket and a drill mixer, mixing it to no-drip consistency. The first few rows established our method: I would trowel on thinset, then Colleen would hand me tiles as I stuck them on. Then as I cut the two tiles for the end of each row, she'd begin pushing tiles deep into the thinset and adjust to a laser line: When I'd finished cutting the end tiles, I'd help her align tiles, we'd push in the next row of spacers, and repeat.

For each new row, we'd raise the laser level and I'd fill the glass tape between Durok sheets with plenty of thinset. I didn't trowel on more than two rows of thinset at a time. Soon we had some progress made: While doing this , we had been thinking about pot racks for the coming oven, and it was at this point that we decided that rather than a modern hanging pot rack, we would hang the pots, olde style, on the wall. Therefore we stopped tiling and I jumped back onto the computer to sketch it out: You get the idea, the base for the pot hooks would be a plank, and this plank would underlie the sconces. The sketch was rough, but I did put in the oven at scale height to make sure scale pots wouldn't interfere with it. The tiles would be installed around it, not under it. We would in fact save a few tiles this way. The number of hooks was a guess too. I decided the plank would be poplar, inch and a half thick because it would need protrude from the face of the tile in order to give the hooks a little more of a boost away from the wall. This way, the pots would be more likely to hang free without touching the wall. It would also need to be a fair bit wider than the electrical boxes so that the sconce bases wouldn't hang over the edges. I measured and cut the plank, then drilled the holes for the sconces using a 4.5 inch hole saw: There is a very slight bow to the wall; a very slight convexity, only noticeable when viewing edge-on, but there nonetheless. This caused a bit of consternation because I didn't want the very thick, rigid poplar plank to assert stress on the wall, not a tiled wall anyway. As screwed to the wall, the plank would be forced out of true, and would act as a spring, tying to return to straight, and trying to pull the wall with it. My solution was to cut a series of slots on the back of the plank, thus making it more flexible; more able to indulge in the slight curve that would be asked of it: With the plank installed, we could continue tiling. At this point we had to set up the workbenches to act as scaffolding. The top row of tiles would be nine feet off the floor. We also had to improvise an elevated material table: We then continued right to the top. At this point I've replaced the missing case molding on the right-hand door with a piece of replicated molding. The inner rosettes on both doors (one shown missing) need restoration as they were modified when the original builders encased the chimney. The small gap under the pot plank will be filled with molding.

The last image shows the section grouted It also shows a preview of the chair rail. We'll talk about that soon, but first, back to those damaged rosettes.

Both rosettes were cut into by the original chimney bump-out and required attention. The rosette abutting the left hand side of the tiles had a chunk taken out it by the original builders. This corner of this rosette was part of a small broom closet seen in the "before" images at the top of this page. It was my job to restore it back. The fact that we are painting the kitchen trim makes this possible. Here is the culprit: That is a close up of the top right of the left-hand door (shot taken before the tiles went up).

The first step was to clean the missing area of the rosette as best I could. Dust was removed leaving the wood clean. Next, a two part epoxy filler from SystemThree was mixed up. Two equal parts of epoxy and hardener are kneaded in the hands until the color is uniform: Using a putty knife, the golf ball sized glob is pressed into the missing area. It is only shaped very slightly. The key here is to get good adhesion by firm application. The result is shown below. It is left to dry for a day: Once dry, this type of epoxy is workable just like wood. I used the Japanese ryoba saw to cut the excess almost into shape: Then I used the palm sander to finish it off, blending the sides in perfectly with the planes of the rosette. A little more sanding on the face, and after painting, nobody will be the wiser, except of course you.

As for the rosette on the right-hand door, it and the case molding were altered by the original builders to facilitate the bump out that would encase the chimney (now removed). They had sliced off a portion of these details. The case molding was replaced by a local mill and installed as you saw above, but I elected to repair the rosette. Here is the rosette, fresh from the attic, where it had been waiting patiently for a long time to be returned to its rightful place. You can see that the left hand edge has been sliced off. Originally, the small bump-out extended from the point where the rosette was sliced. Now that the wall has no bump-out, there is no reason for the rosette to be un-whole.

I started by removing the paint and the nails protruding from the back. Typical advice when removing nails from trim is to pull the nails right through the piece out of the back side. I have found that when working with trim this old and brittle, it's best to forego that advice and simply grind them off. This particular wood does not take well to stress in its old age. Here I remove the old nails. Next, a piece of wood is cut to approximate size in order to make up for the lost width. The grains are matched as best they can, and the piece is glued to the rosette. In this case I am using poplar, because I had plenty of it around. The fact that the different woods might expand and contract at different rates is not lost on me. However, I did not wish to tap into what few pieces of original cypress I have. If it fails I will rework the approach using pine, but for now, it seems solid and strong. Once the glue was dry, I could trim the piece to the correct shape and sand it flush -but there was more to do. The rosette now partially covers the field of tile we installed earlier. This tile protrudes from the wall a bit more than the adjoining drywall. Thus I had to cut a rabbet so that the rosette would sit flush. With the rosette shaped, the next step was to fill any nail holes and seams with wood filler. Then it could be sanded smooth and installed: The vertical molding in the images above is the reproduction. I had it milled to the exact specifications of the original. The horizontal molding over the door is original. The images below show more of the doors and the drywall which is now being installed. At this time, I removed the hinges to the various doors so that we could have a hinge boiling party. Boiling the hinges is the easiest way to remove the paint. About the time I was finishing up the chair rail and wainscoting, I started planning and implementing the ironing board closet. This closet as imagined, would be a wall-based cabinet where would reside an ironing board. This would eliminate the need to drag a conventional ironing board out of a closet and set it up in the kitchen. An ironing board cabinet would be like a murphy bed, with the ironing board on hinges, which could fold down when required. My design goal for the ironing board, (like everything else) was to build it as it may have been done originally. Seamless integration of new ideas into the historical context is, for me, the most rewarding pursuit of old house restoration. It's a great compliment when someone asks if a feature I installed is original to the house. This question means I have succeeded in solving a most enjoyable problem: authentic hypothetical historical Victorian features. The first decision concerning the ironing board was where to locate it. There were only two real choices: on the east wall to the right of the window, or on the north wall to the left of the window. The south wall was dedicated to the stove and the west wall was slated to receive a Hoosier. I selected to North wall, where the opened board would not block any foot traffic to the house exits (in case I start a fire with when ironing). The board would go into the center stud bay shown in the image below: The cabinet interior would be framed into the bay. The images below show the sides of the cabinet cut from clear pine. The ends I dadoed to accept top and bottom panels for the cabinet. The bottom dado, as seen in the center image below, required a fancy cut in order to seat behind the chair rail. Before the cabinet was installed, I lined the back of the stud bay with ¾" extruded poly-foam sheet. This way, the cabinet would not effect a complete insulation void in the wall. In order to affix the cabinet sides to the studs, I opted for large brass wood screws. These would be countersunk, as is done on old window stops. The center image below shows a good detailed close-up of how the bottom of the cabinet sides meet the chair rail backer. The base of the cabinet will be slid into the dado. The cabinet top follows suit. The image to the right shows the cabinet sides installed. Since the cabinet would be framed with the same case molding used in the rest of the house, it was necessary to frame out the sides of the studs in order to support nailing the 5" wide molding around the cabinet. Here the framing is complete, the cabinet top and bottom have been installed, and the insulation has been re-installed to the area At this point we must leave the ironing cabinet briefly to talk about... You may have noticed in previous images that the drywalling has begun. The drywall was installed where and when possible, not all at once. You may have also noticed that the walls are being drywalled before the ceiling, which is not the typical order. Usually, the ceiling is drywalled first so that the ceiling sheets can be supported around the perimeter by the wall sheets. In our case, we were planning on a tin ceiling, which would require plywood for support. Plywood would not require perimeter support thus we were free to sheath the walls first. Another factor was that we were considering radiant heat, so we wanted the ceiling open as long as possible in case we went that route, which would involve staple-up pex in the joist bays. Since drywall is not a terribly exciting subject, I will not dwell on it for long. I will present the image below as indicative of the general kitchen drywall method. First, ¼" pine furring is nailed to the studs. This furring I ripped from 2x4s. The furring brings the drywall out so that the face of the drywall meets the back of the window and door trim. The original plaster/lathe was ¾" thick. The ¼" furring plus the ½" drywall makes up the whole original reveal. The Six mil poly sheet is stapled onto the furring. The poly sheet provides a vapor barrier, required in cold climates. These days, I install the poly sheet under the furring. This allows me to pull the sheet tight as I work, and provides a small air channel behind the drywall. The images below show the drywall operation in progress around the room. Because I'm working with window and door trim in place, I often must jigsaw in smaller pieces than would otherwise be required. With drywall coming along, we also turned our attention to painting the wainscoting and mop-board, stripping any remaining woodwork, and installing the chair rail. The image below to the left shows all three of these operations in progress. You can see a chair rail has been installed, you can see the half-bath doorway is half stripped, and the wainscoting under the ironing board is painted, Bone White by Benjamin Moore. You can see that I installed poplar chair-rail. I had it milled to match the exact profile as the original cypress chair-rails. The original rails are stored for safe keeping. Two pieces of case molding around the scullery door needed to be replicated as well.

When I reached the ironing board with the chair rail, it became time to implement an idea I had for merging the chair rail into the ironing board case molding. The latter would rest on plinth blocks which would server to interrupt the chair rail. This image shows the two plinth blocks in place, separated by a short piece of chair-rail. I gave the plinth blocks a bevel on the bottom face and left the top face square. Like the rosettes in the room, they are slightly thicker than the surrounding chair-rail and case molding, the same thickness as rosettes. With the plinth blocks in place, I could install the first piece of case molding. Then the next piece of case molding... I cleaned up the original window case molding and re-installed it on the window to the right, then with the laser line in place for reference, I then ran the chair-rail over to the window. The final items of the ironing board cabinet included installing beadboard in the back, the short piece of case molding along the top, and two rosettes. The rosettes I made plain; cut squares of poplar thicker than the case molding, the same thickness as the plinths below. I then continued the chair-rail around the room. The image to the right above also shows the bevel in the ironing board cabinet's plinth blocks. You can see that I've set the nails and filled the nail holes. There are also two original window rosettes waiting to be cleaned up and returned to their places on the window above, and a bit of old paint still remaining on the window stool.

I thought the ironing board cabinet was pretty good, but had it been installed when the house was built, the builders almost certainly would have used the same rosettes as used in the rest of the room. Therefore, to effect harmony and a more precise restoration I opted to turn the plain block rosettes to match the period ones. The profile is fairly simple; a convex circle surrounded by an ogee curve. I chucked the rosette into the lathe. Using an original rosette, I could transfer the boundaries of the design to the blank rosette in pencil. Finally, turning at slow speed, I used a parting tool and a small gouge to create matching rosettes. After a light sanding they were ready to go. Rosettes turned by hand (my hand) are never exact duplicates of the originals or even each other. But with a little patience and time, I got them almost exact. Here they are installed, with the first coat of paint on the cabinet After several more coats of paint throughout the room, we were ready to move on the ceiling and the floor. I had a plasterer come in and do the ceiling. He used blue board with veneer plaster. He was very quick and precise with his trowel, leaving me without any sanding to speak of. Unfortunately, I have no images of the ceiling in progress. Immediately after the ceiling was dry, we had the floor installed. After considering many species of wood, we settled on ¾"x5¼ solid Australian cypress. Australian cypress is harder than oak and it looks very much like pine. Again, I have no images of the installation, but here is the finished result. The finish is oil based polyurethane. Selecting wallpaper was quite a task. Fortunately, it's easy to browse countless books online. We clicked through thousands of possibilities hoping to find just the right diaper pattern to compliment the restoration. We finally found a perfect Victorian kitchen pattern by Stroheim & Romann. It is the background to this web page seen to the right. The images below show the walls papered. With wallpaper up, the kitchen was almost done. The only thing left was a few pieces of filler molding around the stove tile area. We started to think about... The Hoosier had been waiting patiently in the parlor for a long time. We found it on Craiglist for a good price. It's day had now come, we could move it into place. The stove you see below is a real 1903 Glenwood F. It has been electrified and now has a standard stainless oven with broiler and bake. This stove is temporary until I finish restoring another stove which will replace this one. More details on that to follow. The image below also shows that I have one gasolier installed. It's brother will be installed on the left. These are 1890s sconces which have been electrified. I found these on eBay. By the time we had reached this point, the impetus to continue in the kitchen had waned in favor of other more pressing projects. We took a break from the kitchen. Though the break was physical, the mind always works, especially in a room that you spend a lot of time in. As I stared at the ironing board closet over the months, I began to envision it as something different -as small built-in shelves to hold spices and other small items. This option seemed to offer more immediate use in line with the function of the room: cooking. Though I felt the ironing board would be just as historically appropriate, truth is, we don't do a lot of ironing. I began thinking about how the shelves would be implemented. As usual, I wanted it to be simple and appropriate. The images below show the first pass shelving: the shelves would be supported by simple fixed bands. I used various spice jars and other objects to determine a placement for the shelves which would offer some variety for different sized items. At the top of the closet, I made a small concave trim piece with a quatrefoil design. This was done on a scroll saw. The quatrefoil would be a small token artistic embelishment -a small decorative allowance in an otherwise utilitarian room. The above design sufficed for a while. During the months I looked at it, unpainted, I began to learn of a predilection by Victorian joiners to implement adjustibility in their shelves. It was very common for built in shelving to have the means to replace the location of each shelf to facilitate the items at hand. Here at Ocean Manor, built in bookshelves in the bedrooms incorporate this philosophy. This image below, shows how victorians typically implemented this adjustibility in kitchen cabinets. If you look close at the shelf jambs, you can see the sawtooth boards. Because the fixed shelving seemed constraining, and also because the adjustable method was appropriate, I elected to change what I had done. Our spice cabinet would be a bit small for that exact method shown in the image above, so I opted to make it adjusable using simple dado jambs. The first step was to remove what I had done, fill the nail holes, and repaint. I left the quatrefoil trim in place. The image below shows the dado jambs. These I cut from poplar, like the rest of the cabinet. I put together a small jig for the table saw to aid in making the cuts. The jig consists of a straight board clamped to the mitre fence, along with a small indexing pin, to guide the next cut, When the dadoes are cut, the jambs are both part of the same board. Then the board is ripped in half lengthwise. This ensures there is no mismatch in the alignment of the dadoes. The image below shows the jambs dadoed and ripped. I used the shelves I had cut for the previous version, added a cavetto to each face, and made an allowance on the ends for the thickness of the dadoed jambs. I made this allowance "blind" in that the cavetto covers the allowance. This is shown in the image below: Finally, the jambs could be installed then painted. Painting was the hard part, as it had to be done in each dado without causing drips or sags which would hinder shelf operation. The images below show the finished spice cabinet. Here are some detail shots of the finished cabinet.
Yet to come:

-Final Trim and moldings
-Pot Rack/Shelf #1
-Pot Rack/Shelf #2
-Decoration and fit-out


This page will be updated as we accomplish more....