Restoration Heaven

So yeah...we saw the most amazing house today. Our geology instructor Bob happens to own the house that I have been lusting after since we first visited the niagara region. It is a beautiful stone house that he has lovingly and painstakingly and perfectly extended, restored and conserved. This is the kind of project I am sure every skilled tradesperson dreams of being able to work on but is like a one in a billion project.

The front of Bob's house. Isn't it beautiful!

And the back. Also striking!  You can see the extension added on at the far left hand side.

Bob is a geologist who was raised in this area, but made his living in Calgary ('nuf said) and has retired back to this area. He is an incredibly sweet man and very very meticulous (two bound volumes on Niagara stone's worth of meticulous). We now are able to identify the stones that would have been quarried and used in this area to a tee. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we'll be whipping out our hand lenses and inspecting every heritage home, just to make sure that the write ups and plaques are accurate when they describe a building as limestone, because usually the plaques are wrong and they are dolomite or crazily whirlpool sandstone! Insane stuff, but now we know stone and all the unfortunate things that can happen to it when its not properly maintained - like when people use portland cement to repoint a wall. The results are nasty and heartbreaking, not to mention stone-breaking!

But the highlight of our day today was when our instructor gave us a tour of his home. It is a stone heritage house that he and his wife and a crew of 13 have been restoring and extending. The house is ah-mazing! And it was incredibly inspiring to see this kind of thought and painstaking care going into a building.

Being a geologist, Bob was very concerned with making sure that the right stones were used in the extension and in any of the replacement sills. Every piece of stone worked in the building - and there were a lot - was done as it would have been done originally by hand by a stonemason.

This sill happens to be from the last piece of whirlpool sandstone quarried from the Queenston Quarry. You can see the beautiful tooling and slight angling out of the sill. All done by hand!  The "crack" you can see in the sill towards the right side of the picture is actually very characteristic of whirlpool sandstone, it is where a shale pebble would have been and has now eroded, because it was much softer.

Even the landscaping edging is hand cut and tooled! With a mitred edge! 

There have been so many thoughtful and innovative solutions that have resulted from this restoration. All of the air intakes and vents are hidden beneath or behind the eavestrough. They even had a 'smokehouse' built to house all the ugly utility meters so that they wouldn't be visible inside (also all of the utilities are buried, so there is not a single ugly wire coming into the house).

The 'smokehouse'. They even built in fake windows that were bricked up from the first (with sills and everything!) for  the utility meters that have to be read from the outside.

The same care that Bob and his wife have had for the outside has been carried on inside. The floors have all been plank by plank stripped and recoated 8 times, individually! Walls that were external and had a coating of soot but are now inside, have been painted to look like the stones were always inside (i.e. never touched by soot - he assured us they did try to clean them but it didn't work). In the basement they stripped the whitewashed stone, but couldn't get all the different coloured coats of lime off, so new walls were mottled with similar bits of lime, to make the effect continuous. All of the outlets are recessed into the baseboards, with tiny little doors over them - so  they are not intrusive and historically inaccurate.

The tiny doors on the recessed outlets.  A corded outlet comes out when you need it and then just tucks away. Amazing detail!

 The stone detailing is absolutely beautiful inside as well. Every washroom has a beautiful all-stone shower stall. Every fireplace has beautifully tooled stone surrounds and hearths. And the new extensions have gorgeous lintels and sills in the doorways.

The shower in the basement bathroom. Insanely gorgeous!

The stone lintel that over the doorway that leads to the conservatory. It is so beautifully hammered,  producing the mottled effect in the centre of the lintel.  This is also the room that had the walls painted to cover the soot. Can you tell those stones are painted? or were ever covered in soot?

This a properly built, in working order, Rumford fireplace, renowned for its incredible draw (created by a very narrow chimney and side walls), this type of fireplace is rarely seen these days, but it is supposed to be incredibly efficient. You can see the freshly plastered chimney breast. It was old-school plastered by the man who will be teaching us about plaster later on, it incredibly takes a year to cure before painting. You've got to have some serious patience with this kind of work. All of Bob's house was plaster on stone where possible, except for two instances when drywall was necessary. He says that it makes for a very easy house to heat and cool. They didn't even put in air conditioning, it is that great.

Even all of the light fixtures are rewired restored originally gas fixtures and they are all incredibly gorgeous. They are from a man who does them all by hand at Ruth Jones Antiques in St. Catharine's.

Two of the many beautifully restored light fixtures in Bob's  home.   Everything just feels so authentic!

I can't even begin to explain how incredible it was to have the opportunity to see such a project (almost completed) and to witness such a great respect and love of history and built heritage. I think that the tour of Bob's house really inspired all of us today, and showed us that there are people not just all us crazy conservation students, who do really appreciate traditionally and skillfully built homes. I'm pretty sure that a landing a project like this would be like going to restoration heaven.