The Historic District

Hi folks, I'm about to start residing part of my house. I have 1/2 inch cedar bevel siding, and lot's of trim, but I'm uncertain about the grade of cedar I need for the bevel siding, or if finger-jointed quality is improved from years past. The siding will be painted. Has anyone resided with lower g...

I'm a week away from attempting this and was wondering if anyone has prior experience with it. I'm doing a two-coat application with blue board, a base coat, and a finish coat. I have the blue board up, and in the process of sourcing various tools. Not too common in the Midwest, so tools and materia...

We have both forced air for heating and cooling, and hot water radiators. Don't replace your radiators. I won't go into the back-story for how we ended up with both (Bought a house with freeze damage). But having both, I can say there is no comparison between forced air heating and hot water radiato...

We've been working on our Queen Anne for a while now. Here's a photo of the upper half of a pocket door. The house was carved up into apartments and for some reason they cut two pocket doors in half and just left them hanging in the wall.

I'm able to jack the joists up no problem, almost to level. Certainly enough to make it a worthwhile pursuit. The LVL's can bear on the interior wall. The exterior wall is balloon frame, so the original joists are fastened to the studs and sit on a ribbon board. I'm now thinking of moving the bedroo...

Howdy folks, I have 16 ft spans and 2 x 10 joists. All the joists have sag of about 3/4 inch. I can live with that. However, the original builders used a sistered pair of 2 x 10 joists to carry the load of a second floor bedroom wall. This bedroom wall runs parallel to the joists below it. The wall ...

I had an antique lighting dealer tell me I can get cast iron gas chandelier arms reproduced for $400.00 per arm. He said they use rubber molds. These arms are of the Neo-Grec style, so not super ornate. I contacted Al Bar Wilmette and holy cow they were expensive. $3,000 to $4,000 just for the molds...

Anyone have experience with getting antique brass parts duplicated? I have some antique lighting I'm working on.

I see some folks out there making reproduction lighting, so it can't be that hard .... can it?

Jeff

I disagree with most of the posters here. Reason #1: Anecdotal evidence. It's not the basis for sound decision-making. Just because you were around lead and were ok blah blah ... there are so many variables. Reason #2: Scientific evidence. A lot of it is old. A lot of it is not good science in the s...

Tapering the trim is an interesting idea. Thanks for the idea and great photo. That's what I'm grappling with.