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Saturday, December 29, 2012

An entrance treatment on a historic home


 It was many years ago, and I was a young carpenter. I didn't take a before shot, but if you can imagine just the finial and the shape of the turning within, capping off a door casing with buttons in the corner, that was pretty much it. This would be about 20 years ago.

I had just finished off framing and trimming a glass roofed guest house, including mantles and kitchen, as well as a tennis court fence that took a crew of 50 nearly 3 months to build and now the main entrance to the house was looking a little shabby for it's new neighboring guest house.


The house is in the Barrie Ontario area, and if you can believe it, the owner received a gift from a friend just as I finished the headpiece... the 5 birds on a branch concrete casting you see in the middle. It was finished and I was packing up the tools when the owner walked up with the casting saying... "Just work this in ok?".

How it was done?  Just nested and built up trim, with a proper roof flashing tucked into the siding. It is sort of like a mantle, however everything needs to be sealed as you go, and you certainly cannot use Poplar... that would rot within a couple of years. Believe it or not I salvaged the old lead flashing from the original installation and used that to seal the turned finial and lower part of the curve after making it deeper.

By Lawrence Winterburn


1 comment:

jeleasure said...

Hey Lawrance,
Nice work. Carpenters are true artist in their craft. Not many people see it that way because most of the time the work is covered. Trim carptentry, that is where you guys get to show off. Great that your work is out doors in the photo. Gives you a chance to drive by and admire it every now and then.

I'm looking to build a network of bloggers whith whom I can share the priviledge of posting links to each others blogs on the side bar of one another's blogs. It may not seem necessary. But, believe me, it helps to get your blog listed high in the page rank when someone is searching for a carpenter. Or, in my case, a plumber. Give it some thought. Post a comment on my page and let me know. Thanks, Jim