Lauren Parlin chose the vibrant paint colors for her new home and business in Hague, New York

When the youngest of Lauren and Ken Parlin’s three children had left home for college, the couple thought it was time for a lifestyle change. Having lived in suburban New Jersey for many years, they always felt drawn to their long-time family vacation destination in the Adirondacks. “We’d summered on Lake George and love the area,” says Lauren. One afternoon they were biking past an old general store in the hamlet of Hague—a summer community vibrant in the early twentieth century—and were intrigued by its charm. “We forgot all about it until it came up for sale, and we went to take a look,” says Lauren. Although the original general store had been divided into four separate rooms to create a private residence, the couple’s two daughters thought it would be the perfect place for Lauren to open a café and for Ken to telecommute from. The couple put in an offer on the structure and began to look for an architect who would have the sensibilities needed to bring the charming storefront back to its roots.

Uptown Downstairs

“I actually found Sandy Vitzthum on the web,” says Lauren. A Vermont architect, Vitzthum had the philosophy toward renovating old buildings that Lauren and Ken were looking for. Once Vitzthum was on board, the couple planned their renovation strategy. They decided to start with the first floor and turn back the clock. Although the structure originally was built as a general store in the 1880s, the building had been reincarnated several times over the years, operating as a shop, a boarding house for local miners, and even as a taxidermy. Many of the original design elements still existed on the main level. Intact were its open shelving and varnished plank walls. The floor was in fairly good condition as well. Vitzthum, working with contractor Tom LaPointe, removed the interior walls (leaving the support beams in place), which opened the space into one large dining room. Next, Vitzthum transformed an old shed room off the back of the general store into a commercial kitchen. LaPointe added support beams in the basement to shore up the floor to carry the weight of the commercial range. The downstairs also had to pass fire safety code, so LaPointe incorporated double layers of fire-retardant Sheetrock into the kitchen ceiling and walls.

Uptown Upstairs

The general store's original floors were painted for easy cleaning.

The upstairs of the building, which the couple decided to make into their home, had not weathered the years as well as the first floor. The rooms had gone through many renovations over the decades and had lost much of their original character. Dropped cork ceilings and faux paneling adorned the small “boarding house” rooms. Lauren wanted to bring the décor of the first floor into the upstairs living space. They also reconfigured the floor plan, orienting the dining room, living room, and kitchen to the back of the house, which had views of the brook and woodlands. Today these spaces open onto one another—five beams help divide the room functions.

To re-create the charm of the shop upstairs, Vitzthum gutted the interiors and introduced appropriate details evocative of the space below. Horizontal and diagonal paneling was brought in as wall covering. Made of 3″ fir boards, the paneling was finished with a coat of varnish to give it a warm patina. LaPointe installed new wide-plank white pine floors finished in tung oil. Vitzthum also had the windows replaced with Kolbe two-over-two sashes. She custom-designed the window muntins to match the original window profile. LaPointe salvaged as much of the interior woodwork as he could. He carefully removed and later reinstalled the window trim with bull’s-eye corner blocks.

A salvaged Glenwood stove adds authenticity to the kitchen.

Lauren also wanted to create more sleeping quarters, so Vitzthum explored how to best utilize the attic space. She transformed the third level by simply incorporating two shed dormers with casement windows, which provide additional space, natural light, and ventilation. In addition to re-creating the interiors and adding more bedrooms, Vitzthum added a two-story porch onto the back of the building that opens onto a bubbling brook. The screened porch off the upstairs living quarters is accessed through a set of glass doors off the dining room.

Salvaged Interiors

“Lauren was instrumental in re-creating authentic interiors,” says Vitzthum. “She has a great eye and scoured salvage and antiques shops for age-appropriate items for the house.” Salvaged blackboard was transformed into the kitchen counters, an old Glenwood stove graces the kitchen, and the built-in living room cabinets are faced with antique glass cabinet doors. The new staircase leading to the third floor—which replaced an old spiral wooden staircase—has an antique newel post and several antique balusters. LaPointe turned new balusters to match the old counterparts. An old milk bowl became the sink basin for the bathroom. “All these pieces lend authenticity and character to the house,” says Vitzthum.

Uptown Exterior

Vitzthum incorporated new exterior details into the design, including a two-story porch that overlooks the brook.

LaPointe introduced Charles Eastlake-inspired decorative cutout balusters to the two-story porch. He had seen the design on a hotel dating to a similar time period as the shop and felt it was an appropriate choice. To keep the proportions of a Victorian-era porch, Vitzthum chose to incorporate two railings to meet today’s height code requirements. “Older porch railings were typically 30″ high, but today if you have more than a 30″ drop, you have to add a 36″ to 42″ railing,” she explains. A simple railing tops the adorned piece strictly for safety.

Lauren chose paint colors that she felt would be forgiving to the original clapboard on the house. A dark olive green  with mustard and tangerine trim creates a handsome face to Uptown’s customers. Today, Lauren is chef/owner of the restaurant. It’s open during the height of the summer and fall season, when you can find Lauren greeting patrons. When the season quiets down, the couple often invites family and friends to join them for holidays. “It’s great to have a commercial kitchen and seating for 30 right in your own home,” says Lauren, who loves to entertain. The place offers the perfect environment for the couple to enjoy both their public and private realms under one roof.

Charles Mueller of Centerbrook Architects and Planners used some tricks in the master bedroom of this Connecticut house to cut down on building costs.

The walls of the master bedroom are inexpensive—and dimensionally stable—birch plywood ripped into 8″-wide boards. They were spaced with a dime to express the joints.

Exterior wood clapboards were used on the ceiling, and are reminiscent of the hull of a boat, with the keel, or fin board, camouflaging air diffusers.

The owners can watch the sunrise from an intimate deck, just large enough for a couple of chairs.

This brass door knocker is a style from the mid-1800s. Eric Roth photo

Getting the details right is more than half the battle to restoring, adding onto, or designing a traditionally inspired home. But the details are often the first design elements to go. Today, many new homes are lacking in subtle details, which add character and charm to interiors. In today’s housing industry, such architectural fine-tuning is all too often left out of the budget, to be replaced by additional unadorned square footage and a great big Palladian window in the front of the house. Consequently, architectural hardware is a detail often left to the most inexpensive stock pieces.

While getting the details right when it comes to hardware, and keeping your projects on budget, can be a challenge, it can be done. Architects and designers often create a fictitious timeline to give a home the look of a building built over a time. Understanding the historic timeline of architectural details can help decipher what details were popular when, and which are appropriate for your home.

History of Hardware

Nothing complements the architectural style of a new old house or an old house better than period door and window hardware. Whether it’s vintage, reproduction, or custom hardware manufactured by local artisans, period hardware provides character, form, and function in equal measure. Once a beacon for the progression of architectural styles that began in America with the geometry of Charles Eastlake and graduated through the excesses of Victoriana, the sparser Arts & Crafts style, and the acute angles of Art Deco, hardware took a misstep in the mid-twentieth century and has been fighting its way back into the public’s consciousness ever since. Today, it is often sidestepped, or even forgotten, by contractors in their door and window specs. As a result, homeowners are left either uninformed or overwhelmed by the quantity of choices, styles, and finishes available. Either way, the outcome is sure to be costly.

Mercury glass knobs were popular in the Greek Revival era. Jon Wallen photo

Preindustrial

Before the 1800s, function, not fashion, dictated the design of architectural hardware. Hand-forged iron hinges, latches, and heavy rim locks offered utility as well as security. Local blacksmiths forged strap hinges and thumb latches of imported English iron for these early postmedieval structures. One of the most common hardware designs was the Suffolk bean latch, named for the handle plate and the region of England where it originated. Blacksmiths varied the design by forging hearts, spears, and tulip shapes for the handle plate. Heavy strap, H and HL hinges supported these early doors. With the advent of better building techniques in the 1700s, the Georgian style flourished, and the grandest homes imported brass from England.

Greek Revival

Introduced in the mid-1800s, the Greek Revival style emerged, as well as pressed glass, and colorful pressed glass knobs began to appear on interior doors—blue and amethyst were popular colors. Another ubiquitous knob was the mineral knob or, as you might know them, the Bennington knob.

Victorian

Architectural hardware blossomed in the late 1800s in both America and Europe. The industrial revolution, new house designs, and Victorian aesthetic sensibilities gave rise to a decorative hardware makeover. Innovative casting methods enabled companies to mass-produce hardware at affordable prices. With the new sand-cast technology, companies could produce hundreds of pieces a day compared to what the local blacksmith could produce.

In 1869 in the United States, the Metallic Compression Casting Company was awarded its first design patents for decorative hardware, and by 1872 many companies had designers on staff to create ornamental hardware. Inspiration came from every corner of the globe and from every historical period. The Byzantine Empire, Colonial America, sixteenth-century England, Amsterdam, ancient Egypt, and China were just a few places tapped for their aesthetic sensibilities.

A Victorian-era doorknob boasts a lion's face on the handle. Eric Roth photo

Revival Styles

At the end of the nineteenth century, housing styles changed yet again, with the United States recently celebrating its centennial, and the building industry looked back to revive past house styles. Simple unadorned brass and wroughtiron hardware were also introduced. Architects, builders, and kit-house purveyors also introduced Tudor, Spanish Colonial, and French Norman styles. The hardware found in these houses was rustic, charming, and made of iron.

Arts & Crafts

Influenced by England’s William Morris and America’s Gustav Stickley, the Arts & Crafts movement introduced a new house style as well as a new philosophy in house design. Morris challenged the English Victorian society to have “nothing in their homes that they do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” And this philosophy reached right down to the doorknob.

Doors adopted a rustic hand-hewn, hand-finished appearance—whether they were constructed by hand or not. Custom doors would often feature oversized wrought-iron hinge straps. Arts & Crafts doors drew on preindustrial metals such as bronze, brass, copper, and iron, while rough surfaces simulated hand hammering or ancient casting. Designs also took on rectilinear forms and geometric shapes.

Architectural Hardware is published by Quarry Books.

Antique apples offer sweet-tasting fruit as well as beauty to the new old house garden.

One of the very first things I did after I bought my home outside Boston was to plant an orchard of heirloom apple trees. Some people thought that quite strange at the time, especially since my 1852 house had neither working plumbing nor electrical systems, and the whole place, from rooftop to foundation, was under renovation. But I didn’t. While the workmen busily felled rain-soaked walls, ripped out damaged sills and otherwise made a complete disaster of the interior, I, oblivious to all except a mounting unease about the costs, blithely prepared and cleared a piece of overgrown land and set out the trees I had purchased before I’d even closed on the property. Friends and neighbors would stop by and note the progress of the house renovation and then cast a bemused glance in my direction, wondering what in the world I was doing out there in the field.

But there was method to my madness. You see, the previous winter I had been bitten by the antique apple bug, seduced by catalog descriptions of luscious long-forgotten apples that were old when the Colonies were young. These were deliciously redolent apples not only for eating out of hand, but also for baking, cider, cooking, and general storage, fruit of sonorous name and historic associations like Roxbury Russet, Tompkins’ County King, Cox’s Orange Pippin, and Duchess de Oldenburg. The books and catalogs promised culinary delights unknown to the modern purchaser of our hard, nearly flavor-free supermarket varieties, and I knew that if I wanted to sample these delights anytime soon, I needed to get started immediately.

Now, almost 15 years later, friends and neighbors wonder at my sanity no longer, as they are too busy marveling at the bushels of shining apples produced by these magnificent, long-lost varieties and wondering why in the world they haven’t a tree or two in their own backyards. That’s a very good question, because as recently as 50 years ago, no homeowner worth his salt would have been without a small home orchard, with some selection of apples, cherries, peaches, and pears, depending on location. At the time, of course, this planting was a matter of culinary necessity. Fruit was often expensive and impossible to find out of season, and every industrious homemaker harvested and preserved her own if she wanted fruit in winter. These days the appeal is not so much availability, but quality. If you wish to experience fruit flavor, aroma, and texture unlike any store-bought apple (or peach or plum), you must grow your own.

Given all these obvious advantages, why aren’t there more home orchards in the American landscape? In part, it’s a question of perception: When I ask my clients if they’ve considered growing fruit trees on the property, their answer is almost invariably, “Well, we’ve thought about it, but they’re so much trouble and so messy that we never tried.” While it is true that apple trees require a bit of care, they really demand no more work than many common landscape plants—a once- or twice-a-year pruning and, if you live east of the Mississippi where pests and disease are more prevalent, more than likely some sort of once-a-season spraying, which can be organic or inorganic, according to your needs and preference. As to the mess, once you taste some of these antique varieties, there will be few—if any—left on the ground to clutter the lawn, so that’s really not an issue either. (Horse and other animal owners, take note: Windfalls make great feed.)

Getting started is easy. In fact, the hardest part about the entire process is selecting which varieties to grow. Historically, apples were bred for specific uses—cooking, general eating, pressing for cider, winter storage ability, and the king of all uses, the dessert apple —meaning that there were, and still are, hundreds of varieties to choose from. Obviously, available space and planned use will force something of a triage, but that will still leave you in the happy position of selecting from dozens of different varieties. Fortunately, many historic museums and specialty orchards arrange tastings in the fall, and I highly suggest you attend and sample the delights to be had before buying your trees. Apples have an amazingly varied range of flavors and textures, and I was surprised to discover, after attending just such a tasting at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, last fall, that I had missed several really spectacular apples in my initial selection a decade ago—ones I no longer have room to accommodate.  The moral of the story: In the world of apples, as in all gardening, thorough research is everything.

Once you’ve done your homework and narrowed down your choices, it’s time to order plants, which will generally arrive through the mail in the early spring as three-year-old “whips”—a single rooted shoot with a branch or two. Though tiny, given a deep, cultivated soil, ample moisture, and sun, apples grow quite fast, and you can expect your first limited harvest in just a few years.   Just be sure that when you choose your trees to purchase dwarf (8′ to 10′) or semidwarf (12′ to 15′) species, even if you plan to devote considerable space to the enterprise. Each has its own set of advantages. Dwarf trees produce much more fruit per square foot than their full- size counterparts, and much sooner, too, so you can have many more varieties and harvest earlier than with standard-size trees.  Personally, though, I prefer semi-dwarfs; they don’t need to be staked like dwarfs and, to my eye, develop into a nicer-looking tree, which remains compact enough to pick without too much trouble.

Sources of Antique Fruit Trees
Over the years, I’ve ordered a considerable number of trees from Miller Nurseries, as well as from Southmeadow Fruit Gardens, which though smaller, has a much larger selection of rare and unusual varieties. Another excellent choice is Trees of Antiquity.

Michael Weishan is the author of The New Traditional Garden. For more tips and techniques of traditional gardening, follow Michael’s Old House, Old Garden blog.

Rustic Red

A. E. Sampson & Son Nature’s Rustic grade flooring is the perfect addition to a new old house. Shown here in red birch, knots, checking and small holes and variations in color are left in the wood for an authentic look. The flooring also comes in random widths to take full advantage of the tree. Located in Maine, the company prides itself on its practice of harvesting local tree species for its products.

For more information, visit A. E. Sampson & Son in the Products & Services Directory.

Antique Oak

Spruce up your kitchen with the beauty of handcrafted oak flooring from Carlisle Wide Plank Floors. Now Forest Stewardship Council Certified, Carlisle harvests old growth timber, which yields the highest quality wood flooring.

For more information, call 800.595.9663, or visit wideplankflooring.com.

All Heart

Located in Chatham County, North Carolina, Baba Wood Floors recycles and remills aged wood floors from derelict buildings, offering a floor with patina. Floors are hand-sanded and oiled to enhance their original beauty. Shown here is 200-year-old heart pine flooring.

For more information, call 800.542.4812.

Wide White Pine

Craftsman Lumber in Groton, Massachusetts, mills pine planks up to 30 inches wide and oak floors up to 18 inches wide mirroring widths used centuries ago. Shown above is its wide white pine planks and feather-edged paneling.

For more information, visit Craftsman Lumber in the Products & Services Directory.

Basket Weave Beauty

Tallon Lumber in North Canaan, Connecticut, offers a wide range of wood floor species to create decorative wood floors for your home. Shown here is its basket weave design in white oak and walnut.

For more information, call 860.824.0733 or visit tallonlumber.com. ]]> http://www.oldhouseonline.com/pretty-planks/feed/ 2 http://www.oldhouseonline.com/re-creating-a-boston-rowhouse/ http://www.oldhouseonline.com/re-creating-a-boston-rowhouse/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:53:03 +0000 Clare http://www.oldhouseonline.com/?p=11061

The window bay is a popular architectural detail in cities, as it allows precious natural light to fill front rooms on narrow streets.

With its elegant brick town houses, brass door knockers, decorative ironwork, and gaslit narrow streets, Boston’s Beacon Hill is the oldest historic district in Massachusetts. In 1962, the aristocratic neighborhood was designated a National Historic Landmark. The Beacon Hill Architectural Commission strictly regulates changes to any visible part of a structure, so visitors to this half-mile square enclave experience something of a time warp. Hiking up the steep brick sidewalk from shop-lined Charles Street to residential Pinckney Street, it’s easy to imagine Louisa May Alcott perched on the front stoop of #81, where she moved in 1880. The ghosts of former residents Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, and William Dean Howells still haunt the neighborhood where current denizens include Senator John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz.

When architect Sally DeGan of SpaceCraft Architecture in Lexington, Massachusetts, undertook the rehabbing of a five-story Federal town house not far from Alcott’s onetime home, the conundrum she faced could have been right out of Little Men: How to accommodate a family with five active boys and two dogs in little more than half the space they were used to living in? “The house had to be homey and comfortable,” DeGan says, “because they occupy every inch of it.” The architect’s challenge was to render an overall impression of the late 1800s, when the home was built, without compromising her passion for living spaces that welcome, comfort, delight, and inspire, all of which matched items on her clients’ wish list.

What started out as a kitchen-only project quickly turned into a total renovation. “We essentially gutted it down to the studs,” explains DeGan, noting that although the home was fine—it had been renovated three or four years earlier—the claustrophobic layout and heavy-handed décor did not suit the lifestyle of the new owners. The family was vacating a 6,500-square-foot suburban home they adored, a move precipitated by the boys’ increasingly busy schedule of in-town music lessons and their father’s desire to shorten his work commute. “We wanted to have a sense of their country home brought into the city,” says DeGan. “That was our starting point for the design, and it evolved from there.”

The 3,885 square feet of living space, from basement playroom to attic sleeping quarters, comfortably and efficiently accommodates the family members, who, in addition to being musically inclined, are athletic and love to entertain their large extended family. There are five bedrooms, five full baths, and one half bath. 

DeGan designed the interior moldings in this entryway, following details and proportions of nineteenth-century row houses in Beacon Hill.

“Given the narrow footprint and the challenging light conditions, we opened up rooms and connected spaces for multi-purpose living,” says DeGan. The homeowners wanted to add more bedrooms, but their first priority was the ground-floor space, which includes the kitchen, dining room, living room, laundry room, and a courtyard. In the kitchen, an existing steel beam was raised to increase the ceiling height to about nine feet. The coffered ceiling that now hides the beam exemplifies DeGan’s mastery of achieving harmony and balanced proportions throughout the house. For this and other trim work—moldings, wainscoting, mantelpieces—she tried to give the homeowners something of a sense of the house they had left as well as the feeling of a formal Beacon Hill home—the flavor of the 1800s, as in the Federal-style symmetry, if not a literal translation.

Sunlight pours into the cheery kitchen through three skylights—one new addition and two existing but replaced. A row of windows looks out on a newly painted brick wall that brings the outdoors in. Artist Jan Marie Spenard’s trompe l’oeil mural depicts the view from the front porch of a longtime family camp on Lake George. When it rains, the special crushed-mineral paint (which actually helps preserve the brick) creates a striking, jewel-like effect.

DeGan’s attention to form and function produced numerous new storage areas. “We design homes with a purpose for every space,” she says. “It’s amazing how much we struggled for a few inches here, a foot there.” Closets are built into the sides of archways, built-ins replace bureaus in the bedrooms, cabinets hide behind wall paneling, and window seats lift up to stash items underneath. Form and function was carried through by the builder, Silva Brothers Construction, who happens to be general contractor for PBS’s “This Old House.” They added whimsical touches like swings in the basement playroom and a zip line and climbing wall in the younger boys’ attic bedroom, where space under the eaves was reclaimed for a row of drawers,  each deep enough to hold a good-sized suitcase.

The only original architectural elements left untouched were Indian shutters on some of the windows and a niche in the wall at the top of the stairs. The staircase and banister are original to the home, but the sagging stairs had to be reattached to the wall. (Rebuilding them to code would have eaten up precious floor area.) There is new stained quartersawn oak flooring and radiant heat throughout the house, and several of the bathrooms have black-and-white basketweave Carrara marble floor tiles, a traditional pattern the homeowners are fond of.

Kitchen cabinetry resembles storage from the late nineteenth century.

Along with putting a premium on sunlight, the homeowners had strong feelings about the interior decoration. “Not too masculine, and not too frou-frou,” were the guidelines. “I didn’t want it to be too Louis XIV, but I wanted it to be evocative of the times,” DeGan says. The result is a pleasing combination of classic Federal-style elements, like semicircular fanlights and marble firebox surrounds, with furnishings from the family’s previous home that range from an orange leather couch in the kitchen to a Steinway grand piano in the second-floor parlor. The interior design incorporates a number of Federal arches, a style the homeowner admires. In fact it was she who did all the decorating, scouring E.R. Butler and other Charles Street antiques shops for period light fixtures, ordering Victorian floor tile from England for the front foyer and the mudroom, and finding just the right placements for the family’s eclectic art collection. The doors to the dining room are carved Chinese screens that the homeowners purchased as newlyweds and have brought with them over the years from home to home, and sometimes country to country.

With the exception of the ground-floor hallway and stairwell walls, which sport a predominantly yellow Brunschwig & Fils garden-theme wall covering, every finish is hand-painted. Decorative painter Ruthann Pordes chose a golden base color from her stencil work in the dining room and carried it through all the rooms. Complementing this predominantly yellow color palette are other classic Federal-era hues like sky blue, cream, celadon, and rosy peach.

While a visitor to this stunning Beacon Hill home will certainly be impressed by the abundance of aesthetic detailing, the occupants of the house have equal, if not more, appreciation for Sally DeGan’s skill as a problem solver and her ability to create a beautiful home that functions so well. “Our family is using her architecture,” says the homeowner with a smile. “Not a day goes by that we don’t appreciate what she’s done.”

Janice Rohlf is a freelance writer living on Cape Cod.

New York architect Gil Schafer collaborated with Historic Housefitters to create period-inspired hardware for a Hudson River Valley country house.

After David and Nancy Sposato married in 1980, they mutually decided to make good on their growing interest in old houses and purchased an old Cape in Putnam County, New York, for the specific purpose of restoring the structure. Without much research or bookwork on the subject, the two spent their nights and weekends attempting to re-create what it was that drew them to the house: a shared interest in authentic period details.

“We just looked around at a lot of old houses,” recalls David, “and it basically came down to certain architectural and design characteristics—not to mention whether it fit into the budget.”

Supported by two full-time jobs, they began on the foundation in the basement and worked their way up—room by room—until final tie-in of the restored chimney into the new roof. “We coined the phrase ‘resto-vating’ because almost everything had to be updated throughout the restoration process,” jokes David.

Of course, this love affair with their home occurred during the pre-Internet era, when one’s selection of materials was usually relegated to the local hardware store. When the couple eventually got around to picking out hardware, they realized their options were limited, choosing instead to seek out a blacksmith to re-create the missing pieces.

A gentleman from Vermont was commissioned and began working on some prototypes. Unfortunately, the wait period was much longer than anticipated, resulting in some unexpected delays. Then, after finally installing everything, some of the pieces didn’t quite fit or work as intended. “That’s when Nancy and I thought there’s got to be an easier way,” says David.

Go with the Flow

Just as they had gone about restoring their Cape, the couple set out with the same fervor in creating a niche hardware business that functioned with higher levels of both period accuracy and customer service. Without any marketing background or experience, they decided to create a catalog of various pieces and advertise in the back of homebuilding magazines. “We literally cut and pasted little pictures of items using type-set format,” admits David. “It was very tedious and time-consuming.” The first publication hit the stands in 1986, establishing Historic Housefitters Company as a one-stop shop for all your period hardware needs.

While Nancy handled the demands of networking contacts, administering contracts, and fine-tuning the details of their commission-based business, David worked on product development—including design, function, and workability. “The goal was to provide quality period pieces with the authentic appearance of a hand-forged item,” says David. “That and a higher level of service for every client.”

Initially, more clients were architects and designers, who were seeking authentic period pieces for their projects. By focusing on the architect/builder relationship, Historic Housefitters was able to create added value for homeowners who had interesting product ideas of their own. “Going in, you think about what or where your business should be,” reflects David. “Ultimately, you end up following the current of where the customers take you.”

Deeper Currents

The work that made Historic Housefitters profitable within three years of initial operations could not have occurred without the skill and pride of the blacksmiths subcontracted to do the work. “A very important part of our company’s business is the strong working relationships with the group of men who are dedicated to producing our own pieces,” notes David.

Many arrived at David and Nancy’s doorstep by word of mouth or in response to the early magazine ad, with most still remaining 20-some years since the company initiated business. Although spread out throughout New England, New York, and down to Virginia, the love of their craft acts as the common denominator that binds them.

“Our business is made up mostly of thumb latches and ‘L’ or ‘H’ hinges,” confesses David, “yet custom work must meet the same standards as volume work. In order to accomplish this, it must come from the same hand, or set of hands, every time so that over time it is consistently the same in appearance and functionality.”

Easier said than done, as most blacksmiths use traditional processes such as coal forges and unique anvils that allow for broad variances in production. Yet it is the time-honored skills that have been passed down from blacksmith to blacksmith that help close the gap on errors. By strictly adhering to correct tooling, they are able to minimize the mechanical tolerances.

In an effort to minimize any potential errors, David spends a lot of time with prospective clients, fleshing out a desired object from peoples’ imaginations. “We produce a lot of drawings to uncover what someone really envisions,” he says. “Then we work directly with each blacksmith involved on the project to review and verify every detail.”

To help in the war against attrition, the company has shifted its concept on product development. By focusing on a higher volume of products per order and reducing the quantity of orders, blacksmiths are able to increase their workload, often resulting in the need for additional workers. “The best economy of scale is volume, and over time, smiths can orient their shops for volume production,” explains David. “But it takes time, so you want to keep them busy.”

Staying the Course

Holding on to that battle cry has been hard over the past year and a half. David bemoans the fact that the company’s volume of business is down almost 25 percent from last year this time, with lead times on production dropping to half of what it originally took. “There is still work to be had,” observes David, “but the projects are not as plentiful as in the past.”

Still, he remains upbeat and optimistic. “We’ll continue to follow the currents, maintaining our strong interest in period work.” Noting a trend moving more toward rustic décor in new old country homes, David eyes another opportunity. “With all the open-hearth kitchens, there is a strong demand for hand-forged fireplace equipment,” he says, excusing himself to work on a new set of sketches.

Stephen T. Spewock is a freelance writer living outside Boston.