Landmark Services- Historic Renovation Contractors

Eco friendly drywall

A company called Serious Materials has introduced a more environmentally friendly drywall called EcoRock. The product is made from waste products from the steel and concrete industries.  Apparently the process of making traditional gypsum-based drywall releases a tremendous amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.  

In fact, the construction and operation of homes and buildings accounts for over 50% of the CO2 released each year, compared to 9% for passenger cars.  It will be very important over the next several decades to do all we can as a society to reduce these emissions.  

Here at Landmark Services we have been teaching our clients (and sometimes learning from them!) about the importance of energy efficient homes for almost 20 years.  Readers of this blog know that we do not use fiberglass insulation, for example, because there are better alternatives for making homes energy efficient (namely cellulose and sprayed foam insulations). We know that even historic buildings can be made to be energy efficient.

It's encouraging to see the host of new products on the market made from recycled materials.  For a first hand look, I encourage Boston area readers to visit the Nexus Green Building Resource Center in downtown Boston. They have product samples, literature, and classes on materials and methods being used to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings.

The New Urbanism

An argument for moving away from sprawl and back into our cities:

Renovation Techniques: Stone Veneer

When we build an addition on a historic house, we take pride in our ability to make the new space blend seamlessly with the old.  One of the ways we do this is by avoiding the raw look of exposed concrete foundations.  Instead, we typically place a veneer of stone over the concrete so that the new foundation looks very much like the original foundation- at least from the exterior.

To do stone veneer you must form a shelf in the concrete foundation, as shown in this crude sketch.

The stones are laid in mortar and typically attached to the wall using thin metal straps or ties.  Because the shelf is usually fairly thin - 4-6"- it's necessary to use fairly thin stone.  On the project shown below, however, we poured a very thick foundation wall with a large, 12", shelf.  This enabled us to use much larger stones than normal, more closely replicating the look of an old fieldstone foundation.  We used salvaged fieldstone for this project, and kept the mortar back from the face of the stones to suggest an old dry-laid foundation.

On other projects, we have used old granite curbstones as a veneer material to simulate the granite capstones found on so many 18th and 19th century homes.  Here's on example:

If you can't find old curbstones, you can use new ones.  However,  many stone yards sell salvaged stone of all shapes, sizes, and types.  Although expensive, facing the foundations of your addition with stone makes a noticeable difference in the appearance of the job. 

We'll be doing a large amount of stone veneer on our project in Brookline, MA.  We lifted this house up on steel beams, removed the old stone foundation, and installed a new concrete foundation.  We stockpiled the original stone and will be using that as the veneer material.  We'll have to pick through the pile for some of the thinner stones and if we run out of thin ones, we'll have to split some of the larger ones to make them small enough to fit on the shelf.  In the end, we'll be rewarded for that effort with a new foundation that has much of the look and feel of the old foundation.

Team Landmark

We managed to gather about two-thirds of the company in one spot when we took in the Journal of Light Construction Show in Providence recently.  Okay, we'll probably never get asked to model in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, but we like what we do and have a lot of fun doing it!  After the show we enjoyed some refreshments at the Union Station Brewery.  

(l-r) Rob Way, Chris Titus, Oliver Hoen, Cary Eggerline, Glen Stoddard, Mark Landry (me), Jamie Morley, Beth Sitterly, Lester Wade, Fred Carr, and Don Lagasse

Musical interlude

From the movie The Last Waltz, here's the Band with It Makes No Difference, one of my top 10 all time songs.  The interplay between Garth Hudson's sax and Robbie Robertson's guitar is just great.

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Project feature: Victorian renovation

We recently completed major interior renovations to a ca. 1900 Victorian home just north of Boston, Massachusetts.  Back in 1996 we added a kitchen/family room addition to the rear of this house and our clients decided that they finally wanted to tackle the rest of the house.  A prime impetus for doing the project was to create a third floor playroom for their kids. But it was evident that the rest of the house had some urgent needs including sub-standard wiring and some serious structural concerns.

Our clients wisely decided to move out of the house for several months so that we could work on the whole place at the same time.  This is always preferable for us and usually works out well for the homeowners. Why deal with dust, noise, and the stress of a renovation if you can rent a place during construction?

We completely gutted the third floor and most of the first and second floors.  After the demolition was complete, we discovered that the framing was severely undersized and- no surprise- had been seriously compromised by enthusiastic plumbers and their power tools!  One bathtub was barely supported.  We straightened and beefed up the framing on all three levels and built two new dormers up top to increase the useful space.

First, a couple "before" shots of the third floor:

Here are two views of the same space after the renovations were complete.  The new dormers added a lot of headroom and light.  That's a cork floor, perfect for spaces like this.

We completely renovated the Master Bath and added some built-in closets to the Master Bedroom.  All cabinetry and built-ins were done in our shop by our two cabinetmakers Kerry Kenda and Shane Gauthier.

On the first floor, we built some half-walls and columns to split the main room into two separate spaces, and added a built-in shelving unit.

In the Dining Room, we built a lovely Butler's Pantry with a mahogany top.

Finally, here's a shot of the addition that we built in 1996.  As part of the recent project, we made some minor modifications to this space, such as the wall tile and new countertops.  I think it still looks pretty good after all these years!

Behind the scenes, we updated the wiring, installed an new heating and cooling system and insulated the whole house with spray foam insulation.  We've now renovated the entire house so our clients can relax and enjoy their house.

May is Preservation Month

And to help celebrate Preservation Month, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has teamed up with American Express to fund some worthy restoration projects in Greater Boston. Dubbed the Partners in Preservation Boston Initiative, the program has selected 25 projects to be eligible for funding.  Voting is open to the public and ends on May 17th. Among the candidates are the Old North Church in Boston and the Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham.

The National Trust is a great resource for preservation information and is a strong voice for preservation lobbying in Washington.  Richard Moe, the executive director, recently had an op-ed in the New York Times, citing preservation as a worthy place to spend some of the stimulus dollars.  Making historic houses more energy efficient will certainly create jobs and save resources.  Preservation is really the ultimate "green technology". Instead of throwing old buildings into landfills, we preservationists have been renovating and preserving these important places for future generations.

Ice dams: prepare for next winter

Okay, I'll admit that ice dams are probably not on your mind much these days.  With Red Sox playing well, and the Celts and Bruins in the playoffs, if you're doing anything around your house, it's likely out in the yard.

   

But if you suffered through ice dams last winter, it makes sense to take some steps to address the problem before winter rolls around again.

Ice dams are caused by snow on the roof that melts and backs up under the roofing shingles.   In an attic that is not insulated- or improperly insulated- heat that is supposed to be keeping you warm passes through the roof structure, melts the snow sitting there.  You notice this by the brown water stains on your walls and ceilings.

The real culprit, in my opinion, is that most houses are improperly insulated.  The standard technique is to insulate the attic floor with batts.  The problem is that this does a very poor job of air sealing between the heated space below and the unheated space above.  Heat leaks into the attic through the attic stairs, light fixtures, ducts, around chimneys,pipe chases, etc.  It's almost impossible to prevent this.

The solution is to avoid this trap and insulate the roof slopes instead of the attic floor.  This can be done with batt material, but batts do a poor job of preventing heat loss around their edges (which is the reason that an air space is required when using batts in roof slopes.  A MUCH better solution is to use a material that has a good R-value but one that also effectively cuts off air infiltration.  Two such products are blown-in cellulose and sprayed on expanding foam products.  Because they fill the framing bays completely- without the gaps around the edges that batts have- the amount of heat loss through the roof is dramatically reduced.  They are so effective that it is not necessary to vent your roof, which avoids some of the problems that venting causes (we'll get to those in a future post).

At Landmark Services, we've been using cellulose or foam in the roof slopes instead of batts on the attic floor on our projects for the past 15 years. Not only does this solve the ice dam problem, but the attic is more comfortable year round, and any heating and cooling equipment up there (air handlers, ductwork, etc) is far more efficient.  This diagram from the Journal of Light Construction illustrates this point quite well.

Of course, it still makes sense to ensure that when you have a new roof installed, certain precautions are taken to address ice dams from above the roof.  These procedures include installing an ice and water barrier along the lower three feet of the roof lines and at other important places such as valleys and around dormers and chimneys.  Proper gutter installation is important, too.  

Supplier focus: Bingham Lumber

Thanks to Tom Bingham for providing me with a tour of his showroom today.  Bingham Lumber is a family owned business that for many years was a sawmill, supplying lumber to wholesalers and retailers.  In recent years, Tom and his team have re-shaped the business and have become a producer of specialty millwork, with a particular emphasis on interior trim products.  

The real growth in the business, however, is in the reclaimed lumber market.  Bingham buys truckloads of old beams, barn board, etc, and then re-saws and mills this material into flooring, moldings and paneling.  Here at Landmark Services, we've been using Bingham for several years to supply us with material for our renovations. We're currently using some of their reclaimed heart pine to build cabinets for one of our projects in Milton.  We see environmentally responsible cabinetry as a growing segment of our business.

If you're anywhere near Brookline, NH (just north of Pepperell and Groton, Mass) take a ride up to check out their showroom.  It's a fantastic resource.

They didn't always build them liked they used to, Part Deux

One another one of our projects, we are preparing to renovate and restore a ca. 1870 Mansard roofed house in Brookline.  During some early site visits, we discovered that the house was spreading.   Some floor joists were literally hanging on by a thread- they were barely in contact with the beams that were supposed to be carrying them.  The third floor is particularly severe: the outside walls have pulled away 3-4 inches in some places.

It was later determined that not only was the house spreading, but it has settled about 5 inches towards the rear of the property.  Sole borings confirmed that it was built on uncompacted fill.  The best solution, it turns out,  is to life the house, remove the existing foundation, build a new foundation, and set the house back down.  During this process we will pull it all bactogether and try to straighten it as much as possible.

We did a similar thing to an 18th century home in Newton a few years ago, as seen in this series of photos shown below.