Sills and Corbels

After deciding to repair the two lower sills on the east side of the house, Woody came back to me with the suggestion that we just replace them because they were missing more wood than it appeared at first.

So now we have fancy new sills in the library and front parlour.

I do feel better about new sills in these locations, just because as a relatively flat piece of wood, the sill takes a lot of weather. Water is most likely to sit on the sill, so having something that is less likely to develop cracks or having structural weaknesses is a good thing.

The other work going on is the replacement of damaged/missing trim pieces. Each window has a pair of elongated corbels, and between four windows we managed to get one complete one as a sample. From that, Woody created replacement pieces for all four windows on the east side.

The corbels are made in three pieces to get a depressed center section. There was a lot of bandsaw cutting to make these happen.

There's also a fair amount of detail in the decorative cutouts on the side. To be honest, that looks like a major pain to get right and I'm glad it's not me doing it.

And then because the bandsaw is not a delicate instrument, there was sanding to smooth them out. Woody's son, Bodhi, was handling that.

Also underway is the tedious process of taping off the woodwork so stripping can proceed.

In retrospect, having Woody come and start his work earlier in the process, maybe during the six months when the general contractor and I were working out a contract and getting prepped for a start date, would have been a good thing. Woody is a grumpy guy who doesn't get along with a lot of other contractors, so I didn't do that, but it would definitely be easier to deal with these stairs if they'd been stripped before they were rebuilt.

posted by ayse on 08/30/18