Determining original interior woodwork - any help?
Have just started painting and soon to be staining our first floor long parlor, vestibule, front hall and stairs of our PS brownstone. We are lucky to have all he original wood from the bay window shutters, and all the doors and trim in the parlor straight back through the dining room. The front door and vestibule also contain original woodwork. Where things get weird is the front hall. The trim on the hall side of the parlor pocket doors is lighter and wider grained. It matches the stairs wainscoting, inner front door and trim of all doors along the hall from front to the kitchen extension which includes the trim around the pocket doors into the dining room and kitchen from that long front hall. It’s as if the entire hall and stairs as well as inside of inner front door were replaced on hall side, but original left inside the larger room. Luckily most of the floors are original, we cant tell about the railing, but it is the same lighter wood as the hall trim which we believe to be new. Any way I can figure out what is what? We’re planning to paint what we believe to be the “new wood” which si all in the hall, but the wood on other side in dining room and parlor leave as is. I am tempted to rip out some of the hall wood as it crowds the entry from front hall into pantry but wish to know more about it before doing so. Where can I get some help on this?
adobera80
in General Discussion 6 years ago
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adobera80 | 6 years ago
You notice there is no dark inlay going around the landing, so I think that’s been added on or extended. Also that parquet floor in front hall is different from rest of the house and butlers pantry (which is rear of front hall). This newer parquet has barely visible nail heads, theyre very apparent in the rest of house
Another oddity is that the crown molding on doors on the hall side, including inside of front door, have a different motif than the vestibule and parlor sides. The kitchen extension has 2 windows, 1 with a hallway style crown the other with the “older” parlor style.
The house did change hands in ’84, so some 80s updates make sense. The re-done hall floors look 80s to me. The family prior to 84 had lived there since the 60s and a woman who grew up there lives nearby, I’m tempted to reach out (maybe a bit creepy), but she posted a story online about living there and keeping farm animals in the back yard. FWIW the house was originally built 1896 – 98. To the dismay of our GC we are painting the stair & hall wainscoting, risers, stringer and balluster white and staining the handrail, treads and end newels a walnut / mahogany blend which will match the re-stained doors and vestibule. I’m not running a wood museum and cant spend the money to restain everything, especially the smaller newels. I couldnt even get a quote on that.
There are many other inconsistencies. They dont bother me at all I’m just interested in how this all came to be. 1 other weird thing I came across in my research; in the 1940s tax lot photos which you can find on the city archives website, there were no gas lamps in front of the houses. I always assumed those charming gas lamps go back to the 1800s, guess not!
adobera80 | 6 years ago
You notice there is no dark inlay going around the landing, so I think that’s been added on or extended. Also that parquet floor in front hall is different from rest of the house and butlers pantry (which is rear of front hall). This newer parquet has barely visible nail heads, theyre very apparent in the rest of house
Another oddity is that the crown molding on doors on the hall side, including inside of front door, have a different motif than the vestibule and parlor sides. The kitchen extension has 2 windows, 1 with a hallway style crown the other with the “older” parlor style.
The house did change hands in ’84, so some 80s updates make sense. The re-done hall floors look 80s to me. The family prior to 84 had lived there since the 60s and a woman who grew up there lives nearby, I’m tempted to reach out (maybe a bit creepy), but she posted a story online about living there and keeping farm animals in the back yard. FWIW the house was originally built 1896 – 98. To the dismay of our GC we are painting the stair & hall wainscoting, risers, stringer and balluster white and staining the handrail, treads and end newels a walnut / mahogany blend which will match the re-stained doors and vestibule. I’m not running a wood museum and cant spend the money to restain everything, especially the smaller newels. I couldnt even get a quote on that.
There are many other inconsistencies. They dont bother me at all I’m just interested in how this all came to be. 1 other weird thing I came across in my research; in the 1940s tax lot photos which you can find on the city archives website, there were no gas lamps in front of the houses. I always assumed those charming gas lamps go back to the 1800s, guess not!
stevecym | 6 years ago
i can tell you something else. if a piece of wood has been changed and you are comparing it against another piece, you may notice that it was not cut exactly the same. it is hard to get the reproduction knives exact but not only that, the machine cutting it may leave telltale marks that differ from another machine.
stevecym | 6 years ago
not round nails which have been used since the 1910’s???
stevecym | 6 years ago
and of course real old nails are square cut.
stevecym | 6 years ago
i’ll tell you how you can tell if this was rebuilt, by the nails holding it together. I would pull a piece of trim and see if they are wire brads. perhaps it is ’80’s and they were still using steel finish nails that will still look new (100 year old nails wont, the acid in the oak and the humidity in the pre a/c summers worked on the finish.
stevecym | 6 years ago
cate is right about the box on the lower part of the newel. look ’80’s. that other round post throws me; I don’t think I have seen anything like that in Brooklyn or the city in general. and by the way, I just went back to a customer’s house where we did some doors a few years back. he wanted us to strip the wainscot in the vestibule. we refused. so he had someone do it and it looks like it could be new. it had been under paint so long, it had been protected.
stevecym | 6 years ago
it all looks as thought it could be original. the only thing that throws me is the newel on the right side. not sure. wainscot can be different from entry to stairs, no issue there. grain changes even with older woods (they tend to say the older woods had wider growth bands but the wood may have been harvested from a larger tree someplace a little further away. a freak thing, better nutrients down closer to the river might cause wider graining. keep in mind that this is a nicer house and they will change things more in a house like that. with the more modest houses, they tended to keep it the same as they sourced a lot of it for a row of houses and even then, small things change.
even if some stuff is new, they did spend money on it.
cate | 6 years ago
It’s hard to tell looking at photos rather than in person in real life, but overall the woodwork in the stair hall looks original, at least in the photos. If you are saying the wood is one color in the stair hall and another in the entry and parlor, that wouldn’t necessarily mean it is not original. They mixed different woods, sometimes in one room (such as two woods on newel posts and dark bead board with lighter oak cupboards in kitchens) in the late 19th century. It could be that it is a different species of wood or finished differently originally or later refinished differently from the woodwork in the parlor and the entry. For example it’s possible the stair hall was/is oak and the parlor and entry are mahogany or rather poplar stained to look like mahogany and then later painted and more recently stripped. Is all the woodwork finished with shellac, varnish or poly? That said, the lower half of the newel post looks a bit odd to me, like something 1980s with a n older newel post put on top, but I’m not sure. That front piece of the staircase sure looks original though. Could some of the stairs have been rebuilt?
adobera80 | 6 years ago
Replying to myself…
I now believe that the inside of the inner door and trim was flat, without much decorative trim. When looking at the inside of the outer door there is almost no decorative carving, however the color appears original and matches all the surrounding wood in the vestibule.
This theory would also explain how they attached the trim on the inside of inner door, a flat surface would be required and the inside of the outer door is mostly flat and unadorned.
When originally built you saw lots of decoration walking into the house from outside, but when leaving there was very little. The decoration on the interior was added later.
adobera80 | 6 years ago
Replying to myself…
I now believe that the inside of the inner door and trim was flat, without much decorative trim. When looking at the inside of the outer door there is almost no decorative carving, however the color appears original and matches all the surrounding wood in the vestibule.
This theory would also explain how they attached the trim on the inside of inner door, a flat surface would be required and the inside of the outer door is mostly flat and unadorned.
When originally built you saw lots of decoration walking into the house from outside, but when leaving there was very little. The decoration on the interior was added later.
adobera80 | 6 years ago
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/ngKxpBh
It appears the wood right inside the front door is what was redone, the outside part of the inner front door looks all original, but the inside of that door is a lot lighter and the trim around the door and stained glass is lighter. When I looked at the door frame can see it looks like a fake molding was glued on top of the inner wood. The crown molding above every single door in the hall is a light wood that does not match the darker slightly red wood of the crowns in the vestibule and parlor/dining room. Also in the middle of the hall going towards the kitchen you walk under 3 big crown moldings, in the center door in to butlers pantry, another on the left passes into the dining room and 3rd on the right door into a closet. It shrinks the hallway down quite a bit. In pic 2 you can see part of it. I also wonder if the newell post is original, it’s in the lighter wood that matches the new trim. I think it may be a copy of the original made later in a lighter wood (we’re restaining that). I wonder the same with the spindles. I’ve seen th em in other buildings in the area, ours are lighter matching all this newer trim, we’re painting these white it’s too costly to sand and stain them all. [1](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:yP4n:1.jpg.jpg)
adobera80 | 6 years ago
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/ngKxpBh
It appears the wood right inside the front door is what was redone, the outside part of the inner front door looks all original, but the inside of that door is a lot lighter and the trim around the door and stained glass is lighter. When I looked at the door frame can see it looks like a fake molding was glued on top of the inner wood. The crown molding above every single door in the hall is a light wood that does not match the darker slightly red wood of the crowns in the vestibule and parlor/dining room. Also in the middle of the hall going towards the kitchen you walk under 3 big crown moldings, in the center door in to butlers pantry, another on the left passes into the dining room and 3rd on the right door into a closet. It shrinks the hallway down quite a bit. In pic 2 you can see part of it. I also wonder if the newell post is original, it’s in the lighter wood that matches the new trim. I think it may be a copy of the original made later in a lighter wood (we’re restaining that). I wonder the same with the spindles. I’ve seen th em in other buildings in the area, ours are lighter matching all this newer trim, we’re painting these white it’s too costly to sand and stain them all. [1](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:yP4n:1.jpg.jpg)
stevecym | 6 years ago
some of the wood changed as you move through the house. they tended to put the dearer woods near the entry and then inside it may have become something else and the second floor would have been altogether something else. I can generally tell when I look at it, especially near entry ways as that is what I work on and I often have to advise people on what they should try to save.
JohnHancock | 6 years ago
Post some pics, someone may know