The carpenters have been hard at work. They tore off the top of the house and started framing up the new second floor. Right now is a unique time. There is a mishmash of new carpentry and old carpentry. The differences are stark. In a way, I feel badly because there is history being taken away here without a great deal of care for storage. Sometimes I wonder if renovation might have been better than new construction. In a way, we are renovating because we're planning on using moldings and trim consistent with similar period construction, but that seems like a pale nod to the old home.

This is what the new backview will look like through one of the master bedroom windows. The work is standard stud framing--pretty much what you might expect in a modern home.

This is one of the old boards that served as exterior sheathing on the house. This particular board is 18 inches wide (there are several about the same width). To give a sense of scale, the largest standard board commonly available today is about 10 inches wide. These old boards have a variety of nails sticking through them: square nails, old round nails, new round nails, ring-shank nails, and a few wood screws.

This is the remnants of a post and beam which represented the framework of the old house. These blocks of wood are held together by mortice and tenon joints with pegs. Some of the toolmarks indicate that these were hand hewn.

Here is a tenon without the horizontal beam. The piece of wood on top is the old peg.

Here's a closer view of the same tenon. This tenon is about 7 inches wide.

In the old upstairs (a child-sized bedroom), there was an odd-shaped cubby. We get to keep it!

A previous piece of work on the house simply covered up the old roof instead of tearing it away. You can see the wood shakes of the old roof underneath the newer part. This is pretty typical of older updates-if it was easier or more convenient to leave the old work in place, they did.

Most of the above shorts were taken in the shade of blue tarps tented over the new construction. This is the shadow of the west wall on the tarp.

In our case, it is more convenient to dispose instead of cover up. This is the remains of the upper story of the house.