July 20th, 2006
shingle and clapboard
We’ll be on the road early, making our way in the general direction of home. Plenty more to write about and show you as the past two days have been beyond amazing… however, they’ll have to wait until I have a bit more time.. perhaps even as early as this evening. However, in the meantime, I’ll post a photo of a house seen during our travels – a big old Queen Anne style house that’s undergoing restoration. I’d like to dedicate this image to Robin and Roger at Dharma Bums — we were thinking of you while we stopped to observe the progress. In this much larger view, you’ll find that the surface is a mix of shingle and clapboard.
(Note to R & R: Aren’t you glad you don’t have to shingle a couple of towers?)
Tags: Queen Anne style house
July 20th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Shingling the towers is just the start. Then you have to paint. And then, a few years later, you have to paint again. And then again. That’s a house from that days when manual labor was a quantity in plentiful supply.
On the other hand, I have considered using some of the fake shingles that go up in large panels. They can fool the eye from a distance.
July 20th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Bev, thank you so much for photographing that beautiful house, we really appreciate seeing it. That is quite a shingling job. Love those round shingles on the tower. We’ve got a row of rounds too. We don’t have towers, but we do have four gable ends that are very high and will require scaffolding. We’re saving those for the very end, so we only have to rent the scaffolding once. We’re not painting our shingles. They’re simple cedar, and we’re going to let them weather gracefully.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:43 am
Mark – Yes, you’re quite right about the labour intensive nature of these old homes. Many are certainly beautiful, but they required so much upkeep. I often think that about windows with many small panes of glass. What a lot of time and work just to keep them clean — time that most of us just don’t have these days. I guess these houses just reflect on a time when the owners could afford to have handymen, gardeners, and maids working around the property. I love to study these houses but I’m not so sure I’d want to own one! (-:
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Robin – It sure is a shingling job. I didn’t get all of the house in the photo as there was a big tree blocking the view to the right, but there’s another tower — I think it was of larger diameter, to the right of the arch. We couldn’t figure out if that section might be all new, or whether it was just undergoing some major restoration. It had a lot of shingle work on it — and what a job that must have been!
I don’t envy you the work on the gables of your place. I don’t care much for heights, so it’s difficult for me to work several feet above the ground. I’ve occasionally thought of redoing the outside of our place to increase its insulation and weather resistance — something along the lines of what you’ve done — but the thoughts of working on the high area sort of put me off a little. I love the look of your place though — it really seems to be working nicely and the house really fits into the landscape. The cedar should weather beautifully over time. In Nova Scotia, we saw many shingle houses – most not quite so ornate as the Queen Anne style house — and many of them are just natural shingle. It’s such a beautiful look.
July 21st, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Bev, did you swing by to Lunenburg at all when you were in Mahone Bay? Because it is a UNESCO world heritage site, they require all home owners within the designated area to have wood siding, except those that had otherwise before it was designated However, they must change to wood if they ever replace it or sell the house. I’d estimate about 80% of the houses we viewed a month ago had wood siding, and it is a beautiful town.
Mahone Bay is also a beautiful town, I can certainly picture myself living in one of the homes there some day, or atleast wanting to.
July 22nd, 2006 at 2:27 am
Peter – We didn’t visit Lunenburg on this trip, although we’ve been there before. You’re right… it is a beautiful town (as are so many in Nova Scotia!). We’ve often found that if we go a few streets back from the main street in most NS towns, we end up in a neighborhood of older homes. Streets on higher ground often have the really stately old houses. We found some fairly remarkable wooden houses in Windsor this time. Bridgewater also has some very notable architecture. Same goes for Annapolis Royal. Of course, Wolfville has its share of interesting older homes too. So much history in the Nova Scotia towns.