A Victorian Kitchen Revival – Part 1

Have you ever walked into a room and felt transported into something untouched by the erasure of time, imagining the smells and activities that might have taken place there (Déjà vu, if you will)? Sure you have, that is if you have any intuitive sense at all. And if you are involved in restoring an old house, you have a sense of intuition that grows keener with each new, creative activity you employ in your projects.

A few places in Hannibal have done this to me. They include:

• The grounds of the Garth Mansion. The entire spread with its virtually undisturbed acreage and an old Victorian mansion painted grey made me feel as if I had walked into a 100-year old postcard. That is, until I accessed the restaurant in the back of the house. The newness of this area will jolt you back to the present.
• An attic of an old house on Olive Street where I once lived. All the smells, tools for living, and cast-off literature made this space a virtual 100+ years time capsule.
• An old general store at the corner of Center and Main. The dark, smelly and closed-in room with heavily stocked shelves, old stains (blood?) and faint remnants of sawdust on an ancient wooden floor was not for the claustrophobic. The store was converted to something else during the 1970’s.

In all of these properties, I (seamlessly) transcended the present into an alien time staged by props from another era. This sense of transcendence is our goal for a restored Laura Hawkins house, and nowhere am I more excited about staging than in the kitchen. So, back to the restoration of this room…

During the Victorian era, the kitchen was the least regarded room of the house, as far as interior decoration and furnishings go. Preparing food and cleaning up afterwards made a mess. In some of the wealthier homes, extra measures in the architecture were used to separate this room from the more presentable areas of the house. In the case of the Laura Hawkins house, a small hall with an adjacent washroom separated the kitchen from the dining room.

  You are looking at the small hallway that leads from the kitchen to the
dining area. A heavy curtain hanging from a doorway likely shielded
the dining area from both the kitchen and the washroom (to your left).

Note the half-hearted attempts at updating the walls and the moldings in the photo above. The plastic bag on the floor of the washroom covers a hole where a toilet once stood - not an original toilet, mind you, but one that would have been installed during the late 1940’s to 1960’s.

Why do I often refer back to the late 1940’s when discussing previous renovations? Based on the extensive (and horrid) remuddling of the house exterior circa 1947 and the look of some of the existing bath fixtures, this was when the house underwent much renovation in an effort to “update” and “be like the neighbors”.

As with most restoration projects, the kitchen is often the most extensive and Laura’s house was no exception. So, we stripped through the layers of additions, bad paint jobs, and mismatched amenities to reveal its bones. Remember this wall?

 The North Wall of the kitchen. The doorway on the left leads to the basement,
while the doorway on the right leads to the 2^nd floor of the house.

Here is that wall, gutted…

Here is a view showing the ceiling that has now been insulated…

Note the exposed brick on the west wall and the stove pipe portal in it. Here’s another look at it…

 If you look closely, you will see that a brick inserted into the stove pipe portal.

The family likely converted over to a “cleaner” method of

food cooking via a gas or electric stove.

Here is what that wall looked like before its gutting…

 Note the plastered circle where the stove pipe portal existed.

Remember the east wall that overlooks the backyard?

  This 1960’s style sink cabinet is long gone.

Here is that wall now…

Moving to your left, here is the northeast corner of the kitchen…

  At one time this room was a pantry stocked with canned and dry kitchen goods.

A door which had long been removed enclosed this small room.

 Here is a glimpse of the extended pantry that was in place before the gutting…

Moving to your right past the sink cabinet, here is the southeast corner of the kitchen with its sole source of heat (other than the stove)…

Here is another view showing some of the insulation installed…

Here’s a closer look at the heat register…

Finally, moving further to your right, here we are in the southwest corner of the kitchen, right back to the small hallway that leads to the washroom and dining room…

In my next post, we will delve into the many activities of a Victorian kitchen with all of its ugly implements and furnishings. We’ll also look at some sample kitchens of the time and I will share with you our plans to take this kitchen back to Laura’s day.

I’ll even share a recipe or two enjoyed by my own Hannibal relatives during the late 1800’s. Yes readers, I have roots in these hills and like the Hawkins family, they were part of the Scotch-Irish set that migrated from Kentucky during the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Hmm, pork, rabbit, fish… and snapping turtle!

Full Circle (A Thirst for Connectiveness - Part II)

 

Our friend Don sporting the last of the Becky Thatcher House T-shirts.

In our last post where we attended an open house for the Becky Thatcher house, everyone in attendance was told of what would be in store for the restored structure. Here’s the high-level plan as we understood it:

Restore each room to reflect Becky era activities in accordance to times of the day. The ground floor rooms will be dioramas, each one accentuating morning, midday, and evening activities. The 2^nd floor will be used for classes and other learning activities held or sponsored by the Mark Twain Museum.

 These figurines that once belonged to the
Becky Thatcher House went on auction in August 2008.
Here is the link to the auction post:
http://raisinglaura.blogspot.com/2009/09/once-in-lifetime-auction.html.

I’m relieved that the Becky Thatcher House will not be doing exactly the same thing as the Laura Hawkins House. Originally, the first floor of the Becky Thatcher House was a bookstore and the 2^nd floor was a period room for viewing only. The latter is our vision of the Laura Hawkins house with all rooms exhibiting the décor and furnishings related to the Victorian era of Laura’s later years. Included will be the parlor, dining room, bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms, and even the attic. Eventually, we want to expand use of the house to include Victorian themed art shows. After this, who knows?

 This old postcard shows the 2nd floor period room before it was gutted.

Gutted.

After expressing dismay at the lack of photos (published or otherwise) that exist of Laura Hawkins, Henry Sweets, curator of the Mark Twain Museum and emcee of the open house invited us to visit him in his office in the Mark Twain Museum. Eager to see his cache of photos, we accepted and a week later, found ourselves wandering the upper floor office area.

For anyone who hasn’t been to the museum (and I can’t imagine a local not visiting at least once), it is a must see. The original Norman Rockwell paintings illustrating Twain’s book Tom Sawyer are alone worth the price of admission, which is $9.00 for adults, $7.50 for seniors, and $4.00 for children 6-12 years old. A child under 6 years of age gets in free. Admission includes access to 8 different buildings including the childhood homes of Mark Twain and Laura Hawkins (aka Becky Thatcher).

Norman Rockwell paintings in the Mark Twain Museum
(Photographed by Dr. Cindy Lovell, Mark Twain Museum Director)

We were shown the direction to Henry’s office – a corner suite overlooking Main Street. He opened his cache for us and indeed we recognized some of the better known photocopies that exist of Laura. There were a few we were not that familiar with. Here are some of the photos...

 This photo has been published in countless publications when it came out in 1925. In this photo, Laura is shown commemorating Mark Twain’s 90^th birthday in 1925 at the Mark Twain Museum. The museum back then and for many years afterwards was housed in Mark Twain’s boyhood home.

Here is the same event, with Mrs. George Mahan. George Mahan was a prominent Hannibal attorney who bought Mark Twain’s boyhood home as a gift to Hannibal...

Here is Laura standing on the porch of a house I believe she occupied for many years on the 500 block of steep Rock Street. More research is needed to confirm this.

Here’s another photo showing Laura standing at a fence, possibly on a farm she lived on in Palmyra. Again, more research is needed.

  

I recall as a teen seeing a photo once showing Laura tending an antique store in downtown Hannibal. So this is one photo I intend to search out.

As we come closer to our goal to preserve and display the Laura Hawkins House, it is our wish to join hands with the Becky Thatcher House in displaying Laura’s life full circle.

Our next post will show the kitchen of the Laura Hawkins house in its various stages of work. Here are a couple of teaser photos:

This was the sink cabinet - very 1960's - that has since been removed.

EEYEOW! What were they thinking with this color scheme?

A Thirst for Connectiveness - Part I

NOTE: Laura Hawkins died 81 years ago on this day (December 26, 1928) at 3:15 am in her home. Cause of her death was listed as "senility". For more on her death, click the link to the blog post, "Lady of the House - Part 2":
http://raisinglaura.blogspot.com/2008/09/lady-of-house-part-2.html

Happy Holidays Everybody!

During this spirit-of-giving time of year, many of us review our connectiveness to those we touch in our homes and in our communities. In our camp, we reminisce about all who've made our work on the Laura Hawkins house possible - the Friends of Historic Hannibal (FOHH), Bob Yapp, Ron our fix-it guy, and our neighbors.

As those who follow this blog know, members of Friends of Historic Hannibal (FOHH) (http://www.hannibalhistoricsocieties.org/FOHH.htm) and their friends came out in 2008 to show the world the original face of "Laura" in an event called "The Unveiling". It was a face that, until 1947, brightened the neighborhood when the house was first built over 100 years ago. On a tip from Bob Yapp, a crew from NPR came to Hannibal as part of their broadcast on Missouri, a bellwether state in the 2008 presidential election. The Laura Hawkins house was a lead-in to their story. A very well done piece, here it is ...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96176983

To listen to the piece, click on "Listen to the Story" (All Things Considered) at the top of the webscreen and then click the "download" icon to the left . You will first listen to Richard Garey, Hannibal's Mark Twain impersonator, followed by a short conversation between our guy Ron (with his full Hannibal accent) and myself, and then you will listen to Frank Salter give his voting analysis for the 2008 Presidential candidates.

Frank Salter at the Unveiling of the Laura Hawkins House - October 2007.

For those who don't know Frank Salter (and just about everyone in Hannibal does), Frank is one of Hannibal's key folks in the town's restoration missions. As public relations focal for FOHH and an educator, he's also one of our favorite persons to ask for advice. Frank conducts classes for the Hannibal campus of Moberly Area Community College (MACC) (http://www.macc.edu/) and once conducted an Abatron 101 class, just for us. Abatron BTW, is a liquid wood product used to restore columns, shingles, window frames, etc. It's really amazing stuff that can restore the most decrepit of wood moldings.

Aaahhhh... Was this not worth it?

As the Christmas weekend dwindles down, I'm basking in the glow of the two historical events that were benchmarks in the restoration of Laura's house - the Unveiling and a bookmark in the annals of NPR's archive - the 2008 Presidential election and the part Missouri played in it. I'm so looking forward to 2010 and all it will bring for Laura.

Next blog post - our connectiveness to the Becky Thatcher House, Laura's first home in Hannibal. See a similarity between the two houses built 54 years apart?

Restored gable on the Becky Thatcher house (built 1843).

Revealed gable on the Laura Hawkins house (built 1897).
Frank's wife Donna is peeking through one of the palladium windows.

Upstairs, Downstairs - Plaster & Laths

A key thing to look for in any house intended for restoration is its foundation. An unsettled foundation (and termite infestation) will result in many problematic projects throughout the house, not the least being the ceiling.

We lucked out with the Laura Hawkins house in this respect. Though the aged plaster had been cracking and disintegrating, exposing the laths and the rafters, the wall moldings and their levels relative to the ceiling remained intact. The foundation of the Laura Hawkins house was very solid with virtually no settling. The destruction of the ceiling was mostly due to water damage, general aging, and vibrations (hammering away at the exterior slurry during the Laura Hawkins unveiling didn’t help).

Me hammering at that blasted, hardened slurry
installed on the side of the house circa 1947.

Here is the blog excerpt on that Unveiling event:

http://raisinglaura.blogspot.com/2009/04/strip-tease.html

I’ve seen less-than-stable houses where the center of the ceiling remained intact, but the sides were inches lower. This forced the owner-restorer to re-level the ceilings with edge supports and cross beams from one end of the ceiling to the other - something best left to a professional.

Our guy Ron had done numerous ceiling replacements while working for one of Hannibal’s major restoration companies. He suggested replacing the ceilings and the laths totally with drywall, and then applying an old-fashioned, hand-laid plaster skim-coat over this.

As a purist, I questioned this method. Didn’t we want to keep the lathwork and reapply plaster over this instead of drywall? In a word, no. This process can be prohibitively time-consuming and expensive. Laths damaged by plaster removal need replacement as these timbers were often made from cheap wood. Applying new plaster to laths is something that should be left to an expert (read: $$$$$$). You may have to remove all the laths anyway if no insulation existed in the ceilings, and it will not exist if your house is over a certain age.

Laths were usually poplar or pine waste and edgings
and often do not sustain plaster removal too well.

But shouldn’t the construction of the ceilings be as authentic as possible, you may ask? I had reservations about this aspect of the restoration, but you know what? After installing it and covering the drywall with plaster, who can tell? Drywall is sturdier and easier to plaster over and insulation did need to be installed after all. I couldn’t imagine reinstalling new laths on all the ceilings. So we went with the drywall option.

A few weeks into the job, my suppressed concerns of using drywall instead of installing new laths were allayed when we visited the Becky Thatcher House during Open House…

The restoration of the Becky Thatcher House exterior thus far.

Henry Sweets, curator of the Mark Twain Museum, greeted a small group of residents and discussed plans for the restored girlhood home of Laura Hawkins aka Becky Thatcher (this in a later post)…

See me in the middle? To the left of the photo is Dr. Cindy Lovell,
new Museum director and to the right is Henry holding court.

The home, built in 1843 (when Laura Hawkins was 8 years old), is 54 years older than the Laura Hawkins home and it showed in the rafters which needed reinforcement…

The added reinforcement not only saves the stressed rafters,
the upper floor area needs to support the parade of students
who will attend Museum classes that will be held on the 2nd floor.

Dr. Cindy Lovell with Becky and Tom.

We asked Henry how the Museum intended to install new ceilings and he said that drywall is a possibility. To our relief, he assured us that this method was acceptable to the standards of those who’d ultimately judge a house on its historical authenticity merits during restoration (like, committees who federally fund historical grants).

So, back to Laura’s final residence…

The rule to restoring a house is to start from the top down. Here is a "before" picture of an upper floor ceiling…

Missing plaster from the 2nd floor ceiling of the
"Master Room" that faces the street.

The culprit: Water in the attic from a leaking roof.

This photo shows the plaster in place…

What? We missed the stuff inbetween? Below are the steps for total ceiling replacement. These were taken at ground level in the living (or library room)…

The plaster is almost totally removed from the ceiling.
The laths appear to be intact, but...

The laths will be removed anyway,

To make way for the insulation,

And the drywall.
The drywall for the ground floor ceiling is slightly thicker
than that used for the 2nd floor ceiling.
This gives a greater noise baffle for the "museum area".

Here is work that was ongoing in the small dining room.

And here are the before and after pictures of the parlor ceiling.

It wouldn't have taken much for this ceiling plaster
to have collasped on the floor.

This is more like it.

See how the moldings have remained level to the original ceiling plane?

We are at a stopping point on the ground floor ceiling. Plaster will be applied after we sand and paint the 2nd floor, reconstruct the 2nd floor bathroom and move in period furniture.

Meanwhile, the Laura Hawkins kitchen is being gutted and removed of its crumbling walls - the subject of a subsequent post.

Next post - a link to the Becky Thatcher house.

THE GARDEN MONSTER AND OTHER HORRORS

Nothing tells you more bluntly that you have a monster restoration project than two things: a falling ceiling and a neglected, weedy yard. First about the yard…

What the hell are those humans DOING to my yard?

The backyard of Laura’s house is a JUNGLE with nothing but weeds – thick trunked weeds – growing there. It’s survival of the fittest with various weeds muscling and nudging one another for their own turf, so they can continue to grow out of control.

Think I’m kidding? Here’s a typical bi-monthly haul of mowed down weeds – only weeds. No grass grows in this yard.

This bird was overseeing our efforts.

Here’s one of us after wrestling with these critters just a couple of weeks ago.

The Garden Monster

The Garden Monster's claw.

Contrast this with the backyard of our adjoining house, lush and green like a tropical garden.

So we have a yard that is our burden. But it will eventually be our joy as we turn the yard into a lavish garden, one a true Victorian would be proud of.

Next the ceilings…

For any of you restoring a house, don’t you love it when you come upon yet another plaster chunk that dislodged itself from the ceiling?

If it's just the ceiling (often, it is not), be thankful. Deteriorating ceilings are symptoms of bigger roofing problems. Here’s a major example of this when a roof recently collasped in a building just down the street and around the corner from us…

The recently condemned building at 520 Broadway.
(Photo courtesy of Hannibal Courier-Post)

The collasped 2nd and 3rd floors.

(Photo courtesy of Hannibal Courier-Post)

Why, oh why do people allow their buildings to get to this condition? For months, this building was offered free to anyone who would step up and restore it (within an 18-month timeframe). There were no takers and now the City of Hannibal is coughing up over $40K to demolish it.

If you think this folly wrought on Hannibal is done only by neglectful, fund-less locals, I assure you it is not. The deterioration of otherwise desirable and useful properties has also been the domain of out-of-towners who bought their properties at prices unheard of in their native cities.

Often these out-of-towners come from a sunny climate and are virtually ignorant of the effects of extreme cold and stormy weather in the Midwest (Case in point: just last month, Hannibal witnessed its greatest monthly rainfall at a whopping 11-1/2 inches. Normally, October sees a little over 3 inches of rain.) They’ll leave the house unattended during the winter months not understanding that an unweatherized, leaking roof will allow water to infiltrate the house and cause ancient electrical wires to ignite and burn.

This happened to one Californian at the worst possible time of year – a time when Hannibal streets were clad in ice. Add that the street was very narrow and steep, and this owner’s house became a total disaster when fire trucks couldn't make their way up the street to douse the ensuing fire. Owners who get away with a powerful drenching of their hardwood floors are more the norm and are the lucky ones in this case.

No danger of this with the Laura Hawkins house. The first thing we did (and what every new owner should do with an old house) was replace the roof and replace & upgrade all the electricity. Nearly all old houses in Hannibal come with a deteriorated roof and old knob and tube style wiring (often uninsulated and almost always unable to carry large, modern load demands).

So, Laura’s ceiling…

Here’s what it looked like…

Major plaster losses.

Major water stains.

Here’s the work ongoing to replace the ceilings totally. No half-ass, patching jobs for this historic house. The ceilings will be our subject of a subsequent blog post.

In the end, all of the ceilings in Laura's house will be like new.