Minor Interior Door Repair: 1830's thumb latch hardware

This weekend, I had a very minor repair to make to the latch between the dining room and hall on the first floor. The problem was simple, the screws were falling out of the door. This has happened to three doors since we moved in--we're just too hard on the old things, I guess.

The first time it happened to a spare bedroom door, I had no idea what to do, and locked the door latch up in my desk drawer so noone would try to "fix" it wrong. Several months later I stumbled across a note in an issue of Old House Journal, with the advice to shove the wooden ends of matches covered with carpenter's glue into a stripped out screw hole, let it dry for 24 hours and then re-screw the screw into the now newly filled hole. Bingo! It works.

Here it is demonstrated--

Problem -- door latches, but without a working handle on the other side, can only be unlatched from this side:

Hardware removed, with two match sticks glued into the stripped hole:

Match sticks sawed off:

And, just for fun, a close-up of the door without its handle. Easy to spot, in the ridging of the paint, the fact that there was, at one time, a slightly shorter but similarly shaped handle on this door, and, before or after that, a bolt on the other side (screw holes above the latch).

In any case, it was the work of a few minutes to re-install the handle:

And, the view on the reverse of the door, also showing another spot where some kind of hardware was once installed.

The view from the side,  showing both sets of hardware back in place:

And, for good measure, a couple views of the installation of the piece on the frame that receives the latch that looks like a hook, which is called a keeper (ignore the other handle on the door behind):

And, finally, a view of the entire latch mechanism, closed and secured:

The whole process makes me curious about the history of these door latches, though. I've never lived in a house with NO interior door knobs. Not one in the entire place. Every door has a version of this cast iron latch, and they're all virtually the same in look and feel. That fact, in and of itself, makes me feel pretty certain that they're replacements.

But replacements for what? The photos above make it clear there never was a traditional door knob assembly on this door. Every other door in the house is the same. So, this house was built with this kind of latch.

What are they? A bit of digging around on the web revealed that they are colonial thumb latches, most often imported from England during the 1700's, but at some point, made also in the U.S.A. Used from the colonial period up through the 1830's, and then sporadically to the late nineteenth century.

Easy to find today, as reproductions. I've found them here on the website for House of Antique Hardware, called rim latches on their site. And, as antiques, on Ed Donaldson's Hardware Restorations, where he displays images of antique thumb latches.

Most of the doors in the house seem to be original to the house, or to the era it was built in. Who knows where these two hall doors were first used. I don't think there was a doorway between what is now the dining room and the hall, originally. There certainly wasn't a door to what is now the half bath (which you can see behind the hall door, in the photo below) when the house was first built. But I do think they are original to the house, because the wood is ancient and the four-panel solid wood construction, but very thin, is an old construction and the layers of paint and age of the wood are consistent with other original elements, like the windows. And, because all of the doors show signs of having been shuffled around, like an old, slow, giant game of musical chairs. Musical doors.

Which is a long way of saying that these are old doors, and now fixed! Cool, says Minky, from her perch.

Curtain's Up: Bathroom Renovation Project 28

Small wins, at this point in our continuing work to finish up last details in the bathroom renovation. The original curtain rod and eyelet curtain went back up over the weekend, making a joy of sunlight in the window:

Local Heritage Garden 2: Seeds for a partial sun/shade garden

Snow has moved in to stay. The storm called Nemo laid down a foot that's stuck around, and we've had dustings several times since then, and cold. Cold that bloomed in icicles on the porch roof and frost on the old windows ...

and limned our early morning world in magic.

My mind has turned to summer. And so, for the first time, a couple of times this week, I delved into the world of online garden catalogs. Seeds. Glorious seeds for the garden.

I'm working on a plan for relatively small, established garden, outside the studio door, on the back of the house. It's more shady than I realized, getting good morning sun starting about 8 or 9, and then shaded by the house the entire afternoon. The dirt is black and friable, almost always moist, with a wilt in the dirt, that attacks certain plants at the stem.

The first fall I was here, in 2011, I put in daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and allium. There is a large patch of naturalized grape hyacinth in one corner, too. Here it is in spring, height of color:

And withered ... in the back of the garden (left hand, here) are old peonies that barely get one flower because of lack of sun.

In the winter of 2011, I put in poppy seeds, here, in June, you can see the poppy seedlings, about 6-8" high, coming up. I also planted zinnias and alyssum from seed. But considering that it is June, this garden is rather uninspiring ...

A  little later, without realizing how little sun the garden gets, I added black-eyed susans, coneflower and russian sage. 

By August, the zinnias had gone gigantico, dwarfing the perennials in the back, that struggled for lack of sun ... and all of August and September, there was the most magical display of zinnias in raspberry and green -- Renee's Gardens sells these varietals online and in stores. The butterflies loved them.

This past fall 2012, I added more hyacinths and allium, and last summer I let the poppies go to seed and  crunched up every seed head in the garden. I also let the zinnias go to seed and saved masses of seed heads to plant come spring.

I'll have to move all the perennials along the back of the garden that need more sun, so out again will come the black-eyed susans, the coneflower, the russian sage and peonies. I'll also take out the one experimental lavender bush I put in the front that didn't do well.

What I need are some cottage flowers that tolerate some shade, come up over bulbs (so I can continue to add bulbs every year without disturbing perennials), grow tall behind the zinnias, and bloom before the zinnias start, in May and June. So, after a lot of digging around online this week, I ordered the following late last night:

Tall for the back:

Hollyhocks, dark purple and apricot, they're biennials, so they won't bloom this year

Cleomes, rose and white

Snapdragons, very tall dusky pink ones

And a mix of foxglove, some that if I start early indoors will bloom the first year

Mid-sized, for the middle:

Bells of Ireland, something I've never heard of but looks like a green foxglove

Columbine, for late spring color in the next few years

More snapdragons

Dwarf, for the front:

Alyssum

and Anemone

I also ordered several varieties of sweet peas to train up over the falling-down bench on the edge of the patio that is more ornamental than used.

Let fly snow while ye may.

How to Make Wood Window Screens 1: Beginnings--Materials Needed

I have been procrastinating for a year on starting a thread about wooden windows, wood storm windows and wooden window screens. While I personally find the topic more interesting than bathroom renovations or replacing porch column bases, after taking a first stab at a draft or two some time back, I realized that as a blog topic, it will probably be long, dry, technical and a total bear to write about well. Still ... now, in the deep of winter, I have finally run out of other things to write. So here goes.

This post is introductory, and covers the materials needed. To go straight to construction, go here.

In the early part of last summer, just when it started to get uncomfortably hot, we finally got off our asses and decided to start making screens.

The house has all but two of its original windows, complete with wavy glass, ancient signatures and mysterious etchings from earlier inhabitants. The windows on the gable ends had aluminum storms and screens installed at some point, and the windows in the additions at the back of the house are newer, so fourteen of our thirty-seven or so windows do have screens. Still, a total of twenty-two windows have no screens, or, as I was to learn, nothing that I recognized as "screens" at the time. There's, like, no cross ventilation, especially upstairs under the eaves.

I'd actually never seen wooden storm windows before, and one of the most compelling things to me about the house, when we saw it for the first time, was the wealth of original windows. The last owners, Martin and Marguerite, must have gone out of their way to keep and maintain them, and it's something I too am absolutely determined to maintain.

Still, not having screens for cross-ventilation is a major problem in an era of global warming, especially when one has cats. And at first, I didn't think there would be an easy solution. But buried in the basement, the first summer when I went through its contents, the summer before last, I found some old screens in wooden frames. Wooden screens! I thought. How about that.

There was a baker's dozen, a very odd assortment, and so I brought them all up one day, trotting around to each window in turn, holding up one and then another. Ultimately, I found three that fit existing windows, though they fell out when I put them up. It didn't seem that they'd been put in for a very long time, if ever; there was no hardware; and I had no idea how to install them. Finally, in desperation, I just nailed them in.

Here's one from that first summer, nailed into the bottom half of a window:

I knew, from the first, we'd have to have more than three screens. And while the three we have work well, I also knew we'd have to figure out what hardware to use to attach and detach them easily, year in and year out.

After much hunting around online, and seeing no mention of wood screens anywhere (someone should write a blog about this, was one of my thoughts!), I decided that we'd have to make our own, using the existing ones as a model.

Turns out to be fairly simple to do, though I think it will be complicated to describe. Still, the basic steps are to make a frame, pretty much like a picture frame with a few minor modifications; install the screening; and then find a way to fix the thing to the window.

We're complete newbie DIY'ers and we managed to make two of them in the midst of multiple projects this past summer, so take heart if you are reading this, like your old windows, and want screens--keep going, you can do it!

First things first, so in this first post, I will review the materials needed to make a wooden window screen:

Materials Needed:

1. Paint-grade lumber for the frame. We used size 1-3/4" x 3/4". We're using poplar for the first story front windows underneath the front porch. It'll paint better than pine, and seems to work fine if the screens are only up during the summer. But I've been doing research in the meanwhile, and learned that poplar can degrade and warp faster than pine, so it is probably worth going with a good grade of pine, to get the longest lasting results.
2. Trim, to fasten the screen to the frame: 1/2"x1/4"
3. Top brace lumber, 3/4"x1/2"
4. Wood glue
5. Dowels, corrugated fasteners or some other appropriate fastener, to secure the miter joints
6. Screening
7. 1/2" finish nails, to fasten trim
8. 1" finish nails, to fasten brace
9. Primer and paint
10. Fasteners to hold screen to window frame. There are various solutions for this, which I will cover in a later post. Turnbuttons will work, seem to be period appropriate, and are readily available. I'm using screen and storm window retaining clips from House of Antique Hardware, an online shop.

Tools Needed:

This project also requires a few tools beyond the usual hammer and saw, including a table saw, drill, and miter box or miter saw, as well as some way of clamping glued miter joints.

A Note on Lumber:

Finally, note that before buying lumber, you will have to measure your windows to figure out how much lumber you need. I will cover that in the next post here.

____________________________________________

For the entire series on making wooden window screens, click on the category "How to Make Wood Window Screens Series", in the Topics list along the right-hand side of the home page. There is also now an index tab at the top of the home page, listing all the posts in sequential order, with a link to each one.

Local Heritage Garden 1: 2012 Summary

Where to begin? It's still Saturday, February 9, a foot of snow on the ground. My mind turns to gardening, naturally. But where to begin? It seems an endless topic and my own gardens are so paltry, they really don't seem worthy of a blog topic. Still, this spring will be my second in the house and I spend a lot of time trying to garden (or trying to "yard," more like it). Probably more apt to title this the trials and tribulations of the small time gardener. I dearly love flowers and herbs, yet it seems the more I try, the less I know.

So still, where to begin? Well, it seems time to order a few seeds and things for the spring. I've never done that. To do that, I have to think about design. Urgh. Not a lot of help there.

Photos. Perhaps. Let me try to find the best and worst of last year.

I'd put a few bulbs in right after we arrived, the first fall, and the very best show was in the spring, right after we got back from our honeymoon--tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, forsythia:

This is a magical place in the spring. I can feel the age of the land, its less-tampered-with quality because the house has been in place for almost 200 years. As far as I can tell, the yard hasn't been wed-or-fed, certainly not lately, perhaps not ever. There are naturalized crocuses and courses of wild flowers, blue, white and yellow, pink, threaded all through the bright spring grass, against a backbone of more domestic but long established azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwood, and the (unusual to me, coming from the midwest) early blooming andromeda (pieris japonica). The explosion of color and profusion of what is clearly a long, long established eco-system gave me the idea of trying to create or re-create a garden that would stay true to the place.

I honestly don't know what that means. This was a farmhouse. It wasn't a Victorian home with a formal garden. It doesn't even have the feel of informal English gardens. But it seems clear to me that the women and men who have lived here have loved this postage stamp of land and that it has attracted owners who love to garden, along the lines of what might be considered an old-fashioned American way.

So I figure that a garden that hews more to American folk would suit the house. It's the summer flowers that have disappeared in the intervening years, that I want to put here, or as I think of it, put back. Irises. Roses. Lilac. Peonies. Lily of the Valley. Day Lilies. Black-eyed Susans. Zinnias. Marigolds. That's what I want.

My first attempts last summer were pretty meager. Here's a month-by-month journal of sorts:

June:

The bulbs were done in the garden by the studio door, so I put in a few perennials--coneflower, black-eyed susans and russian sage--, some herbs--thyme, chives, oregano--, and planted seeds of poppy, marigold, alyssum and zinnia ... waiting ...

I ordered day lilies and dug up a patch of grass by the garage that was impossible to mow, thinking that a south wall would make an excellent spot for a day lily garden, and put in nasturtium seeds for ground cover ...

I planted some plants that tolerate dry conditions on the dry hill near the well--iris, guara, and two kinds of sedum ...

And, my most successful move, hanging geraniums on the front porch ...

July:

I realize there really isn't enough sun next to the house for the sun-loving perennials ...

or the day lilies on the south wall of the garage, which are struggling.

And the well garden has gone dormant, uninteresting, tho the weed tree is happy.

August:

The hosta, snapdragons and parsley in the shady corner of the patio are happy, but the patio has been completely taken over by crab grass ...

The garden by the studio door has finally taken off like gangbusters -- green and pink zinnias giant-headed and full of butterflies ...

But I'm not happy with the well garden, so I take out the weed tree, move the iris, and add coreopsis and a feathery old-fashioned pink plant whose name I forget, yarrow, it is ... and an unusual kind of plain portulaca ...

Giant crab grass has overtaken the day lilies, and after much pondering (and Capel's insistence that the forsythia absolutely must not continue to overhang the street so), I agree to severely prune back the forsythia, really to get more light to the day lilies, I say, really ...

I try really hard to prune it without taming its wild-haired look. After a long day's work, it's a bit more manageable in size while still looking totally unruly (and I might note, still arching subtly over the street), but the crab grass will have to wait ...

In the front yard, a new little summer garden of lavender, coleus, nasturtium and pink dahlias is doing well.

But the north boundary of the property has been completely overtaken by giant unnamable rhizomatic weeds ... and vines ...

There are a number of old flowering bushes in this border, but no hope of rescue for them this summer. ...

September:

The hosta, parsley and snapdragons in the corner are happy, as is the crab grass, which has now totally overtaken the patio. 

I spend several weekends digging up the patio crab grass with the handle of a teaspoon (truly), not even getting to most of it, with modest results here and there. As I weed, I plant creeping thyme, to try to force out the crab grass, because I refuse to spray the patio, which has its own marvelous ecosystem of ants, mosses, seasonal plants and other interesting denizens. Won't bore you with the details here, just the results--tiny bits of thyme and other creeping covers:

The zinnias continue to be merry ...

The well garden has a brief moment of glory, with the guara, portulaca, yarrow, coreopsis and nasturtium all in bloom ... tho it still doesn't look anything like what I have imagined it could, in my head ...

And I finally spend an afternoon weeding the impossibly high crab grass in the day lilies ...

I take out two giant Lowes yard refuse bags of crab grass. When I'm done, it's marginally better ... the nasturtiums have done much better than the lilies. At this point, I'm just hoping the lilies get established, so I have better results next year ...

But then I realize the stump on the far side of the day lilies has an invasive patch of poison ivy, which I have been watering along with the lilies, and it has sprouted hydra-heads everywhere. That I recruit Capel's help for, and on a non-windy day, he helps me spray. It wilts. Yay.

Best of all, an old stump near the garage has sprouted! Probably what we used to call a snowball bush, one of the viburnums. A neighbor's yard has a giant bush with the same leaves and giant white blooms, but of course I don't know what that one is called either ... so we shall see if mine blooms this year ...

Sometime in this timeframe, I spend a few weekends trying to rescue the rhododendron stand by the front porch. But I won't go into details here. That's a longer story. Then the bathroom overtakes all.

Late October:

Bathroom done, mostly. While frantically trying to finish the porch column bases, I'm also still fussing with the well garden. The nasturtiums shaded out the sedum, so that seems a lost cause. I plant more bulbs. I don't even remember what now. But these are my last garden efforts on what turns out to be the last sunny fall day, winter nearing ...