Environmental
Protection for Your Building
Home Maintenance Checklist
5 Biggest Restoration Mistakes
Tips for Selecting a Specialty Contractor
Repairs to Plaster Cracks
Cures for Calcimine Ceilings
Hanging by a Hair — Techniques for Reattaching Plaster Ceilings
The Importance of Climate Control to Protect Your Building
Climate control is an important consideration for historic building
maintenance. We are all familiar with the large temperature swings experienced
in the Northeast climate, and buildings experience temperatures ranging
from -30° below freezing to 100° in the sun just like we do!
Just as we desire cooling relief and the warmth of the furnace for our
quality of life- buildings need these things just as much to preserve
their quality. Significant fluctuations in building temperature directly
(and possibly negatively) impact the longevity of your preservation
efforts. As you consider your building maintenance plan, and before
you invest in a preservation effort, consider the importance of climate
control.
Large swings in temperature cause all surfaces to expand and contract
accordingly. These changes in surface tensions cause considerable stress
on all building materials, as well as the contents of the building.
The unfortunate result of these changing surface tensions is eventual
failure of plaster, paint, glue and nails. As the many surfaces move,
interior paint begins to crack and alligator, plaster cracks and releases
from its lath or base surface, nails bend or break, and glue cracks,
flakes and withers away. In addition to the building itself, large temperature
changes threaten the preservation of manuscripts and documents, furniture
and fixtures, antiques, and other important building contents.
If you use the building during the colder months at all, it is more
cost effective to maintain a minimum temperature and bring the building
up to comfortable temperature than to attempt to bring the building
from 10° to 68° on any regular basis.
It is our recommendation that the building heat be maintained throughout
the colder months at 50°-55° Fahrenheit which is considered
'Museum Temperature', the minimum temperature preferred by museum curators,
art historians and historic preservation professionals. This is a solid
first-step toward protecting your important historic building and its
contents.
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5 Biggest Restoration Mistakes
1. Skipping the
necessary research and investigation to determine the building's history,
what the period details were, where materials can be found, what modern
methods are available, and what preservation experts can advise and
assist.
2. Failing to develop
a Preservation Plan including the project timeline and priorities, budget,
and maintenance schedule.
3. Investing in
improving cosmetic details before restoring the structural integrity
of the building.
4. Performing projects
in a sequence that undermines previous work ~ finishing floors before
the walls are repaired, restoring plaster before foundation repairs
are completed.
5. Short-term "cures"
that lead to more serious problems in the future (using inferior quality
products, performing cosmetic cover-ups, etc.).
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Repairing Plaster Cracks
It is very rare to see older
plaster without any cracks, and there are those of us that find cracks
part of plaster's aesthetic character and charm - love plaster, love cracks.
Cracking, however, can also be serious and lead to further plaster damage
if not taken care of. Cracks occur for a variety of reasons, many of which
are simply the natural reactions of plaster compounds and building materials.
Climate and temperature changes, building settling and moving over time,
weight loads, chimney movement and environmental stresses (heavy traffic,
nearby trains, construction blasting) all contribute to plaster cracking.
Cracking is further exacerbated by any structural disturbances or repairs
to a building (foundation work, sill repair), leaving a building unheated
during the winter, deteriorating framing and timber (rotting sills, weak
floors and joists, insufficient framing), or water leaks. Some or any
of these conditions are usually present in older homes and buildings.
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Cures for Calcimine Ceilings
If
patches of peeling paint on a ceiling or flakes of paint chips littering
the room is a familiar site in your old house, your ceiling likely has
a past that includes calcimine paint.
Being essentially chalk,
the water-based mixture of calcimine paint contained minimal binders
and glues for adhesion. Herein lies the problem for those of us dealing
with peeling paint now, because this lack of active binder chemicals
discourages modern paints from adhering. Over time, any paint coatings
over a calcimine base will fail, chipping and peeling away modern paint
coverings have nothing to "stick" to. Click
for more...
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Hanging by a Hair — Techniques for Reattaching Plaster Ceilings
Most of us with an older home have experienced sagging and
cracking plaster in our ceilings. While ceilings are affected by all
the normal wear and tear that goes on within our houses - structural
shifting, leaks and temperature shifts, traffic and vibrations - they
have the addition stress of being at the mercy of gravity! Because ceiling
surfaces tend to be some of the largest, unsupported surfaces in the
house, older plaster systems applied over wooden lath have a limited
life span before they begin to break and pull away. The good new is,
they can be repaired and saved from further damage.
We have successfully reattached many old ceilings using a reattachment
process which involves injecting glue to create a new bond between the
plaster and lath where the keys have been damaged and broken away over
time. This technique uses modern adhesive materials that are easy to
handle and cause minimal damage to savable plaster, and will restore
the old plaster's integrity for many more years. Click
for more...
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Tips for Selecting a Specialty Contractor
We believe restoration is an art, and those of us working in the restoration
trades have spent years developing special techniques and expertise
to handle a restoration project with the sensitivity necessary to maintain
historic integrity. Click
for more...
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