Wood-Crafting Team

Wood-Crafting Team
The Wood-Crafting Team is dedicated to producing a superior, long-lasting finished product, completing work without compromising the safety of visitors and workers, and providing meaningful learning experiences to employees, clients and partners. Our areas of specilaty include window and door repair, replication, construction, and replicating millwork.

The Little Studio before project work

HPTC/NPS

Featured Project
Repair and Preserve the Exterior of the Little Studio
Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire

Significance of the Resource

The Little Studio at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site was the personal work space of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of the most important American sculptors of the Gilded Age. Saint-Gaudens is known for his innovative designs of civic sculpture and gold currency. Saint-Gaudens built the Little Studio next to his home, Aspet, in 1903-1904. It embodied his design ideals for the property, incorporating Classical Revival and Shingle Style architecture. It currently houses museum collections and is open to the public as exhibition space.

The Little Studio before project wood-crafting work.

HPTC/NPS

Why Are We Doing the Project:

By nature, wood shingles have a finite life and have to be replaced to protect the rest of the building. The Little Studio’s cedar-shingle roof and wall coverings were beginning to break down by summer 2018. Time and weather had also deteriorated a variety of painted wood exterior components including gutters, cornices, fascia, and soffits. These items required repair and re-painting to avoid further deterioration. Stucco on the low wall surrounding the Little Studio terrace had been replaced in 1994 and now required “re-preservation.” This is not uncommon. By 2018, the stucco was cracking and separating from the wall’s stone core.

The Little Studio after wood-crafting project work

NPS/HPTC

How Is This Done?

We began the roof work by removing the old shingles, roofing felt, and stray nails down to the board sheathing below. We then inspected the historic sheathing and repaired it where needed. We notice the sheathing was fairly sound, and the plentiful local rough-sawn Northeastern pine made the replacement simple. Next, we installed the underlayments and laid cedar shingles with stainless steel nails. We then installed copper flashings and gutter linings to protect against water intrusion. Our last step is to complete carpentry repairs on gutters, fascia, soffit, and molding, retaining the historic wood components.

HPTC’s Masonry team partnered with the Woodcrafting team to address the Little Studio’s stucco challenges. The masonry team removed the deteriorated stucco which revealed a rusted, failing anchoring system. They designed and installed a new system and new stucco was applied. The team also re-laid several courses of unstable chimney brick – a life and safety issue not apparent until project work began – with mortar formulated to match the historic fabric.