Barleywood Restoration

We are restoring the front door and a window of an antebellum solid brick house in Jefferson County, West Virginia.  The house is called Barleywood, and it is a beautiful Greek Revival home; still quite original.

The door and window construction are still sound and very well done.  The design is simple and elegant.

The window is unique, as the lower sash closes on the top of a pair of bottom doors, which open flush with the floor. I am told that this window was used for boarding and disembarking from the carriage, directly from the center hall. I have never seen a window like this; it is similar to the windows at Monticello, though with lower doors instead of a sliding sash.

Our cabinetmaker Chris Robare:  “This is museum quality millwork.  This is the kind of **** that the DuPonts were buying and dragging to Winterthur.”

The joinery is pinned mortise and tenon, as you can see from the pictures.  The paint tested quite high in lead, and may have simply been white lead used as a white pigment in an oil carrier, though we don’t see any evidence for what the carrier might have been.

The screws for attaching the sashes into the frame are hand made, and are sparingly used.  The hinges are cast iron, and are labelled ‘Baldwin’ and ‘Patent’.