 Hello, I'm Leslie McVane and welcome to Portland Media Center member highlights and today I'm at the Holiday Inn with the amazing Hillary Bassett, Executive Director of Greater Portland Landmarks. Hi, Hillary. Great to be here. Thank you for coming and we're having a great day here at the Old House Trade Show. And we were just talking a little bit about when did this start? This started in the mid-90s and actually the first one was in 1996 and that was really all about getting people together who have old houses with the people who work on old houses. And that has proven to be just a really fun premise for the show and we get lots of people from all over the state in the region who are restoring their older buildings, so it's a lot of fun. And we're blessed in this state with wonderful older buildings and many are here because of Greater Portland Landmarks. Right, exactly. Well, you know, back in the 70s there was a whole movement to get rid of the old, the 60s and 70s and so at also at that time people started realizing the quality of the construction, the history, the stories behind the places, the beautiful details that you just don't get in a new construction these days. It's different. And the hand-plained wood and I mean just everything, if you go into an old house they feel different, the atmosphere is different and you've just helped preserve all that. Well, Greater Portland Landmarks really started in the era when there was a lot of demolition so Landmarks in 6061 actually, before it even started there was the demolition of Union Station and then there was a lot of demolition so Landmarks started in that climate and you know something, there's still a little bit of that climate continuing today with all the development pressure. People don't realize that these resources are really precious, you know you can't get them back once they've been demolished, you can't get them back. It's so true. So today you have people who really do appreciate the old and are here to share some of their ideas and wares. You want to talk a little bit about who's here and what's going to happen this week? Yeah, so the Old House Trade Show has 50 exhibitors so there are people who do everything from plasters, late roofing, copper work, window repair, window replacements if that's necessary, timber framing work, you name it, they do it. We even have interior designers who specialize in historic buildings so I think it's just a fun place for people to actually meet the contractors, you know if you're trying to find a mason, well come on over, we have a couple of the top masons here to talk to, you can actually talk to the owner, show them photographs of your project and they can give you some feedback and what should you do? And I think having a good relationship with people who are working on a building that you cherish is really important. Absolutely and I think you'll find or certainly I have found that the people who work on old buildings are salt of the earth great people and they really care about quality, they're personable, they're at the Old House Trade Show, they want to meet you, they want to share their knowledge, people are so generous with what they've, frankly they've learned over 30, 40 years of working in the business. And they're not just craftsmen, they're really historians in their own right. Absolutely we have a mason here who specializes in very early buildings and he knows all of the intricacies about how old chimneys work and old stoves, we have other people who are specializing in plaster work and they know all the different techniques and how you do the mixes and things that you and I probably wouldn't even think about but they are experts. I did talk to one of the plaster guys because I have a 1750s house and I said I'm in total denial, I look at it and I walk out of the room. Well people do get frustrated because they don't know what to do and the beauty of the Old House Trade Show is these people know what to do and you know I think people sometimes feel like oh my gosh it's just too big a project, what are we, how can I do it and we're also doing workshops at the Old House Trade Show so people, one of them is on how do I plan my projects, where do I start, I need everything and so that's part of it where you can kind of phase it in over the five to ten year plan so you're not feeling totally overwhelmed by a project that's too big. Another workshop you have is finding out who lived in your old house, I thought that sounded fascinating. That is a really fun topic where we actually, one of our staff members, Julie Larry is expert at looking at internet resources, old city directories, photographs, so you can actually look up your own house and get the story of who was there and even how it evolved, you know, do you know when it was first built, was it different and so that's really fun. And if people can't come to that particular workshop, they could call Greater Portland Landmarks and have an appointment to come down and maybe talk to them. They could meet with us or Julie does the workshop throughout that, we do a couple of them during the year because it is popular, people, you buy a house, you want to know more about it or even maybe when you, you know, later in your, if you moved in, you think gee, this is really cool, what was going on here, who was here? Well I know it's one of our favorite things to do, so thank you Hillary. Thanks a lot Leslie, great to see you. Well people have come from all over the state and I'm here with Mike Thompson, hi Mike. Hi, how are you doing? I'm fine and you're from Kenny Bunk? Correct, yep, the old house parts company. Right, so tell us a little bit about what you do in your business and why you're here. Well we're an architectural salvage company and been in business for 23 years and I worked for the original owner for 18 years and just bought the business back in September. So I'm the second generation but we sell antique house parts basically, everything you can possibly think of, it's, you know, 12,000 square foot building, so it's lumber, thousands of doors, thousands of windows, we have a custom wood shop so we build things from antique wood materials and yeah, yeah. Some people who have old homes can come and people who have new homes who want to add old details. Actually it's probably a 50-50 mix and our biggest sales are new construction where people want all the doors in a new house they're building and yeah, it's cool, so it's reliving. So when people are doing demolition in an old building, do they call you? Yeah, yep, a lot of local builders keep us in mind, homeowners that do renovations and will take stuff out, they'll, you know, seek us out to just, you know, make sure it doesn't end up in a landfill and we dismantle our strip buildings and yep. Well great, have you been doing this for a while? Yeah, well the trade show, it's been a few years so this is our first year coming back, so we're excited to hopefully reach a new audience and see some familiar faces. Well thank you so much, Mike. Nice to meet you. I'm here with Dan Morales-Walch of Main Stonescapes. Hi Dan. How's it going? It's going great. Now this is your business, even though I think you look too young to own a business. Thank you. Yeah. When did you start the business? About three years ago, I felt it was time to go on my own. I really wanted to do unique projects and I felt on my own was the way to do that. Had you been apprenticing before that? I've been working about 12 years before I went on my own and so I felt I had a good enough base to complete all the projects to the best that could be done. Now it says Stonescapes, but now you do stone walls. Tell me what else you do. I also do flat work. I try to keep everything natural. I solely like to use natural stone and I use the oldest process that there has been because you know they last the longest. I don't try and do any shortcuts, any modern shortcuts that they have come up with. It's all about old time craftsmanship. And to do it dry stone wall, you have to be visually really great. Yeah, it takes years to really hone in the craft and see what you could see in the stone and make it what it needs to be and build a sound wall. I mean there's really only a couple rules you've got to follow to build a sound stone wall but it takes a long time to follow those rules. And you've got a picture over here of a building that's the old Gorham Inn or something? Yeah, it was the old Gorham Inn and the tavern was attached to it and which is the neighbors now but about 80 years ago was when the separation happened and all the stone work was done and it took about that long for it to fall and then I was able to come through and restore it to what it used to be. That's amazing and I'm fascinated by these tools here. Yeah, definitely. They look kind of old. They look old but it's an old process too. They're not too old, they're about two years old and I'm always having to switch out the handles because I'm working with stone. But yeah, I made my career off of these couple tools and I'm happy to say that. Well, thank you so much. This is exciting. Yeah, thank you so much. I hope it's a good show for you. Thank you. Well, I'm thrilled to be with Deb Andrews with Historic Preservation, Portland. City of Portland. Hi Deb. Hi. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. And we have a lovely wallpaper behind us of some of the buildings that you have made, helped restore. So people don't always understand what your office does. Do you want to give us a little elevator speech? Sure. In 1990, the city of Portland adopted a comprehensive preservation ordinance to recognize the city's historic buildings as assets and to take a real stewardship approach with those buildings in neighborhoods. So to date, there are about 2,000 buildings in the city that are protected under Portland's ordinance. In neighborhoods as diverse as Stroudwater, the West End, India Street, Congress Street, the Old Port. And the ordinance requires that if you renovate your building or add a sign to a commercial property or whatever, it is reviewed according to preservation standards. And we try to approach that process from a real technical assistance perspective. Not so much of no one is interested in, you know, hammering on a property owner with their goals and dreams, but to try and guide a project to make sure that those characteristics that we all love about an historic building are taken into account and treated sensitively. And we're so fortunate here in Portland to have so many historic buildings that are still with us. We are. In the late 1980s, it was a time of tremendous development boom, much like we're experiencing right now. And at that point, it wasn't at all clear that we would have so much at 30 years in. And so that's what really triggered the interest in adopting an ordinance. We lost a number of buildings, really significant buildings to demolition, and then some really radical renovations. And it was a wake-up call to a lot of people in the community. And that's what we need sometimes to realize, wait a minute, we're losing a lot. I think oftentimes we take for granted that everyone appreciates these and recognizes what characteristics really give a building its character. But when someone comes and radically changes it, it is that wake-up call. I know. I work in England a lot with English antiques, right, with Browne over here. And when you go to London, I mean, why do you go there? You go because of those beautiful buildings. And that's why people come here in many ways. It is. It is. I think it's its authentic character. And it really does take stewardship to maintain it. And that's what this program is about. Well, thank you for all you do. We appreciate it. Right. Thank you. Now I'm with Wayne Velzanya from Red Hook Design here in Portland. Hi, Wayne. Good morning. How are you? I'm fine. So let's talk about what you do. You do restoration and replication, mill work on older homes, typically landmark structures where there's a requirement to maintain the integrity of the old building. And we've done that for a very long time now. And many times you'll come to a site and see big chunks missing. So you have to replicate those. It's missing. And also lots of chunks that came from a variety of places that don't belong on that particular structure. So we've got an example here of a building, right? Yes. Do you want to talk about what you did and what these pieces of wood are that you're holding? Sure. Sure. This building is in Brooklyn Heights, New York City. It's a landmark structure. So there are strong guidelines as to what we can and can't do in rebuilding that particular facade. Their requirement is that we go through and find old pieces of molding that are still somewhat intact and then use those. We submit them to landmarks. They approve them as being period correct. And then we can begin the restoration. And so in this case, this is one of the only good pieces we could find on the building. And this is really what our target was, which has the front detail. But then also we have to match the depth of the piece and so on. So it goes this way, goes this way. And so we build up through glue-ups. And I have a knife maker. I think this is the guy. So we send off a piece of this profile to the knife maker. He makes a set of cutters for me, which are these guys. And I have a machine that these are installed on, which allows me to make any amount of this. Oh my gosh, that's fascinating. And so on this particular project, there were probably at least a half dozen different details. So there's this particular piece. And you can see in the photographs, there'd be this bottom piece, top piece. These were hand-carved capitals. So we took those off and hand-restored them, much like we're doing with these knee braces. This is a Munjoy Hill House, probably an 1890 project. So situation is similar, where you find old pieces and basically capture the workmanship and then reproduce it. How fascinating. And you travel, obviously. You've done work in Brooklyn or New York. Typically here. And for a long time, I was doing a lot of work in New York City also. Again, a lot of landmarks projects there. And so we work well in that market. Terrific. Thank you so much. So fascinating. Thank you. I'm with Kevin right now from the Heritage Company. Hi, Kevin. Hi, how are you? Fine. Now you work with Slade and Copper and tell us a little bit about what the Heritage Company is. Well, the Heritage Company is a Slate and Copper Roof Restoration Company. We specialize in historical residences, historical restoration of historical homes, churches, things like that. I grew up in, well, I was born in a house here in Portland that was a Slade House and a Slate Roof on Danforth Street. And you don't see that often. So do you see many Slate roofs? I mean, are people putting new Slate roofs on? We are. Yeah. Actually we're on a project in Yarmouth right now where it was an existing roof that needed to be replaced and they replaced it with Slate. So we still do some new construction from time to time and a lot of restoration mostly. There's nothing like Slate. Oh, it's beautiful. Long lasting. Long lasting Copper is just fabulous. But now Copper is at a premium. It is. It is always fluctuating but it's definitely a costly roof material. But if people are doing an old home and they want to be true to what was there, Copper was used. Copper is the way to go and the beauty of it is it first of all, it's beautiful but it lasts a long time. So a Copper Roof, a Copper accents with a Slate Roof, it's a 100 year project. Yeah. More than every 7 years. Exactly. Yeah. So you're going to do a little demonstration for us and maybe show us some of the Copper as well that you use for flashing and right now what have we got here? So we have a few of the Copper components that we'll use on a house restoration. This is a Copper vent pipe cover that would hide the PVC pipe or the cast iron pipe that would be going through the roof. Different types of gutters. This is an OG style gutter that we custom fabricate to match whatever is existing on the house. This is a double beaded style gutter that would hang a little bit differently. It's kind of a, we've had these described as earrings jewelry for your house. This is a different conductor pipe that would lead the water to the ground. Oh I love that. Custom drip edges. Basically if a house has it and it needs to be restored we can fabricate it. And it's so beautiful. You know I've gone to the hardware store and bought Copper piping and had it cut for napkin rings. Yeah that's, there you go. That's a good idea. But it looks so good and then there's a piece over there that's aged a bit, right? Another sample of a way to get the water down, but it's just an older piece that's been around for a little bit so it shows just the aging process. A little patina on there. And sometimes they turn kind of a green color. Eventually it'll turn green. Coastal. The ocean, it's like a 10 to 12 year process. If it's inland a little bit it could take 20 years or so. But it looks good no matter what stage it's at. So now you've got slate too. And do you just do slate roofs? You don't use slate for sinks or countertops. No we're just a roofing company. So let's have a demonstration of how to cut slate. Okay now tell us what you're going to do. So I'm going to demonstrate how we cut slate. Now for us we have this hammer, this is a slate hammer. It's with us all the time when we're on the roof. We have staging around us all the time. And this is called a slate stake. So we can drive this in wherever we're working. And we take our slate, draw a line just to have a go by. It doesn't score the slate or anything. That's so cool. And then if I want to punch a hole, I'm going to punch a hole. I've never seen that done before. There you go. Oh my gosh that's fabulous. You just told me something that I didn't realize. You did the restoration. Our company did the restoration on the State House Dome. It was a good project, a fun project, it was a lot of work and a good project to be a part of. A real historic project. Yeah exactly. And it looks beautiful. Well thank you. It was a lot of work. Thank you. All right well this is terrific and I learned a lot. I didn't know, it seemed kind of easy the way you did it. It's really not hard. I mean it is an art to be good at it. The tools are basic and it's easy to do. I'm afraid if I did it it would look like that little pile. You want to try it? No. Okay. All right. Can we hold this? Yeah. I'm going to try it. All right. So what do I do? Take this. Okay. Let's start with a rough edge. So now you've got to score it under here, right? You don't have to. It was just to keep a straight line. So turn this edge, this is the cutting edge right here. Oh. You just go just a little bit, just take a little bit off and just chop nice and easy. Chop with this? With this part right here. Yeah. Just like that. Oh. Exactly. Oh I'm good at it. You are doing great. I'm working. Fantastic. Nicely done. Thank you. I like being on this side. Thank you very much. That was fun. I'm with Justin Smith from New England Sash Company. Hi Justin. Hi. How are you? I'm fine. So this is what you do. Yep. Yep. We're traditional wooden window makers. I've been making wooden windows since 1992. And I had been down in Providence, Rhode Island for a number of years, but my wife and I moved up to Portland two years ago and we started this company. Well, wooden windows are beautiful I think. Thank you. But people are like low maintenance, let's just put in some plastic. Yep. But you're obviously getting a lot of call for the beautiful old windows. Yeah. I don't think the traditional wooden windows are for the vast majority of applications out there, but there are certainly some people who value that they're trying to match existing. They're building a wing on their house and they want it to match the sash that were there. They have a house that was built in 1750. The sash were all replaced in 1900. They want to go back to the way the sash were in 1750. So they come to us and we work with shards or remnants of old sash and have knives ground to match the profile and then put it together with mortise and tenon joinery. We peg the joints together with wooden pegs and putty glaze it typically with linseed oil putty. Oh, lovely. I know my sister and brother-in-law have a 1750s house or maybe it's a little actually 1850s and they have wooden storm windows. Do you do those? Absolutely. The screen over there, it's a similar idea. Sometimes we'll make sets of screens and sets of storms that are interchangeable and then seasonally they get swapped in and out. That's what they have to do every year. For the right situation, I think an exterior wooden storm is a good application. It's not good on commercial buildings or buildings with multiple floors, but they do offer protection to the primary sash and if you've had your windows restored or had new windows made and you want to give them some protection from the weather, an exterior wooden storm is a fine solution. Well we've had a great time at the old home trade show and I can't wait to say goodbye and go look at some of the other booths. This is Leslie McVane for Portland Media Center.