In January of 200
9 we completed the restoration of a San Francisco Victorian home. It involved a lot more than just paint removal, priming and re-painting.
The original facade of this 1890’s Italianate Victorian had been stripped, leaving only the roof-line corbels to indicate the grandeur that once was. The redwood siding had been covered with fiber shingles and then these had later been re-stripped and replaced with new siding and tacky, flimsy 2 1/2 inch wide trim.
The owner wanted to bring back some of the original detail of this historic home. We started by taking photographs of similar Victorians, and checked some books out of the library. We found that for this style, (Italianate) with slanted bays, the corners of the bays were always capped by round columns. We decided that the entryway and a large upper window would need pediments (overhanging caps), which would be supported (at least cosmetically) by corbels (tying into the style of the existing roof-line). Some additional decorative details would be borrowed from an unmolested square bay window on the right side of the house.
After submitting our sketches and gaining approval from the historical planning department, we approached American Wood-turning (formerly Gail Redman Studios) for the columns and corbels, and we are on our way!
We realized that the existing window sills would not support the 5″ diameter columns, and so we cut channels into the siding/sheathing and slid 2″ by 6″ redwood sills under the existing ones to build them out.
We found “mock-ups” to be very helpful in pre-determining how things will look before actually building them. We spent a good amount of time tacking trim into place and checking out the look before actually mitering and nailing them.
The owner gave us artistic license which was fantastic, because we had the freedom to not only create a great design, but also a fantastic color palatte. The end scheme was fairly simple, yet elegant, with four colors and some gold leaf. Check out this restored Victorian at:
https://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=65050&id=646520447&l=38993c0cdb
