more late 19th century old growth notched sills and girts salvaged from a two story wood-framed dwelling

this was the first job site where i was unable to document the demolition of a late 19th century chicago two story wood-framed residence. it contained both old growth notched timber sills and girts with mortise and tenon joinery. in my place, i sent my most skilled salvagers to oversee the demolition and photodocument the timbers both "in situ" and after their removal from the house during its demolition.

when i received the images, i carefully reviewed and edited certain ones to best illustrate how the sills and girts where configured or positioned within this wood-framed residence. i was especially pleased with the group of detailed images showing the fully exposed beams still joined together. it was even more rewarding to replicate this jointed beam assembly when the salvaged sections were brought back to the shop. we refinished and shot them in the studio, aiming to maximize the visual impact of the surface characteristics (e.g., saw markings) and methodologies used to shape the joints.

interestingly, this is the first house where the "spikes" or cut nails used to toenail the joints where comprised of steel instead of the more common and malleable wrought iron. in addition, the nail heads exhibited features that i had not seen before, which is impressive, considering i have retrieved and documented well over a hundred cut nails (used in chicago residential construction) dating from the 1840's on through the late 1890's. the images below show two of these nails retrieved from a sill plate. the nails are virtually identical with very little crudity evident.

together with the wrecker, i managed to secure nearly every sill plate and girt segment containing a tenon or mortise. most of the sills were badly rotted, so the images below represent girts that were in good enough shape to refinish and photodocument for this post, and to add to the historic building materials database, which will be added in its entirety thus far, to the bldg. 51 site within the next week. there are well over 500 images of building material specimens organized in multiple categories (i.e., sills, joists, studs, nails, sheathing, etc.).