Replacing Victorian Gingerbread

[Scrolling Days]

My parents have a beautiful Victorian style house, but as it is in a wind-prone area, and they live in snowy Western New York, the elements eventually began to weather away some of the gingerbreading adorning two of the peaks. My mom is pretty meticulous about things, so I knew this is something she wanted fixed if possible, so......off to the rescue with the scrollsaw!!

Here are pics of the original pieces pre-repair:






Here, you can see that the problem was not just worn paint, but the wood had begun to lose it's integrity, and was broken in areas.

[Scrolling Days]

The first part of the job involved getting the bad pieces of gingerbread down. This might be fairly easy with most houses, but of course, these two pieces were at the topmost peaks.

Fortunately, we know a nice man who is a roofer and is very capable of working at heights on a ladder. He was able to take them down, but there was an unexpected "discovery" after removing the top piece.......

BEES !!!





Yup....that's a big ol' hive. Luckily, Everitt, our roofer, was not stung, but it did mean my parents had to call in the professionals and have that big hive removed.


Back to my job......


My goal was to use the best piece of gingerbread available and make a template of it, so that it would be identical to the original. This was important, since similar style gingerbreading adorns the house elsewhere.

Here is a section which was removed from the roof:





......and taken apart:

[Scrolling Days]

The baseboards, and the center post would ultimately be relatively easy to replace. The scrollsaw was needed, however, for the rest of it.

I wanted to make a master template on paper so that if had to make any more of these in the future, I could. I simply used an old piece of gingerbread as a pattern to trace from.








The other tracings, for simplicity, were made directly onto the 1x10 lumber I used to make the "wings" with.

Here they are, placed in proper position after being cut from the scrollsaw. I would later replace the center post with 3x3 cedar, and screw in a new oak finial which I found online, to reasonaby match the original.

[Scrolling Days]

After screwing all of the new pieces together, and then priming and painting them, we were ready to call Everitt to hang 'em back up again!

Here is the finished job.











And my parents were like this.....

[Sally]

Wonderful story Shawn and a wonderful project of love. Very nice - love it.

[fireglass]

Varry nice howto and good work! Thouse really make the house look good! Lance

[dan velia]

very good job and what a beautiful house

[Kiwi]

Great work. It is always so satisfying to be able with a bit of skill to fix something back to "good as new"

[lkbraa]

Shawn, what a fabulous project!!! The end result is outstanding and I can tell lots of luv and care went into it! Your folks have a beautiful house and every right to be meticulous about it, nice to see how you saved the history and integrity of the style...awesome, awesome job. Thanx so much for sharing!

[MikeyD]

This is great. I hope to get into this kind of work when I get moved to Colorado. You did such a nice job. Did you learn any thing worth passing along?

Mike

[Don in Brooklin On]

Thanks for posting. Great job.

I love the center post with the finial.

I love doing this kind of work as you will see and appreciate for years and years to come.

Before I moved, I restored a house in Markham Ontario and I reproduced gingerbread very similar to yours without the post. It was copied from old book of the area and then approved by the Heritage committee.

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[Sunlion]

Very nice professional looking job.

[Rolf]

Great job Shawn! What wood did you use?
That is a very good looking house, it is amazing how something like the gingerbread enhances the appearance. Just looking at the height of that ginger bread makes me quesy.
One of my first scrolling projects was making some gingerbread for the shed I designed and built.
The paterns were a super enlarge ment of some thumbnails I found on the web.
I did those on an old Craftsman saw.

[Greenfield_Bob]

Shawn, you did a good job.
Thanks for sharing your work with us.

Bob

[Scrolling Days]

Thanks for the nice words, gang!

Don and Rolf, thanks for sharing your gingerbreading as well.....fantastic work on both jobs!

Rolf, you're right about the height.....there is no way I would have wanted to be up on a ladder that high.

Regarding the wood, I really wanted to use cedar for the whole shabang, since it weathers so nicely. I spent a lot of time scouring the 1x10 cedar boards at my local wood shops, and they were all very knotty, as cedar tends to be. I was afraid of using a section with heavy knots, as when I scrolled out the pieces, the knots might have ended up near an edge, and with cedar, the knots can pop out leaving voids.

After not being able to find boards to my satisfaction, I ended up using some nice knot-free pine. Not my first choice for an outdoor wood, but I covered it with many coats of a good exterior paint, so hopefully it will have some longevity.

The center posts are made of 3x3 cedar, and the finials on the ends are oak.

...... Did you learn any thing worth passing along?

Mike

Always check for bees before sending somebody almost 3 stories up in the air on a ladder.

.