Discoveries at the Kent Wells Sherman House

Now that the Kent Wells Sherman House is safely moved and on its foundation, we have been able to get inside and begin work on the restoration of this historic 1858 house. We've begun by demolishing all of the modern additions to it, which has revealed a lot of the house's history to us. This wallpaper that you see on the left is what was revealed when I peeled off modern drywall in what was no doubt the dining room in the rear of the first floor. We are fortunate that it was not painted over and that we are perhaps seeing the wallpaper that existed in the late 19th century. It certainly does not look like anything that would have been on the walls in the 20th century, but I do not know much about historic wallpaper. So I will have to take the photos that I have shot to an expert to have it properly dated. What upsets me is that some of the people with whom I am working on this project want to put drywall back up on the walls that I just painstakingly pulled it off of, which seems completely pointless after the hard work I did and have yet to do in that room, because I am not yet finished with the drywall removal project. Yes, some of the wallpaper is damaged, but I would love to restore what we can and replace what is too damaged to be restored with identical custom made wallpaper. I'm sure that would be an expensive venture, but even so, it preserves what I think is a crucial part of the house's history. If we can't restore/replace the wallpaper, I'd love to go a cheaper route and put plexiglass up over it to preserve what is there so that people can see what we discovered and to be able to see some of the historic wallpaper that was in the house when some of the early occupants lived there. It would just be a shame, after so much hard work removing the drywall, to put new drywall back up over this beautiful, delicate historic wallpaper that I so painstakingly revealed. I'm going to fight for its restoration and/or preservation. It's probably the only room in the house that was drywalled over the original wallpaper. Everything else has been painted over, so unless we wanted to carefully strip the paint to reveal what is underneath, I'd suggest that we at least keep this one room's wallpaper intact.

Another neat discovery that we made while peeling away modern drywall is this forgotten fireplace. Whether or not is original, I am not sure, but I have been told that it probably is not. Still, it is a fascinating discovery to have made and I would love it if we could keep it, if only as a decorative item and not a functional one, since we have removed what was obviously a modern chimney. I think that would be very lovely if we could fashion a period fireplace out of this opening. Everything that we do with regard to the house is going to be dependent on money and practicality, of course. We're not going to faithfully restore it to exacting period standards, but rather, we are going to adaptively reuse the house for commercial purposes. Still, I'd like to see us try to re-create the interior to look as faithful to period as we possibly can afford to do. I'm really hoping that we do not have to install drop ceilings and fluorescent lights after I worked so hard to remove the drop ceiling in the same room where I peeled off the drywall. I don't want us to get too modern looking where the interior is concerned. I do want the house to retain some of its period appearance so that people, when they come in, can appreciate how a mid-19th century house might have looked. But I suppose that in the end, it will all boil down to money and practicality and so forth. I'm just going to try to hold out for as much of a period interior look as we can possibly afford to do. Going forward, I have my ideas about what I want this to look like, but I am not the one in charge of interior or exterior appearances. All I can do is to make suggestions based on my knowledge of architecture of the period and go from there. Can't wait to see how this thing is going to look when it is all done and open to the public sometime in 2014.