THE OAKS
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Listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register, The Oaks was built in the early 1930’s and suffered a devastating fire in 2007.
It took approximately 250,000 gallons of water to put out this fire. Deerchase was on site to stabilize this structure the day after the fire and remained there to lead the reconstruction effort for two years. To read about this fascinating project, and all that was involved, click this link: Restoring the Oaks. (Interior Design by Letitia Ord) |
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WOODLEY FARM
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This beautiful home, built in the mid-nineteenth century, had an original front porch built with hand made nails. It is quite rare in this day and age for a pre-civil war home to still have its original porch due to decay from exposure to the elements over the years. The elements finally won out when a large tree fell on the front of the house during a big storm. The porch, many of the windows, and the roof were severely damaged.
In our work to repair the damage and restore the beauty of the house, we rebuilt the steps, railings and replaced one of the four columns of the porch. We custom milled 28 different moulding profiles to match the detail of the original porch! |
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RECTORTOWN CABIN
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This is a pre-civil war cabin in which a fire started after the occupant improperly disposed of a cigarette and went to sleep. Thanks to a working smoke detector, she got out safely. The cabin, however, was severely damaged.
The work here gave us an opportunity to do it “the old way” while also completely upgrading to a modern infrastructure. We replaced the rafters and the whole roof system, entirely rebuilt the rear wall of the cabin and the back porch, rewired, replumbed, deodorized, and installed a new bathroom and kitchen. |
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Deerchase sourced antique logs to replace the rear wall of the cabin and replaced the chinking and daubing between them. The joinery at the corners was done with an adze and heavy framing chisels just as it was done originally. The second floor flooring was replaced with handmade rose head nails on antique random width pine flooring, which we also sourced. If anyone were to see the cabin now, they would never suspect that it had been so consumed by fire. The place is a real gem.
SILO REBUILD
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Deerchase was called to this job to demolish and rebuild a forty foot tall wooden silo which had been improperly built. Due to poor construction techniques, the original structure was severely rotting a mere three years after having been built. From the outside, this structure looks like an agricultural silo. The interior, however, houses both a circular staircase used to access the various floors of the adjacent structure as well as a cage ladder accessing the top floor of the silo itself. We lined it with tongue and groove pine and used western red cedar, which is very rot resistant, on the exterior. The roofing on the silo is a fiberglass dome made to look like an agricultural silo roof.
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The height of this structure required us to use an aerial forklift to place the steel framing members, which are extremely heavy. The team really enjoyed the challenge of working with structural steel. Many safety precautions had to be taken!
HIGHCIFFE CLOTHIERS
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In this build out, we transformed an empty retail space on the main street of Middleburg into Highcliffe Clothiers’s stunning new home. Highcliffe specializes in high end and bespoke clothing for men and women. The perimeter of the store is lined with traditionally detailed custom cabinetry and state of the art lighting. We installed a brick wall behind the seating area which features a tufted leather door we had made to look like the one in M’s office in the James Bond movies. Another fun detail is the secret door to the back area, which is concealed in the cabinetry.
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HALFWAY
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This project was an expansion of a pre-civil war two over two miller’s cabin into a large four bedroom house with a state-of-the-art infrastructure. The footprint of the house tripled in size and its overall square footage increased about fivefold.
Deerchase excavated underneath the cabin and supported it with oak cribbing and beams to create a full walk out basement (featuring a fire resistant safe room) and to add additions to either end. We dug a new well, installed water treatment, in floor radiant heat throughout the house and under the soapstone countertops, and four new bathrooms and a new kitchen. |
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The big story in this house revolves around the materials used and the lengths to which we went to source them. The interior flooring was salvaged from a circa 1830’s house in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, which was slated for demolition. We purchased the house a week before the demolition date so as to salvage its materials. The flooring is random width long leaf yellow pine which was milled from old growth trees cut down nearly two hundred years ago. As they were mature trees at that time (roughly 200 years old at harvest), this flooring is approximately 400 years old! A lot of labor went into preparing it for installation as all the nails had to be pulled or cut off, the backside had to be planed to get a uniform thickness, and the boards had to be cleaned. Once installed, of course, the floor had to be finished, a multilayered task which required a subtle application of tints and dyes prior to being sealed with waterlox.
In addition to beautiful flooring, the Dinwiddie house also had single board wainscoting (some boards up to 22” wide and over 20’ long). We were able to use this wainscoting in the powder room of the Halfway house and have a good supply of it in in our warehouse awaiting future projects.
We drew from sources closer to home in other areas. The beams in the kitchen addition were harvested from two sources: a late 19th century Loudoun county barn and 18th century hand hewn floor joists from a house nearby. All the stone used in the kitchen chimney came from the property itself, including a mill stone fragment from the ruins of the mill on the property.
The walls throughout the house are plaster and the millwork throughout is custom. So much of the house is brand new construction which integrates so seamlessly with the original cabin that it is impossible to perceive where the old and new meet.
In addition to beautiful flooring, the Dinwiddie house also had single board wainscoting (some boards up to 22” wide and over 20’ long). We were able to use this wainscoting in the powder room of the Halfway house and have a good supply of it in in our warehouse awaiting future projects.
We drew from sources closer to home in other areas. The beams in the kitchen addition were harvested from two sources: a late 19th century Loudoun county barn and 18th century hand hewn floor joists from a house nearby. All the stone used in the kitchen chimney came from the property itself, including a mill stone fragment from the ruins of the mill on the property.
The walls throughout the house are plaster and the millwork throughout is custom. So much of the house is brand new construction which integrates so seamlessly with the original cabin that it is impossible to perceive where the old and new meet.
WOODLAWN
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In this project, we completely dismantled and moved a house from Appomattox to Flint Hill and then rebuilt it, piece by piece. All the framing and every piece of interior woodwork was labeled prior to dismantling and moving.
This project received a lot of publicity and we encourage you to watch the videos below. |
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