Philosophy

As stated by our mission, our goal is to preserve the historic timber frame structures of New England for future generations.  We have an additional goal of preserving the craft of joinery itself.  Traditional wooden repairs are as much a part of an architectural legacy as the structures themselves.  This tradition is more readily observed throughout Europe than it is here.  At the time when many of the early timbered structures of this young nation would have first required major structural repairs, the industrial revolution was under way and many of the old ways of craftsmanship were left behind in favor of modern efficiency.  We have, on a few occasions, had the good fortune to work on structures that had been restored traditionally a century or more ago.  In these instances, we were able to simply remove the pegs from the repair pieces and re-fabricate the wooden repairs without any additional disturbance to the original structure.  This is an opportunity that we seek to provide to future joiners.

Early on in our restoration careers, when contemplating a repair, we were told to never ‘over-restore’.  This is an idea that has really stuck with us in the development of our preservation and restoration philosophy.  Each individual structure has subtle, and sometimes not so subtle,  details and variations in the techniques and layout of its construction.  It is the nuances of these variations that guides our approach to restoring a structure to be what it was originally intended to be.  Taking liberties in design and technique, no matter how well intended, does not constitute good preservation practice.  Although there may be room for improvement in a structures design, it is more often the case that if a building  is still here to be restored, its design worked well enough.  Changing the details of historic structures jeopardizes our future understanding of history.  Knobb Hill Joinery is always attentive to keeping materials and techniques in kind.  This care extends to the math and layout methods as well as the tool markings associated with each type of layout style.

Back to the top