Period timbers

[MusicMan]

A good source of excellent pine (pitch pine I think) is old church pews. Look for a church that is chucking out its pews to replace them with chairs.

 

[thetyreman]

only the richer classes would have had hardwood doors, skirtings e.t.c, I've only ever seen softwood, the house I grew up in had pitch pine doors skirting and architraves, and that was early 1930s, my mum stripped them and they looked awful without paint on them, most people have skipped them years ago thiking new hollowcore doors are superior :roll:

 

[Trevanion]

It was the same then as it is now, it all depends on how many notes you've got in your pocket.

Of course, If you go out to the India/Myanmar border area you can pick up hand-made Teak doors for less than honeycomb hollows in this country :lol:

 

[peter-harrison]

I would steer clear of Doug fir myself. I've worked in lots of period houses and I can't recall encountering it. It is also horrible to work by hand, splits too easily and has a funny smell.
I agree about the unsorted redwood. You also used to be able to get the soft yellow pine which is common in Georgian and Victorian furniture and joinery, which is nice to work with.

 

[RogerS]

I would steer clear of Doug fir myself. I've worked in lots of period houses and I can't recall encountering it. It is also horrible to work by hand, splits too easily and has a funny smell.
I agree about the unsorted redwood. You also used to be able to get the soft yellow pine which is common in Georgian and Victorian furniture and joinery, which is nice to work with.

+1 about avoiding Douglas Fir. The smell of it always catches the back of my throat and so I avoid it like the plague.

 

[AndyT]

When I was a kid, our 1901 house had a pitch pine staircase, I remember.

In our very slightly older house there's a visible hierarchy of timbers. As you go in, the ground floor has a mahogany handrail with pitch pine balusters and newels. Best impressions for visitors.
On the first floor, it's turned redwood balusters and a pitch pine handrail.
Down in the basement where nobody who matters goes, it's a softwood rail and plain square balusters.

Pretty much the same pattern in surrounding houses too.

The same gradation of quality applies to the doors - best ones have applied mouldings both sides, others are plain on the inside and have simpler, narrower architraves.

 

[Jacob]

You find a similar gradation with mouldings - using the same pattern and materials through, making 3 part compound architraves and skirtings on the ground floor, one tier left off on the 2nd floor, 2 left off 3rd floor and basement.
This sort of thing built up in 3 parts on the ground floor, miss out the middle mould on 2nd, just the board with 3/4 round on 3rd.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I couldn't justify the cost of plaster coving in what was by then a large modern room, albeit with nine foot ceilings, so I made the cove up with skirtings and a five inch plaster cove. I fixed to the wall a five inch skirting about an inch and a half down from the ceiling with the torus on the bottom and a five skirting to the ceiling with the ogee outwards again about an inch and a half out from the wall - the five inch round plaster cove was then planted between the two.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Some of our plaster coving was missing, about a 12" section IIRC. So my dad and my granddad made a wooden mould (granddad was a pattern-maker in his time) from the main plasterwork, and cast a new replacement section from that.