Mastering Modern Urban Stick Frame Techniques
This past week, we looked at the rear facades and balconies at a set of buildings in a nearby urban area where renovations were underway to update and modify the existing row homes. Even though they’re existing historic row homes, the new construction used almost entirely modern methodologies of stick framing. The exteriors of those buildings were clad in a sheet metal panel and the underlayment that sheathed stud framing was made from a exterior gypsum board type material. Today, we’re looking at a similar but different type of project where a group of historic row homes were basically gutted on the interior and garages we’re built at the ground level.
That was like this were generally built without garages at the ground level at the time of original historic construction. About $125 years ago, it was not common for people to use motorized vehicles. In fact motorized vehicles weren’t really even in production yet. Cars are only been just invented a few years prior and had not even yet began to be mass produced.
You may be wondering why this is relevant or even being discussed in a article on a website about historic masonry restoration and repair and remodeling of historic homes. The reason is relatively simple though, the advent of mass produced vehicles made horse and buggy type transportation disappear really quickly. It also had a really big effect on architecture.
In historic times, people often had carriage houses behind their historic row homes. In some cases, those historic carriage houses were turned into garages through retrofit. In other cases though, such as shiwn in the pictures here, it took an entire century for the retrofitting to happen. Here, now, garages are being added for people to park their cars because the cities are simply congested and street parking is hard to find and a garage attached to or under a home is very valuable.
The way that these retrofits are being done, still allows for a front entrance. In fact the front entrance is at the corner of each of these row homes with a garage door next to the personnel door, the main entry door. If you look closely at the picture below you can see that there is a corridor framed into each of the individual row home ground levels. That corridor will actually be turned into a stairway which leads to the upper levels. It still leaves barely just enough space to also park a vehicle next to the stairway.
When a space like this is split between a stairway that leads to a residence and a connected garage, there are generally specific rules to create additional fire barriers between the garage and the remainder of the interior of the building.
In some cases, those fire barriers can be created just by sheathing the garage side of the framed envelope with a fire rated drywall. However, specific rules vary from building to building. It’s not just dependent on the specific area of the construction, it actually can depend on other factors such as the demising wall construction, spacing, and applicable building code per each construction project.
The building code applied is generally determined by the designer, but must be approved by the specific authority having jurisdiction (AHJ). Although we use the word ‘specific’, to describe the AHJ which makes the determination, just because an authority has authority, it doesn’t mean that they’re the only applicable AHJ. In some cases, on some types of projects there are numerous different AHJ’s.
You can learn a lot about a project, just by looking at their stockpiles of materials. In this case, much of the lumber being used is untreated kiln-dried dimensional framing lumber. Some of the exterior sheathing will be built with oriented strand board which is very similar to plywood but generally less expensive.
We can Help
Our company focuses on historic restoration more than modern building upkeep, maintenance, and construction, but our company understands both types of construction very well and a full picture well-rounded approach is needed in any niche in the construction industry. Although we focus on historic restoration, repointing, tuckpointing and historic brick repair, our company also has technical knowledge and competencies in the areas of modern and contemporary construction as well as we become one of the leaders in that area of the market today. Understanding both historic and modern or contemporary construction is useful because both aspects help understand the challenges and potential solutions for challenges in building science and construction.
We can help with a variety of historic masonry restoration needs and upkeep, from modest tuckpointing and or repointing to complicated and extensive historic masonry restoration. Infinity Design Solutions is a historic restoration specialist contractor specializing in both historic masonry restoration such as tuckpointing our repointing, and brick repair. If you have questions about the architectural details or facade of your historic building in Washington DC, reach out and say hello and if we can help we’ll be glad to assist you. You can email us or call us on the telephone at the following link: contact us here.
