The Thomas Loring House Restoration Was a Labor of Hands and Heart

When Lee McColgan and Liz Bailey bought the 1702 Thomas Loring House in Pembroke, they could have done what many new buyers of old houses do: hire a contractor to rip out the plaster ceilings and rough-hewn framing, toss the wavy glass windows and hand-planed mouldings, trash doors with their black iron latches, and build a new house inside the old exterior.

But they didn’t.

McColgan decided to restore the house himself with his own hands and on his own timetable – except for a promise to Liz he’d have the work done in time to host a big Thanksgiving meal in 18 months. There were many times during that year and a half when he had regrets. But each time he worked through the problem, learning new skills and putting his hands and mind to the task.

Gutting an old house or just tearing it down is an environmental waste – trampling the maxim that the greenest building is one that’s already built. It wipes away history and rips out the heart of a structure. McColgan knew his house had been built by men who relied on hand tools and ingenuity as they cut trees on the property, sawed them into boards and planed them for floors and stair treads. Hauling stones from the land, they stacked and wedged them together for the foundation. They cut, planed and sanded simple but elegant mouldings to trim doors and keep the 12-over-12-pane windows in place – and the winter winds out.

McColgan followed suit. When he found rotted framing timbers, he bought a rough-cut beam from a sawmill and used a broad axe and handsaw to work it into shape.  

When he had to replace iron hinges on a cabinet, he didn’t drive to Home Depot, but instead, sought out a blacksmith and learned how to work at a forge, banging and bending iron into the parts he needed.

McColgan did the work himself and chronicled his journey in a book, A House Restored: The Tragedies and Triumphs of Saving a New England Colonial. It is less a “how-to” for fans of historic buildings and more a “why not?”

Once he decided to tackle the project, McColgan pledged to honor First Period crafts and craftsmen, and “become a maker again, preserving the house’s character that had becharmed me.”

From the start he knew he had to learn how to work with basic materials—the wood, lime, iron, stone, glass and brick that others had used to build the house generations before.

To acquire some of those skills, McColgan talked his way onto the crew of a house restoration project on Nantucket, where he learned to repoint bricks using lime putty. (“Don’t get it in your eye,” a co-worker warned. “It burns like hell.”)

There, on Nantucket, he also learned to replaster the way it was done more than three centuries ago by shadowing Olivia Morland, the first woman accepted into London’s Worshipful Company of Plaisterers trade guild.

And when he needed to replace iron hinges, he hunted down blacksmith Tony Millham, a Westport specialist in reproducing early American hardware, to learn how to heat iron bars and hammer them into hinges.

But there was so much more to do. McColgan salvaged old windows by stripping the paint and reglazing the glass. In one concession in his quest to do everything himself, he did not learn how to blow glass and spin it into flat sheets, as it would have been done in 1702.  Instead, he bought wavy antique window glass from a man with a barn full of architectural salvage and installed the panes himself.

McColgan met the deadline for restoring his house in time for Thanksgiving dinner. In the process, he learned lessons about saving old buildings and about his own determination and willingness to learn.

Doing the work the traditional way gave him a deeper appreciation of the Loring House. The thought of ripping out the early plaster, tossing old windows and demolishing the ancient chimney, “these acts became unfathomable after discovering what it took to make them,” he wrote.

The men who built the house for Thomas Loring so long ago would appreciate that.

Richard K. Lodge is a former Daily News editor, author of the book “The Rise of the Neversinker: Fly Tier Rube Cross,” and member of the Newburyport Preservation Trust board. He lives in Newburyport.

(McColgan, a preservation contractor, will talk about his book, A House Restored, in a free public program at 7 p.m., Friday, May 16 at the Newburyport Senior Community Center, 331 High St. The program, which kicks off Preservation Week sponsored by the Newburyport Preservation Trust, will be followed by a book signing and refreshments.)