This week the guys started work on restoring the smokehouse. When I started researching how to do this project, Ann Bennett pointed me to Vic Hood in Nashville, who has restored some of the most significant log structures in the state, including Andrew Jackson's The First Hermitage. Vic agreed to consult with us and made a visit to Knoxville in January 2011, when he gave us detailed instructions on exactly what we'd need to do.
A year later Chris, Jake and Simon found a few weeks in their schedule where they could work on this project, and off we go this week.
The first step was to clean out the structure; I started that in December but there was still a bit left to do. Some neat meat hooks, belt buckles and ladles were hidden in the building and between some of the logs.
Unfortunately Jake and Chris discovered that the upper beam on the south side (railroad side) suffered significantly from water damage or rot at some point and is in danger of breaking in half if there is stress put on it. Not great news, because the beam must be replaced. This will mean removing a good 1/2 of the roof. But, I'm glad we found this now, because that meant the roof was going to fail at some point. This is certainly the time to address it. Chris has a good source of vintage lumber nearby, and Vic also has some available.
The next step was to dig some pilot holes to see how difficult it would be to fit some steel I-beams under the smokehouse to lift it up. Apparently that wasn't too bad, because today Jake and Chris put in a really hard day trenching around the smokehouse (oh - I bet they had some help from Clay and his excavator). Then, with help from the excavator, they placed the I-Beams in the trenches under the smokehouse.
The pictures are all available in this album.
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