They don’t make them like they used to. Houses, that is. To that end, the craftsmen of Weather Hill Restoration of Charlotte are recycling the pride of Vermont’s earlier builders. Harrison Snapp, of Fayston, stands beside a circa 1800 2½-story Federal house that he and his crew rebuilt last year. The house was carefully dismantled and moved, piece by piece, from Bridport to Middlebury and reassembled.

“The key is to put the houses back together as if they haven’t come apart — after we’ve dismantled them. That’s our goal.” Snapp, a tall, ginger-haired carpenter with a full beard surveys Weather Hill’s handiwork. “Many times the original details have been remodeled out of existence. The craft comes in when we put the details back using the same techniques as the builders used 200 years ago.”

The most unusual feature of this, the Soloman Lapham House, is the extraordinary plaster-vaulted “good-morning” staircase, built around the chimneys of three fireplaces from three different rooms. It is called a “good-morning” staircase because the initial staircase rises from the first floor and splits left and right (Y-shaped), under a vaulted ceiling, so that people coming down in the morning can’t help but see each other, hence “Good Morning.” The main chimney comes from an enormous 14-foot wide fireplace with a built-in beehive bake-oven and bread leavening shelf in the keeping room. The other two chimneys are from side room fireplaces and their chimneys sitting behind to either side of the main fireplace. The whole masonry mass was torn down and rebuilt by Peter Werner of Waitsfield, who has been working with Weather Hill since 1976.

“We all started out with just the excitement and the like for saving these houses.” Snapp reflects a moment. “It is really amazing to look at pictures of the houses that survived the 1927 flood. The timber-frame houses rolled like blocks and survived. It’s a great barometer on the houses. Two-hundred-year-old houses tumbled in a flood and survived. Balloon-frame structures of today would never survive.”

Harrison Snapp has been working for Weather Hill Restoration since 1974. He joined Gregory and Carolynn Schipa, the owners, who had already been working at restoration for several years. Gregory started in Nantucket working for someone else, then went on his own. When he and Carolynn met, they discovered they had a mutual love for the classic homes, wood, and antiques. Carolynn studied art and has used this knowledge when recreating paints and doing her research. Currently, the Schipas are spending more time in their office than on the job site. “You know how it is to run a business,” Carolynn said, “while I still do the research, we have to handle the blueprints, the phone calls, the meetings…”

Wistfully, she adds, “I wish we could spend more time at the site.”

Each house has a carefully documented history. The Lapham house is written up as an historic site. The houses are named after the original owners. The Ashley House graces a quiet street in Wainscot, Long Island. The Griswold House is part of a horse farm in Saratoga Springs, New York. Another 25 houses were built on Nantucket. The Davis Priest House sits on a hill overlooking the Mad River Valley in Vermont.

Using the tools of their predecessors, Snapp, Rick Worcester, Chris Scappell, and John Magowan recreate the past. Each board is hand planed to recreate the look and feel of the eighteenth century. “If you pick up a board from a modern mill,” Snapp holds one up, “you can see the roller marks. We ‘dress’ the surface of the wood. All wood surfaces have been hand-planed with jack planes to reproduce the texture of the wood as it was 200 years ago.”

Their favorite tool is a Stanley No. 55. A tool Stanley hasn’t made it since the early ‘50s. Snapp demonstrates how the tool incorporates dozens of planes that make the fine details that characterize Weather Hill Restoration’s work. “With the Stanley 55, you can make all of the Greek profiles: beads, curves, beak moldings, ogees, reverse ogees. With one plane you can make any molding profile. Before the 55 you had to have a whole case of single profile planes. The development of the 55 allowed you to have just one tool to do the jobs. It’s one of the few combination tools to really do the job.”

The contraption looks like a hand-plane with thumb-twists and bowed shafts around the handle and more shafts sticking out for sizing the decorative cut.

“There are carpenters who have worked for 15 years and still have never seen or used a tool like the Stanley 55 or wooden mallets.” Rick picks up his mallet and demonstrates its use. He is working on a cross brace for the roof of the barn they are reconstructing, Snapp is working on a board used to frame the side of a door jamb. The long, thin board Snapp is planing has one side that is precisely straight, the other length meanders and wiggles. When Snapp puts the board in place, the meandering side fits precisely alongside the structural post beam it is meant for. The “new” has blended with the old.

The carpenters find their old tools at auctions, flea markets or just around. Snapp adds, “one of the scourges of antique tool users is antique tool collectors. They don’t use the tools, they collect them. So they end up bucking the price higher with their trading between themselves. It’s a love-hate relationship.” The Schipas have been avid tool-collectors for over 20 years and have quite a collection of joinery tools and molding planes that are used on all the jobs. As Carolynn puts it, “We collected the tools out of necessity. We needed them to do the job correctly.”

Rick offers the story of one carpenter who picked up a Stanley No. 55 in Saratoga Springs, New York for the ridiculous sum of $30 including the original directions and all the bits and pieces. “Obviously, the seller didn’t know what he had.” Rick shakes his head. “Us young bucks can’t afford that.” He wants his own Stanley and can’t find one under $400. Antique dealers are getting savvy with tool prices now.

Weather Hill’s philosophy on reconstruction is to bring back the house to what it was before generations of families remodeled, repainted and generally messed up the original structure. Snapp says, “We’re not really into the preservation end of this business, we more into restoring it. Right there we are in conflict with some people. That’s the fun of it, trying to find the original story on the house. When we take these houses down, we find plank walls, and then we find where the plank wall was originally by the nail holes in the timbers. Pretty soon, there’s a shadow line on the floor, so you can go back to the original floor plan. That’s the way we do it.”

Val Snapp, Harrison’s wife, does the painting, staining and colors. She strips away generations of old paints down to the original and recreates what can’t be restored or salvaged.

In the Lapham home, the keeping room’s baseboard had painted patterns all around the room. There was enough left to salvage. Carefully removing two centuries of paint, Val got down to the original artwork. “I find it harder to keep stuff than to take it off,” Val said. “We were quite lucky to have this detail stay on.” Each house has eight to ten coats of paint from four to five generations of families. She strips the paint down to the base color and restores the wood with the same color. Often, she mixes her own colors from Sturbridge paint based on milk-paint colors. The modern Sturbridge colors aren’t that close to the originals Weather Hill is working with.

By the time the house is completely reconstructed, it will look essentially as it did when it was first built. But, their customers also want modern conveniences. The kitchen is one area Weather Hill allows clients to design with them. Bathrooms are another. Modern appliances are carefully placed in the kitchen. Plumbing, heating, roof venting, piping, all are hidden away from view. Many times vents are incorporated into the chimney mass and not seen at all. “We have developed ways to make them unobtrusive. They are all disguised.” Snapp grins and prodded by Chris adds, “Except for two little vents on this house.”

Period details such as the windows are made in Riverton by Rick Tintle. His shop does the windows, doors, mantels, and kitchen cabinets. Blacksmiths make the sash locks, fireplace cranes, door latches, butterfly or strap hinges, and whatever else is needed. Another supplier makes period lighting. Bathroom fixtures are in keeping with the house. Face it, toilets weren’t invented until 1775 and in use as we know them until around 1890. Compromises have to be made.

“Our kitchens are designed in keeping with the rest of the house. A formal kitchen with formal cabinets.” Snapp continues, “Our clients want to live in beautiful, historic, permanent houses. Their symmetry is rooted in one’s vision. It’s settling to your mind. That’s why they picked it.

“We travel all over to find these houses. We get a lot calls from people who have heard of us, and see a building that is threatened. A lot of farmers want the building gone, but want the land to farm. We’ve saved a few houses from fire departments that were going to burn them down for practice. The Samuel French Tavern was going to be bulldozed for a parking lot for a food market in St. Johnsbury. We try to get them all. But, we aren’t a museum, we don’t have any funding. We can only take what will sell.”

In the past, the Schipas have done “spec” houses. The entire Bent Hill Settlement in Waitsfield, a collection of modest, restored homes hidden in the woods, was built by Weather Hill Restoration in its early years. Today, they don’t have the backing or money to attempt another Bent Hill. As Snapp says, “You can get burned trying that now.”

Because of time pressure today, the care isn’t taken when building new homes and it shows. Weather Hill Restoration takes the time. Usually about six months to rebuild a house depending on how much is left of the original detail and how much they have to reconstruct. Or the size of the job, some homes are much bigger than others.

Clients pick from a collection of dismantled and stored structures or find their own. Generally, their clients want a lot of room. More than the original structure had to offer. If a client wants more room than the original house encompassed, then Weather Hill Restoration adds an ell extension. At this house, a carriage barn holds a library and a two-car garage and the other ell, the master bath and bedroom.

“Hey, some of the houses even have a Jacuzzi.” Snapp laughs as he describes that anachronism.

Chris describes their handiwork as a “Hi-tech place in old clothing.”

“The key is to uphold the tenants of the Greeks,” Snapp points out the columns around the carriage barn porch. “The proportions of the Greek Orders between the fascia, soffits and frieze boards. You follow the rules. There is a relationship between the three boards. People don’t know that. Those are the building blocks of the Greek Order. Of a cornice entablature.” He is referring to the architectural structure of the column itself, as the Greek formulas dictated. (The entablature is the top section of a column, above the pedestal and column.)

“That’s what it’s all about, recycling these homes.” Snapp thinks about it for a moment. “That’s what’s so fun about these houses. They come apart, you put them back together.”