Building RenovationHamiltonCincinnati

Lane Libraries Hamilton Branch Exterior Restoration 2020

The Hamilton branch of the Lane Libraries is one of the oldest public buildings still working on North Third Street, and the parts of it that take the weather — the cornice, the soffits, the upper crown and the trim of its cupola — had been losing to water for years. Prodigy restored the whole exterior envelope. Decayed wood was cut out and replaced in solid stock milled to match, new blocking was set behind it, deteriorated mortar was chipped out and tuckpointed in matching color, windows were re-glazed, every corner, joint and seam was caulked, and the building — brick, siding and trim together — was primed and repainted in a seven-color scheme approved by the City of Hamilton's Architectural Design Review Board. The black iron fence around the property was pressure cleaned, wire brushed and refinished in industrial enamel. The work was carried out under a Certificate of Appropriateness in a local historic district and accepted in October 2020, with a three-year warranty on workmanship, materials and design.

Restoration on a building of this age is mostly carpentry. The rotted members came out back to sound wood rather than being filled, replacement pieces were manufactured from solid wood in the same sizes as the originals, and the crew walked the building with Prodigy before any new wood was primed so that damage found behind the first layer could be addressed while the lift was still up. Preparation on the painted surfaces was pressure washing and scraping to remove everything loose or peeling; all surfaces were then primed with a tinted primer mixed close to the finish color, so the chips and scuffs a public building collects do not flash white against the finish coat. The colors are Benjamin Moore throughout, seven of them, running from the grey of the field to the reds, greens and purples of the accent trim that give the building its Victorian reading.

An amendment that November replaced two deteriorated synthetic-stucco window casings and one rotten wooden sill with composite sill and trim boards matched to the neighboring trim — the right material in the two places on the building that never get a chance to dry out.

The library remained open to the public throughout. Access was by scaffolding, ladders and aerial lift, with drop cloths and fall protection, dumpsters and supervision provided by the restoration subcontractor, and background checks on site supervisors under Ohio law. The project was delivered for The Lane Libraries through the TIPS cooperative purchasing contract.

Repainted library cornice with red brackets and dark blue scrollwork against a clear sky

Arched double window at the Hamilton library after restoration, with repainted tracery and molded trim

Two painters working from a boom lift at the library's octagonal cupola

Technical Discussion

Rot is a water path, not a surface

The temptation on a decayed cornice is to treat what you can see. Dig out the soft wood, pack it with epoxy filler or soak it with a consolidant, sand it flush, prime it and paint it. It looks finished the day the lift comes down, and on a piece of trim that dries out between rains it can last a long time. It does not last on a cornice, and the reason is that rot in a cornice is rarely a surface condition.

Section through a wood cornice against a brick wall: water enters at a failed joint in the trim, runs behind the crown molding along the backing board to the blocking, and the soft spot that shows on the face is only the symptom. — Figure 1 — Filling the face leaves the path. Replacing the pieces at their original dimensions closes it.

What wood needs in order to rot

Decay fungi need wood that stays wet. The threshold is a moisture content of about 20 percent; below it the fungi go dormant, and sound exterior trim in Ohio sits at 12 to 16 percent. Wood reaches 20 percent only where water arrives faster than the piece can dry, and on a cornice that is behind the face, not on it. By the time the face of a crown molding is soft, water has been running behind it, through a failed joint, down the back of a backing board, into the blocking that holds the whole assembly off the wall. Filling the face seals the symptom and leaves the path. Consolidated wood is also harder and less permeable than the wood around it, so the next cycle of water moves to the edges of the repair and rots there instead.

Replacement at the original dimensions

On this building the specification was replacement, not repair: every piece of soffit, trim, upper crown, mixed molding and backing board showing decay or water damage was removed, new blocking was added where the framing behind it had gone, and replacement pieces were manufactured in solid wood at the same dimensions as the existing profiles. Matching the size keeps the drip edges, reveals and overhangs where the original builder put them, and those details are the reason the water was leaving the building in the first place. A slightly thinner replacement crown is a new water path with a fresh coat of paint on it. The building sits in a local historic district, so the profiles also had to pass the city's design review, which they did as matches rather than substitutes.

One envelope, not separate trades

The rest of the envelope was treated as part of the same problem. Deteriorated mortar was chipped out and the brick tuckpointed in matching color, windows were re-glazed where the putty had failed, and every corner, joint and seam was caulked before priming, not after painting. Primer was tinted close to the finish color so a thin spot in the top coat does not read as a different color in five years. Paint is the last layer of a water strategy, not the strategy.

The exception at grade

Two synthetic-stucco window casings below grade and one rotten wooden sill were replaced with composite sill and trim boards matched to the adjacent trim. Solid wood is the right answer on a cornice forty feet up that sheds water and dries in an afternoon. It is the wrong answer at a sill at grade that sits wet, because that sill never gets below 20 percent, and no paint schedule fixes that. Knowing which is which is most of the craft.

For a facilities director looking at soft trim on an older building: price the replacement before you price the filler, and ask what is behind the piece that rotted. If nobody can tell you, the repair is a guess.

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