Restoration
A number to work against.
Once the veneer was off and the logs were visible, a historic renovation specialist could price the work rather than guess at it. The budget was built section by section, which is also how the work will be done.
A restoration without a number is a wish. This is the point the project stopped being one.
The committee
Who did the work.
The plan did not come out of a closed room. It came from the Latimer (Brown) House Restoration Ad Hoc Committee, put together from the people with the most reason to care what happens to a log house raised in the 1790’s by Charles Latimer, son of Colonel Jonathan Latimer.
- Steven King, School Board member, whose district includes the house
- Jim Latimer, a direct descendant of the family that built it
- Mike and Cindy McClard, neighbors of William and Martha Brown for decades
- Kris Coker, a historic renovation specialist, advising
- Frank Varble, a licensed architect, advising
- Commissioners David Klein, Tim Jones, Chrissi Miller and Jeremy Mansfield
Commissioner Klein, a general contractor by trade, carried out the initial selective demolition himself, working alongside the historic restoration specialist the Commission hired. That is the work that made everything after it possible. Nothing could be priced until somebody opened the walls and looked.
The package
What was handed in.
What the committee submitted in June was a complete package, and it satisfied the county’s own Construction and Renovation Policy under Resolution 2411-14.
- A defined scope of work
- A line item budget
- A project timeline
- An intended use and stewardship policy for the house
- A conceptual site plan covering the driveway, the culvert, parking and access
- A floor plan of the historic structure
- A formal proposal and fee schedule from a licensed architect
- A drawing of the house restored
A scope, a budget, a timeline, an architect, a contractor, a defined public use, a site plan, a floor plan, and a drawing of the finished house. Whatever else this project had been short of, it was no longer short of a plan.
The specialist
Somebody who has done this before.
The budget was developed with a historic restoration specialist whose previous work in this county includes the Bridal House, Bledsoe Fort and Rosemont. That matters more than it sounds. A log house under three skins is not a general construction job, and the difference between a specialist and a good builder is whether the logs come through it.
The stewardship section was modeled on the Friends of the Bridal House in Cottontown, an arrangement that has worked here for years. The county keeps ownership and authority. A nonprofit organized for the purpose looks after the day to day.
What comes next
A bid, because the law requires one.
With the package in, the next step belongs to the state rather than to the county. Architectural services on a project this size go out to competitive bid, and that holds even when the architect who helped build the plan is sitting in the room.
It is the right rule. It also means the calendar from here is not ours to set.