Seton Castle Restoration Progress Report

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Dave, from Wolf Corp, loves this project so much he comes into work early everyday!

Demolition of Los Alamos Room and other outbuildings on south side of Castle.

View of South Side of Castle after demolition.

Ground floor after first layer of concrete is removed.

Digging out the ground floor one foot – for extra headroom.

New open look from Front Room – fewer walls and a circular walk around the fireplace.

April 2005
 

We are five weeks into the nuts and bolts of the restoration and do we ever have our hands full! Each day brings new findings that both charge us and challenge us. We are truly amazed at the progress we are making.

The team from Wolf Corp., the general contractor, has done a marvelous job managing the demolition and discovery phase. And the team from Spears Architects continues to do great work with us by preparing thorough drawings and working with the restoration team to deal with the expected un-expecteds.

As you can tell from Dave’s smiling face, he and the other team members from Wolf are really enjoying this project and we all have started to form a family of sorts – all feeling enthused and a true dedication to this restoration. As another team member says, it would have been so much easier and cheaper to raze the building and start from scratch – but what we have here is a real testament to our history that a group is dedicated to the restoration of this national historic landmark. Not only is this a restoration of a building – it also feels like a personal restoration project.

We’ve been working with a fabulous demolition company to remove the out buildings built after Seton's death. What is left is the amazing architecture and distinctive qualities of Seton's vision. The one room built after Seton's death, what we call the O'Keeffe room is remaining. It, in and of itself, is a beautiful room we are lucky enough to keep and restore back to its glory days of the 50's, when it was first built. This time though making it and the rest of the castle more structurally sound.

During this discovery period, we found a number of structural issues that needed attention. For instance, on the ground floor, we have dug down in order to create higher headroom. This may seem rather simple, except for the fact that the castle is built atop of decomposing granite. The concrete floors had to be cut gingerly but were relatively easy to remove, because the granite had split apart.

Unfortunately, the castle itself is also built on the decomposing granite. Because the ground level is constructed of 18" thick stone walls, the castle isn't going anywhere – which is the good news. However, we do have to pour concrete footings along each exterior and interior stone wall, creating a "curb", with the concrete floor to keep the castle secure for years to come.

Also on the ground level, in the rafters, we have to lay steel cross beams in two places. Rooms on the floors above are not resting on stone ground level walls, rather they are resting on vigas. All that weight requires having the steel tubes anchored to stone walls and spanning south to north, to hold the weight above. There is evidence of floors sagging in those stress areas above. The steel will alleviate the sagging, make the structure more sound, and make the floors level again.

In the music room, we discovered there were no 2 by 4's in the construction. There were a series of wood planks nailed to homosote creating a thin wall with no insulation. Plus we knew there were no footings in this room. We dug down and poured concrete footings, on which we will attach 2 by 4's which will then be secured to the existing thin walls, preserving the artwork created by Seton, including the tar monkeys, and creating a place for insulation and soundness. Once the footings and framing are in place, we can remove the roof and rebuild it, but the roof now holds everything in place.

Vigas in the castle are going to have viga end replacement caps. Fiberglass rods will be installed and anchored from inside to outside. Epoxy resin will be filled inside rotted viga areas, after the rot is removed. A barrier will be created between interior vigas and outside end caps to stop any moisture coming in.
Metal roofs have been removed, as well as dirt and assorted materials collected over the years, to get down to the decking. We can see the parapets and original flat roof and it looks beautiful. Once it’s structurally sound and watertight we’ll have no more buckets lined through the castle to collect rainwater.

This is a little snapshot of the various issues that have arisen in just five weeks – we’ll keep digging and scraping and keep you apprised as we uncover and re-awaken this national treasure.