Carpenter

A house carpenter is a woodworker trained in the construction and repair of buildings, bridges, fences, and gates. His job is to cut the timber frame of a new structure, raise that frame on the building site, and then cover the frame to make it weathertight by installing the roof, sides, windows, and doors. He usually lays the floors and builds the stairs as well. Carpenters worked to build new buildings, change existing structures by building additions and renovating and updating them, and to do general repairs.

Houses can be simple or complicated. Houses on “the Great Street” in Williamsburg had to be built on brick foundations with brick chimneys and were plastered and painted. Bricklaying and plastering can’t happen in bitterly cold weather, so construction of a large frame house had to be planned around the weather. Dig the cellar, lay the bricks in the spring while the timber frame is being cut nearby, then raise the frame and “cover” it during the summer. Through the fall and winter, the carpenters and joiners worked inside the house laying the floors, building the stair, installing the other woodwork, and lathing the walls and ceilings…but the plaster can’t go on until after the last frost of the following spring. So sometimes it took a year to complete a house. The building act of 1705 requires that a house in the city of Williamsburg be complete within 24 months, or the property reverts to the Trustees and is sold again.

In 18th-century Williamsburg, the very best nearby timber trees for construction had been cut down for a long time, and we know there was a very busy trade in building materials like shingles, pine floorboards, and hewn timber moving up and down the rivers to market – and one of the most logical markets were the cities and towns located close or on those rivers.

The best material was old-growth, virgin timber, which was slow-grown, dense with tight growth rings, and more durable and rot-resistant than the younger timber available today. One of our greatest challenges is finding quality building materials for our reconstructed buildings. We buy timber from log brokers who can look for material for us anywhere on the east coast. We also use repurposed heart pine, salvaged from demolished 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings. Sometimes we use trees cut on Colonial Williamsburg property, and we sometimes have material given to us after storms hit our local area.