Karl Phillips installs a faithful replacement of the original oak window sills.
A busy springtime week at Graves Light.
Karl Phillips, our master carpenter, puts the finishing touches on the new oak window sills and paneled surrounds that he made over the winter at his Nantucket workshop.
There are nine of these square windows at Graves Light.
Last year, Karl built exact reproductions of the original casement windows, installing them in time for winter to replace the un-authentic glass block that the Coast Guard had installed for easy maintenance once the original windows deteriorated.
Meanwhile, Mike and Brian Sylvester of CCI, who cleaned and pointed the outside of the tower last season, are now inside the lighthouse. They’re removing the rust that was eating away at the steel floor joists.
As the joists rusted, the expanding iron crushed and split the interior wall, breaking up the curved glazed bricks. About five of the joists need to be excavated from the walls, cleaned and painted, and the brick space around them re-tiled.
The “tiles” are actually glazed bricks. To do the re-tiling, we’re going to steal some curved glazed bricks from under the stairs, to keep the walls original.
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- The rust from the iron joists shattered the glazed bricks, so we had to excavate them out to treat the metal.
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- A lot of the most important work is unseen: Stopping rust inside the walls at Graves Light.
