Rebuilding the inside of Graves Light – on Nantucket

Making exact copies of the interior doors of Graves Light at Karl Phillips' Nantucket shop.

Making exact copies of the interior doors of Graves Light at Karl Phillips’ Nantucket shop.

The snow and ice haven’t stopped the renovation of Graves Light. We’ve been using the winter months to reconstruct precise reproductions of the original interior woodwork.

Lots going on at the Nantucket workshop of Master Carpenter Karl Phillips.

Karl has finished replicating the interior stairway oak doors, and the deep oak sills of the windows that he built last summer.

One photo shows the sole surviving original interior door, rebuilt and stripped down to the wood, flanked by two reproductions to be installed in the spring.

The original door itself needed major repairs, but it provided us a good template to work from. Original 1903 US Light House Service architectural drawings of the doors helped ensure faithful reproductions.

Karl also built nine new oak windowsills using one rotted original sill (in the foreground of the gallery picture below) as a guide.

Just wait until he installs these with his oak paneling – still under construction – to fill in the deep window pockets!

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Authentic replacement windows restore original design

Karl Phillips of Driftwood Construction in Nantucket looks at how he's going to install the white oak casement window he built to restore the Graves Light windows to their original appearance and function.

Karl Phillips of Driftwood Construction in Nantucket looks at how he’s going to install the white oak casement window he built to restore the Graves Light windows to their original appearance and function.

From a rotted original casement window frame, master carpenter Karl Phillips and his friend Will Phelps built nine replacements in his Nantucket workshop, and installed them at Graves Light in early August 2014.

First we removed the historically inaccurate and aesthetically displeasing block glass windows that the Coast Guard installed decades ago to replace the originals, and then installed the casements.

Part of the installation was filmed for “This Old House.”

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