Sikes Adobe Farmhouse Restoration

July 2003 Progress Report

The following photographs were taken during July 2003.

Framing of the damaged roof areasand missing walls are underway.

Shown below is underpinning work being done to shore up the crumbling northwest corner of the adobe room.  In the process some of the adobe materials fell away and will have to be replaced.

This picture shows the new footings for the west porch. The porch will wrap in a U shape around the south end of the house.

This photo shows Will Chandler and Marilen Sedlock carefully examining layers of wallpaper.  Their goal is to identify which layer of wallpaper is most representative of the Sikes' period and should be recreated and applied as new wallpaper to the walls, and which walls should have new wallpaper, based on their documentation of where the original wallpaper was found. Below the wallpaper layer was a layer of newspapers that had been glued to the wall to make a smooth surface. It has been interesting to find and read these newspaper scraps, most of them dated 1881. Surprisingly, newspapers in German and Italian have been found, along with a paper published in England. It appears that the Sikes, although a rural farm family, were not so out of touch with the world.

The next photo shows the wallpaper layer they believe is the one that Eliza Sikes papered the sitting room with when she remodeled in 1881 after Zenas Sikes' death.

Many decisions have to be made during the restoration process, and they have to be made using evidence uncovered during the restoration and on educated guesses based on what was common to the period and by using common sense. An example under discussion now relates to whether Mrs. Sikes had wallpaper in the bedroom wing.  She clearly was fond of wallpaper as many layers have been found in the sitting room and even the kitchen.  However, there has been no physical evidence found to date that there was any wallpaper in the bedrooms.  Logic would dictate that she probably did have wallpaper there, at least in the "Master Bedroom". 

One theory is that the original sand plaster in those rooms was so deteriorated that it was replaced when some major remodeling was done during the Barnett period remodeling in 1918.  A support for this theory is that none of the bedrooms currently have a "picture rail", a common feature used to hang pictures in the Victorian era.  The picture above shows the wood lath underneath the existing plaster layer.  Unfortunately this detail does not provide any answers because this type of construction prevailed from the Sikes' period until about 1925.  Investigation will continue, because a decision has to be made whether or not the restored farmhouse should show wallpaper in the bedroom wing.

The contractor is hoping to complete reconstruction by the end of September.

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