After the exterior demo of Holt House is complete and before the renovations and construction of the additions can begin, the original brick must be cleaned. For decades, the exterior brick was covered in a red powder top coat - possibly an iron oxide compound - that gave the red-brown raw brick a more uniform color. While this was likely done to mask the mottled appearance of the natural colors of the handmade brick, the homeowners seek to remove this top coat in order to celebrate the beauty of the nearly 200-year-old brick.
Like most of the other materials that went into building this antebellum home, the clay for the bricks was harvested from the property and surrounding area. Because these bricks were made and laid by the enslaved people who lived and worked on the Holt plantation at the time, the homeowners are taking every step they can to preserve and respect the work that these people did. Thomas Holt may have his name attached to the house, but the nameless men and women whose hands built the house and whose lives are indelibly linked to its legacy will be honored by the careful preservation of the stone, wood, and brick they so skillfully placed.
Nature has a way of reclaiming its surroundings. While the structural integrity of the house’s foot-thick brick walls has remained strong, over the years the aesthetic quality of the exterior bricks has been altered due to lack of maintenance and exposure to the elements. All over the house, the walls are covered with wandering vines and moss, like a long forgotten ancient ruin. Rather than allowing the house to continue to deteriorate, the brick will be cleared of all overgrowth and be given new life.
The removal of all the dilapidated additions reveals the house as it originally stood. The two original brick structures are the main house and the kitchen, where meals were prepared away from the main house in case a fire consumed the structure and to keep excessive heat out of the living quarters. All the vines and moss are removed before the surface can be treated with a solvent that dissolves the red powder top coat while leaving the delicate historic bricks beneath unharmed.
Once the brick is treated with the solvent, it is thoroughly pressure-washed at a low setting in order to rinse the surface of the solvent, dirt, and red powder top coat. In some of the images below, you can see the stark difference between the exposed raw brick and the brick that was covered in the rosy powder.
After the pressure-washing is complete, the brick is reborn and looks like it did when it was originally laid. The two images below give a good before and after comparison.
Holt House will continue to evolve as the foundation and framing for the new additions is built and the interior of the existing historic structures is renovated. With the brick finally cleaned and dried, we can view the house as it looked when it was originally constructed back in the 1830’s and move forward with its continuously extraordinary transformation.
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