Inn Harmony: Hidden log house becomes a sweet rehab
Dennis Lapic had no clue what he’d do with the dilapidated, aluminum-sided house in Ambridge when he purchased it from an elderly neighbor in the mid-1990s.
“It was leaning 12 inches to the west,” Mr. Lapic recalls, the result of years of extensive water damage.
Yet at the bargain price of $25,000, the two-story house screamed “deal!” to the retired Army reservist, who had studied building preservation and restoration technology at Belmont College in St. Clairsville, Ohio. He had already restored two other Harmonist-built houses in the national historic district that encompasses Ambridge’s Old Economy Village. And he knew a little about this wreck’s history:
Samuel Heslet built the house on Depreciation Lands around 1822, and it was moved to its current location on Church Street in 1824 to become part of the Harmony Society.
“You'll do the right thing and restore it,” the seller said to him.
In 2010, Mr. Lapic got started, and quickly discovered bad news: Termites had chewed their way through two sides of the house. The floors slumped in some places and bulged in others. To repair the damage, the house had to be jacked up 16 inches.
But there was good news, too. An original log home was hidden beneath many layers of drywall and plaster. Mr. Lapic painstakingly restored it and he and his wife, Rose Mary, opened it last year as the Heslet House Bed & Breakfast. Judges from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Design Center Pittsburgh have chosen it as the winner in the commercial category of the 2016-17 Renovation Inspiration Contest. Established in 2006, the competition honors well-done rehabs of older homes and businesses in Western Pennsylvania.
Unlike the typical brick houses built by members of the German religious group, this one morphed from a log house to what appeared to be a wood-frame house clad in beaded weatherboard.
“I knew something was weird about the construction,” Mr. Lapic says.
Over nearly two centuries, the
house had undergone at least four renovations that changed door heights, window openings and interior spaces. But thankfully, many of its original details were preserved, including massive oak beams, fireplaces, railings, steps and floors.
Before moving the house in 1824, the Harmonists carefully marked the logs with Roman numerals and a series of tick marks — still visible today — so they could easily reassemble it. Along with their signature carved stone steps and isolated entry, they added a second chimney and two fireplaces, and whitewashed the interior log walls. At some point, they also applied a thin coat of clay plaster, concealing the logs.
On the exterior, they nailed oak planks to the 1foot-thick log walls so they could apply horizontal siding and white linseed oil paint. In the Victorian era, taller windows were installed and the wide-plank floors covered with narrow strips of wood. Early 20thcentury carpenters added a bathroom on the second floor and a coal furnace in the old root cellar.
Tree- ring dating by Wooster College revealed that some of the logs used in the house date to 1662, when Native Americans still had settlements in the area. That knowledge only strengthened Mr. Lapic’s resolve to cut no corners in his renovation. It also fed his desire to share the historical discovery with others by turning the house into a bed and breakfast.
Initially, he consulted with an architect for ideas on how to create four guestrooms.
“But we couldn’t come to an agreement,” Mr. Lapic says. So he did all the work himself, drawing on what he’d learned at Belmont College and many hours of exhaustive research.
The result is cozy spaces with exposed-log walls, wavy glass windows and a mix of period and reclaimed furnishings.
Yet the guest rooms also have all the modern amenities today’s traveler expects — dual-flush toilets, cable and WiFi, individual climate control and en suite bathrooms.
Mr. Lapic insisted on making the renovation sustainable. He used locally sourced lumber from a local saw mill that he milled and molded — often with hand tools — into the house’s missing pieces. He also made his own paint for the exterior and fence, along with the sealant (from cow’s milk) that gives the wideplank pine floors their translucent finish.
After digging out the crumbling chinking between the logs, he re-daubed them with a homemade mortar that looks like clay but is actually lime, straw and centuries-old sand he dug out of the basement. To make life easier for modern, taller residents, he made door openings a little higher and wider and outfitted the doors with cast-iron hinges and hand-forged Suffolk latches popular in the postColonial period.
Mr. Lapic turned the attic — a storage room for onions during the Harmonist era — into a 350-square-foot suite with a kitchenette and beamed cathedral ceiling. The exposed wind braces, he notes, would have prevented the house from racking or leaning.
“It’s the only room I took artistic license with,” he says, noting its plaster walls and a storage space hidden behind the headboard.
A new first-floor dining room/reception area gives visitors a panoramic view of Old Economy’s summer kitchen and blacksmith shop next door. But even this modern addition has a bit of history: The only original window sash is displayed near where Mr. Lapic found a pair of men’s homemade underwear in the rafters.
Peeling back the layers of improvements, he says, was like traveling back in time to the 1820s. Now guests can take the trip with him, and so can you. From 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday, the Heslet House Bed & Breakfast will be open for tours as part of Beaver County’s History Weekend and Old Economy's Spring Fest.
Mr. Lapic will soon start another Harmonist restoration in the historic district.
“Some of it sounds wacky or complicated,” he says, “but anyone can do it. You just need time and the willingness to learn how.”