ByCraig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Tory Laitila adjusts the rope support on a bed
for the restored Frame House.

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Mission:
to renovate

The Mission Houses Museum restoration of the 1821 Frame House nears completion

By Burl Burlingame
Star-Bulletin

Next time you despair over repairs to the old homestead, think about the upkeep at a 176-year-old handmade frame house made of recycled materials.

This REALLY Old House!

We're talking, of course, about the Frame House at Mission Houses Museum, which was built in 1821. By England and New England standards, that's not that old, but they're not dealing with vicious termites and constant heat and wobbly humidity and clumsy herds of touristas in New England either.

The Frame House is in the closing stages of a long-overdue renovation, and will open again to the public on May 10. The total cost, including stabilization, realignment, restoration, security and refurnishing is nearing a million dollars. The job was handled by architect Spencer Leinweber, a specialist in historic preservation.

The most obvious change to the exterior is the reworking of the front entrance. The house, when built, followed Georgian architectural ideals of symmetry, and the front door provided the central focus of the facade.

For some reason, the front door was lathed over in the mid-1800s and a window to the visitor room enlarged to make a newer -- and off-center -- front entrance. The result was that the front of the house then looked like a rear.

The Star-Bulletin took a look through the frame house with curator Deborah Dunn this week to get a feel for what has changed.

Moving the front door hasn't improved the alignment of the plants in the yard, but it now opens into what is obviously a foyer. To the left is the visitor room, where there's a reproduction of the rocking chair Hiram Bingham made for Queen Kaahumanu.

"There's a tendency to think of the missionaries as isolated, and they really weren't," said Dunn. "They were always receiving visitors, from all over the world, and in this room we'll give a bit of that international flavor, and there will be a haole bed and a Hawaiian bed."

The walls are covered in pink wallpaper decorated with gold vines, specially printed for the Mission Houses and based on descriptions of the original. Like much wallpaper of the Romantic era, it's glued to muslin, and the muslin is tack-glued to the wall itself.

The interior will be restored as accurately as scholarship will allow. "It will now be a true historic house," said Dunn. "This has been a real treat for me, a lot of fun. I've always liked working with furniture and living spaces."

Star-Bulletin file
The front door, moved off-center during the 1800s,
above, has been returned to it's proper place, below.
ByCraig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin

Some of the furniture, the parts that visitors can touch, are reproductions. "Last week we distressed them by dragging chains over them, so they wouldn't look TOO new," said Dunn.

The only incongruous items are the unavoidable smoke detectors and motion alarms. "No real candles, either," said Dunn. "Electrified candles only."

In the communal dining room in the back, the pink wall paper contrasts with kapa tacked to the ceiling beams. "We had to go to Tonga to get the right kind of kapa," said Dunn. "Around one of the furniture pieces upstairs will be a piece of kapa decorated in a calico pattern, which is really an interesting cross-cultural effect. It took all these bits and pieces from both sides of the world to make a home."

The downstairs, a kind of cellar, was where Levi Chamberlain managed the mission depository, a kind of warehouse/supply shed for the mission. Chamberlain himself lived atop recycled crates, and this will be reflected as well.

"He wrote once about the wall caving in on him while he slept, and we're showing the hole in the wall from the crumbled plaster," said Dunn. The rooms downstairs were divided by lauhala mats instead of walls, almost like Japanese shoji doors.

The downstairs was in "terrible shape," said Dunn, with many make-shift repairs over the years and damage from water seepage.

The cookhouse has been plastered and whitewashed, and technically should be sooty. "But we will have a pile of broken crockery just outside the window -- the archaeological digs we had here a few years ago confirmed that."

The grounds are planned to be planted in a variety of small crops. A uniquely 20th-century problem with the grounds is people camping out there overnight. "We even had people trying to cook over little stoves next to the house," said Dunn. Entrances and exits to the museum grounds will be consolidated to improve security.

The upstairs includes the Binghams' room, an adjunct children's dormitory, plus a "sick room" or nursery.

The center room upstairs was where boarder Benjamin Harwood, a goldsmith, stayed. The gable for the room projects over the relocated front door, and a lathe-and-plaster arch softening the gable interior has been retained.

The bedrooms will be absolutely stuffed with artifacts reflecting the living conditions of the period. "Both parents and children stayed in one room, and we need to show how crammed they were."

Weren't people smaller back then?

"Not THAT much smaller!"