The Smith Brothers Other Leaky House

Our house will turn 200 years old next year. It was built in 1827 for the family of Henry Smith, by Henry and his brother Isaac. Isaac went on to design and build several other less modest buildings in Charlottetown, including our neighbouring Province House.Province House just opened after a decade-long $100 million+ restoration, the root of which, when you get right down to it, was 180 years of water infiltration.Our friend Brian Willis managed the restoration project for Public Works, and he gave an excellent talk the afternoon of Province House’s reopening last month, a talk that demonstrated his depth of knowledge about leaky old houses built by the Smith brothers.Our house, alas, is also a leaky Smith brothers house.The first time this came to a head was in the winter of 2001 when this:Led to this:Ice dams on the back of the house led to significant water infiltration, which required that we leave the house, with 4 month old Olivia, for almost a month, while the damage was…

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