What are these walls?

7 years ago

We've live in Charleston, South Carolina and have bought a house that was built in the late 1860s (record problems mean we don't have specifics). After removing many layers of drywall, wallpaper and flooring, we've uncovered the walls below. Contractor and architect don't know what to make of them. The house had lath and plaster upstairs and in one room in the back, but otherwise has these planks in 3 of the room downstairs. Any ideas what this construction style would be or what this style of wall might tell us about the house? Trying to find words I can google, but not having a lot of luck!

These are the floors - they seem to be made of the same planking as the walls, but we don't know what it is. There are no nails in the flooring.

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Comments (9)

User
7 years ago
Around here(Kansas City) that is called 'shiplap. However, often that kind of construction is more individual boards nailed in place, rather than having a manufactured joint(where the upper board overlaps the lower board).

The flooring is simply one way to build a subfloor, although in that time frame, that was probably the finished floor. Unless that flooring has been installed later and is tongue and groove. If so, the nails have been nailed through the tongues into the floor joists and covered when the groove on the next board covers the tongue.

As for species, maybe Southern yellow pine?
worthy
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
My first thought was some version of plank house construction. But now I see it's shiplap as noted above. I've torn apart lots of homes from 1880s on but have only seen lath and plaster.
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raee_gw zone 5b-6a Ohio
7 years ago
Perhaps the builder was using salvaged materials.
jamiesuec
Original Author
7 years ago
Thanks! These are super helpful leads to help me learn more. The house was originally on farm land, so very possible that it was salvaged materials, maybe even for storage or for workers to live in. The horizontal plank/shiplap part has an old hole where a stovepipe used to be, so before fireplaces were added to the other part of the house. The first census record I can find of the house shows an immigrant from Ireland owning the property but renting it out to a laborer in 1861 (no records of the street before that), so it's also possible that the smaller part of the house was built by the person from Ireland.

I'll read more about these two construction types y'all suggested. Thanks again!
User
7 years ago
If boards were cheap, they used boards. Plaster and lath was high class stuff.

Often old newspapers or muslin cloth was glued over the boards to block the wind.

OR what you are seeing might have been the outer wall of a smaller dwelling that was added to ... and what was exterior became interior.
PRO
Sombreuil
7 years ago
The boards that are unpainted at the margins seem to have been salvaged barnboards; the bare wood was covered with the battens. (board & batten siding).

Interior wood walls are not unusual in the south. Often thin muslin cloth was carefully tacked up and then wallpapered on.
energy_rater_la
7 years ago
add barge board walls to that google search.

my house is built of barge boards. seems to

be a common material when ports of trade

were nearby.

but be warned, leaving planks exposed will allow

huge amounts of air infiltration into the rooms/house.

while the pics in the links are of pretty rooms, itrw

the homeowner would take a real hit in utility costs

and indoor air quality.

http://ajbarnesonline.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-orleans-bargeboard.html

https://adamickarchitecture.com/2016/06/07/historic-home-barge-board/

best of luck
powermuffin
7 years ago
We have ship lap walls behind the lath and plaster on exterior walls that have a open porch in our 1908 house.
Fori
7 years ago
I had a house in SE Texas built and wallpapered exactly as Sombreuil describes (ceilings too). It was built in the 1930s or 40s.