An Award Winning Exterior Restoration

This second empire house in Port Hope is known as the “Clemes Duplex” named for its original owner, Charles Clemes who had it built in the mid-1870s. As a duplex, it’s actually two houses joined in the centre. The exterior work we did was a partnership between the two owners at that time as the front porch served both residences.

Our major job was the complete restoration of the missing front porch which, from existing early photos, was very elaborate indeed. Unfortunately, it had probably been allowed to deteriorate beyond repair and was completely replaced by a very modest structure in the 1960s.

Working from the old photos, and the outline still visible on the bricks behind, we were able to replicate all of the original moldings and brackets and rebuild a front porch that we think closely resembles what was there originally.

At the same time, we restored brickwork and other exterior details to bring the entire front facade back to its original appearance. The photos below will show us at work on various aspects of the job.

Needless to say, we were very pleased when the house was awarded the 2006 Marion Garland Award by the local Port Hope Chapter of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario for the facade restoration and another award (pictured above) by Heritage Port Hope which covered a number of buildings we worked on.

Rob