Green Gables House more accessible thanks to P.E.I. carpentry students

The doors are wider at Green Gables House in Cavendish, P.E.I., thanks to the work of students from the heritage retrofit carpentry program at Holland College. 

The project has taken more than four years, but by next month the entire first floor of the historic house will be accessible to people with mobility issues. 

"If you look at the width of the door, we made the opening two inches wider than what it used to be," said Josh Silver, lead learning manager for the program.

"It's a little bit ironic — when we've done a really good job, it looks like we haven't been here at all. And I'm proud to say that it's really hard to tell."

Silver said working on the historic house brought some added challenges for him and his students. 

"There's a lot of stress. This whole building and everything inside of it is a museum," Silver said. 

"So the walls, the wallpaper, the trim, all the dishes, furniture, everything is a museum-curated piece so we wanted to be very, very careful not to do any damage to that.

Even so, a bit of damage is inherent in the students' work, he said.

"I had to cut an inch or two off the wall here, and I had to be very conscious of of not damaging the wallpaper, not damaging any artifacts around it," Silver said. 

"Kind of a very delicate surgery, if you will."

Silver said they try to maintain the original heritage wood, but it's not always possible.

For example, when widening the doors, the sides remained the same, but the piece above the door, or header, needed to be longer because the door opening was wider.

"We made a new piece, tried to make it as identical as possible, and then we labelled it very carefully and put in storage the original piece should we ever want to bring it back," Silver said.

"The two main tenets are, disrupt the original fabric of the building as little as possible, and make everything reversible."