Image of the Keillor Stone House after renovations.
The Keillor Stone House and Summer Kitchen are a pair of heritage buildings in Edmonton, Alberta. Originally built in 1929 by Dr. Fred Keillor, a coroner and veteran of World War I, the Keillor Homestead has been a cultural and heritage staple of the city ever since.
Recently, Entuitive was retained to provide Structural and Building Envelope consulting for the heritage restoration of the Stone House and Summer Kitchen. We sat down with Mishael Dyckerhoff and Sarika Nahal to learn more about this fascinating and complex project.
Thanks so much for sitting down with us Mishael and Sarika. Can you tell us a bit about this project?
Mishael: Thanks for having us and absolutely. This project entailed the heritage restoration of a pair of existing buildings that are part of the Keillor Farm located in the North Saskatchewan River Valley. The Stone House and Summer Kitchen were originally built on a concrete foundation with river rocks held together with grout, as well as old timber. Unfortunately, as happens with the passage of time, these buildings started to degrade. The masonry was breaking apart and a portion of the foundation had been undermined by erosion.
Image of Keillor Stone House before the renovations.
The City of Edmonton therefore commissioned a heritage restoration of the two buildings. We worked with David Murray Architects, and Scorpio, the masonry contractor, to achieve the restoration.
What were the challenges on the project and what types of solutions was Entuitive able to implement and support with?
Mishael: From the structural side, the summer kitchen was fully dismantled, restored, and reassembled like for like. That meant, for example, that the masons had to remove and catalogue every single stone in order to be able to replace them in their exact locations once the structure was being reassembled. Similar work was also done to select portions of the superstructure of the Keillor house, and we need to give massive props to Scorpio for achieving that incredible task.
Our team primarily worked on restoring the foundations of both the Keillor House and the summer kitchen. The house was too large to fully disassemble and rebuild, so we made a plan to separate the superstructure from the old foundation, and temporarily raise the whole structure on a network of steel beams. Once that process was complete, the old foundation was demolished and rebuilt, before we lowered the house back down onto the new foundation. We also reinforced the existing floors and the windows as required.
Image of Keillor Stone House supported on temporary steel beams with the excavated foundation.
From a technical perspective, the challenge here was to ensure that the contractor’s jacking system integrated with our new foundation. We had to really work out the details of the exact sequence of events, in terms of jacking up the house, adding the temporary beams, rebuilding the foundation, and then lowering the house, and removing the beams. The foundation had to be able to accommodate the temporary steel beams.
Image of Keillor Stone House supported on temporary steel beams , prior to the beams being removed.
As such, we prepared several studies to determine the required openings for the temporary beams, how they would fit in the new foundation, as well as how we would infill those openings once the beams were removed. Once the house was lowered down again, we were then able to remove the steel beams and fill in those holes.
Sarika, what were the challenges from the BE side?
Sarika: Working with Spectacle Architects, we wanted to ensure the House and Summer Kitchen could be restored and last for another hundred years. Unfortunately, the buildings did have indications of water ingress, so waterproofing was a priority.
However, because the buildings are heritage buildings, we couldn’t alter their aesthetics with our usual envelope and waterproofing solutions. For example, waterproofing below grade typically does extend above grade in order to create a proper transition. In this case, we could not extend that waterproofing above grade at all, because it would have impacted the heritage look of the buildings. To solve for this, we used parging instead.
Additionally, since the original roof was a log roof, there was a lot of air leakage between it and the stone walls of the house. This was also something we wanted to correct to ensure the life and performance of the buildings. And to ensure proper waterproofing on the roof, we used flashings to deflect water away from the building. These flashings were located on a part of the roof not visible from the ground.
What was your favourite part of the project?
Mishael: Seeing the finished product was really exciting. I just went back the other day to check it out and it looks amazing. It’s like when it was first built. It’s like going back in time. We get to see what the house was like brand new and bring that heritage to the present. Knowing that we were able to contribute to that was definitely my favorite part.
Sarika: My favourite part was the construction process. Seeing how the team was able to remove the foundation, remove all the stones and categorize them, and then put everything back together all new and restored was so impressive.
Image of the summer kitchen after renovations.
Thanks so much Mishael and Sarika for taking the time to chat with us about this complex, incredible heritage project!
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