Touring the Ford Mansion | This Old House

[Music] we are in dearborn michigan just a few miles west of detroit and this breathtaking estate is where automotive pioneer henry ford and his wife clara lived for over 30 years right now there is a massive effort to restore and preserve the estate and today we're going to have a look at the work going on inside hey mark nice to meet you kevin welcome to fair lane well you've got yourself a gym let me tell you every day is a busy one here so what is the story of the house oh absolutely so this was the 15th and final house of henry claire ford if you can imagine that after the success of the model t i think they're looking for a little bit of retreat and get away from the public eye they did it in grander though and built when well so they moved in about 1960 in the beginning 1916 and the architect william van tan was out of philadelphia and i'll tell you i think you'll be challenged to find anything about this gentleman we know very little bit about them but it was designed in the prairie style also kind of eclectic with a little bit of uh scottish baronial if you will okay and how big are we talking because outside it looks huge absolutely there's over 31 000 square feet of the main house with 56 rooms and then also included a powerhouse garden shedding greenhouse that's incredible so now you guys are in the restoration you're overseeing that work how is it that you end up coming into possession of the house well the home like a lot of historic homes had an evolution of owners after the 1950 when clara died they kind of went through ford motor company and then went to the university of michigan right i started a campus out here and it was used for a lot of things such as weddings events rentals things such as that okay and then we came into 2013 it took ownership and here we are starting a new era sounds like a lot of wear and tear for you guys to clean up and how do you start with a restoration on this i'll tell you what it really begins with great scholarly research then we take that research and look at spaces such as the sunport shear which is our real prototype room if you will it's a pilot for this we're using that research to work with over 18 artisans class across the world here and it's particularly here in michigan but everything from plaster work we had failing plaster cleaning of ohio limestone to actually putting faux graining back up that was all painted over at one time it's just unbelievable the talent that we have around here we've been using sources such as this historic photographs from the time period 1919 which we're going back to but using that black and white and then colorizing it so we can envision where we want to take it that's great to have all that detail recorded oh we're so fortunate to have these kind of documentation we also so fortunate we have our own team of conservators that are working down right now down in the basement on historic fixtures that we're in the sunport you want to carry one to see what it looks like i'd love to see that well let's go downstairs so then here we actually took an all-season historic room this porch here and turn it into a conservation room where these talented individuals are working on exterior lights alabaster repairs on this wonderful piece here historic hardware and then of course the original chandeliers from the sun porch these two are upstairs these are the two that were hanging upstairs thampson's been working on these with hundreds of hours on these and here you can actually see where we have the original over 100 years of dirt and grime that just from pollution everything else has settled here and then the elements that we've already started conserving so this is all cleaned up here mostly cleaned up and i see the color compared to this are you adding the color back oh we are not what we are doing is just taking back all that dirt trying to get back to what was there originally kind of leaving that patina we want that look to be that lived-in look that the ford's experienced it's a beauty it is indeed well let me show you a few other things so let me take you into henry clara's dining room this is a magnificent beautiful space what we're doing now is we're focusing actually on the wooden floors here as you can see we have the original floor that has years and years of old finishes waxes build up and we're taking all that off through a passive process to get down to the bare wood floor what do you mean by passive process well we use chemicals and slow application removal removers to try to get back to the natural wood and the key is no sanding you have not sanded this floor not at all and the reason we do that we don't want to lose the integrity of these wood floors that is removed next up is what michael and david's doing down here where's the application of a herding oil and they use this machine to slowly little by little reintroduce what originally the oil looked and feel would have been here on the floors i mean that is absolutely beautiful brings out the grain in the wood the herringbone pattern and it's a hardening oil so this is going to just set up over time yeah well we'll decide we may put another finish on this depending upon how we use this space but most likely this will be the final process right here absolutely if you like this let me take you into the living room show you one other thing so back in the living room we're removing layers and layers of paint off the original walnut and inlay so this was all wood paneling at one point this is all wood paneling beautiful wood stenciling all painted over and who would do that and why believe it or not clara did it right about 1940 41 our research shows we think it was because she just wanted to lighten up the interiors and quite frankly we see that across the nation a lot of people homeowners were doing that so you guys are trying to expose the old woodwork so that's what we're doing so you can see tony here we're removing all the finishes oh look at that just peeling right off isn't that beautiful although it is such a small area i mean at this pace how long to do the entire room yeah we project it's going to take us about three months through the entire room space what a painstaking process well it really is but at the end we know it's well worth it so you can see here this full mock-up we did earlier from floor to ceiling it really shows what a henry and clara really first imagined what they experienced what they designed and that's what we're going for that is beautiful and it would have looked like that throughout this entire whole space here wow all right well we really appreciate the tour and more importantly everything you guys are doing to save this important house you're welcome all right [Music] thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our 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Channel: This Old House

Views: 105,594

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Henry Ford Mansion, Kevin O'Connor

Id: E7hl0_H4yek

Length: 6min 22sec (382 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020