Historic inn restoration progresses

The downstairs interior of the former inn at Navarro-by-the-Sea as of April 7, above. The 1860s building is being restored through efforts by the nonprofit Navarro-by-the-Sea Center. Lori Kaye, below, explains some of the challenges of restoring old, damaged trim. Most of the upstairs still requires extensive restoration work. Matthew Reed photos.

Restoration of the interior of Fletcher's Inn at Navarro River State Beach is well underway.

Jim Martin, Navarro-by-the-Sea Center board president, said Rosenthal-Thornton Construction of Fort Bragg had finished critical stabilization work to save the inn last fall. Among the repairs completed were major demolition, lead abatement, seismic retrofitting, a new perimeter foundation, reconstruction of the original front porch, restoring the siding, installing replica windows for the downstairs and repainting the exterior.

Then it was time to start on the interior. At the end of 2013, an anonymous donation allowed Navarro-by-the-Sea Center to hire restoration specialist Lori Kaye of Elk to work on the downstairs interior of the building, Martin said. Her work included lead paint containment, closing off openings in walls from the stabilization work, installing missing trim, fabricating a window and repainting.

Much of the interior paneling remains intact. Kaye said numerous coats of varnish were required to restore the one-inch thick tongue-and-groove knotty pine.

The original redwood bar is still intact and will be refinished, too, Kaye said.

The historic inn was both built in the 1860s and, with the mill house, is one of the only remaining structures from the original town of Navarro that sprang up around the mill at the mouth of the Navarro River.

Construction

Stacked in the room that had once been the kitchen were several 2-by-12 boards that had been used as floor joists before construction of the new concrete foundation.

Kaye said the former inn was constructed without blocking or rim joists. Blocking is the series of pieces of wood between studs. Rim joists go around the entire perimeter of a house and are connected to the ends of the floor joists to structurally tie in all the sides of the building to the foundation, she said.

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Historic inn restoration progresses