Athanasius, the biggest issues encountered are the interpretive considerations the hardliners take on a conservation or restoration project. I have not found this to be a problem on rehabilitation or reuse foci. Let’s take the issue of a section of missing baseboard. Aesthetically I have two options. One I can custom mill the new piece to match, or perhaps I might find an identical historical piece in a surplus lumber or demolition project. In doing this, the old “Colonial Williamsburg” indictment comes out, and dictums follow that the replacement piece must be of contemporary program, easily discernable old from new. In exact replacement of known fabric, it is all rather anal to argue the academic point of authenticity and authorship, when the goal is to repair.

I will agree with them when considering a complete room or section of a structure that has been robbed of the bulk of its fabric, but not just a stick of wood. All of this is a response to the historic fictions that were created in the past under the heading of preservation and interpretation. There are many "house museums" that were "restored" by well meaning persons that are grossly out of sync with any evolution of the built fabric. When we inject intellectualism into the fray to elicit understanding of the meaning of the fabric (influences, beliefs, etc) as a method of controlling for false history, we lose track of sensibility in a wash of "narrative" and "semniotics" and similar Kafkaesque nostrums. It is these academic debates that keeps academics earning a salary, not what makes special buildings special, or even in the alternate sustainable. Bad carpentry for the sake of some mistaken principle is not preservation.