Keeping a 250-year-old mansion in pristine shape isn’t easy. Now Mount Vernon is taking things down to scratch.
George Washington was a sharp guy in more than beating the British. He wanted the mansion to have a stone look like those in England despite being made of wood. So, sand was mixed with paint and from a distance indeed looks like stone. That is, until you knock on it.
The most visited home in America with more than 1.1 million people annually, Mount Vernon opted to return the mansion to its original look several years ago from white to tan. Now they’re stripping off the old paint down to the boards, which have shown surprisingly little deterioration. They are removing 28 layers of paint.
Yes, it stinks to have all the scaffolding in front to ruin pictures, but ultimately, you’ll see the home in its original glory once more.
