While paint ghosts are great resources, they are also frequently indistinct and it is often hard to develop an accurate profile by just using the outlines.  Fortunately, much like the sloppy painter, the ca. 1848 masons were also careless and did not completely clean up the debris created when they chiseled the columns down.  As a result, the Montpelier archaeologists found hundreds of pieces of the original Madison-era columns when they excavated around the house, including fragments of the columns' Madison-era moldings.  While there were not enough fragments found to reconstruct a complete base, examples from the bases’ major elements were recovered.  Using these fragments, along with the pilaster paint ghosts, an incredibly accurate design for reconstructing the missing column bases was developed.