This Old House

Kevin, Norm, Roger, Richard, and Tommy are back in Arlington—this time at an early English-style Arts and Crafts house built in 1909. Kevin meets the homeowners Nick and Emily, both originally from Arlington, and gets a look at the first floor to see what has been preserved and what has been altered over the years. Meanwhile, Norm goes upstairs to check out the plans for the second and third floors. Outside, Roger and Emily take a walk around the property with landscape architect Kim Turner to discuss how the homeowners envision using the space. Down in the basement, Richard shows Kevin the inefficient boiler and talks about plans for future mechanical and plumbing systems. Back upstairs, homeowner Nick is up for his first task: demolishing the outdated kitchen.

The design process kicks off with a meeting at interior designer Jill Goldberg’s shop in Boston’s South End. Homeowner Emily sorts through colors and wallpaper ideas for the living room to brighten up the house. Back at the house the old plaster walls are carefully demolished. Landscape architect Kim Turner presents her first landscape plan to Nick and Emily outside, and Roger brings in a certified arborist to begin removing the old Silver Maple. Kevin and Tommy bring down the exterior back wall to make room for the new addition.

Tommy and Kevin replace a 100-year-old wooden beam with a new steel beam to provide support for the new addition. Norm visits local examples of Arts & Crafts style houses with historian Richard Duffy. The old oil tank gets drained and removed by a specialist. Digging for the new foundation begins and the old concrete pieces from the patio and foundation get transported to a recycling center. Tommy shows Kevin what happens to the material once it is there and how it is used for future construction material.

Kevin meets Tommy in the old playroom, looking out over the work on the new foundation.  Tommy shows Kevin the ICF’s (insulated concrete forms) that replace traditional foundation molds.  They discuss the high efficiency achieved with this system.  Then Tommy introduces Kevin to Kent Reusswick, who supervises the installation.  Kent’s crew finishes the job and is there when the concrete is poured.  Homeowner Emily, joins Roger Cook and Landscape Architect Kim Turner on a shopping trip to find mature specimen trees for the yard.  Back at the addition, a precast concrete bulkhead is installed.   The old rubble foundation that was exposed during the excavation for the addition needs reinforcement.  Mason Mark McCullough erects a concrete wall next to it to keep the house standing for another century.  Before backfilling, the old foundation that’s exposed outside gets waterproofed with a synthetic rubber spray.

Tommy and Kevin take a road trip to see how the steel beams used in our house are fabricated.  The beams are trucked to the site and Kevin finds Tommy supervising erection on the back of the house.  The third floor has been demo’ed and now Richard can start an HVAC plan for the second floor.  He’s looking on the third floor for a location for an air handler and duct work to provide air to the floor below.  The front porch must be demo’ed to make way for a new design.  With the help of heavy machinery, Tommy’s crew does the job quickly. Then Tommy walks Kevin through the process of placing footings for the new porch.  Kevin finds Mark McCullough working on the firebox.  Kevin wants to learn the dark art of figuring firebox size and chimney height.

Now that the firebox is installed, it’s time to start the new chimney for the addition.  Mark McCullough, expert mason on the project, gets an apprentice for the day—a homeowner. Then he travels to Bridgewater, MA to visit a brick-making factory and gets a tour from the 4th generation owner, Lincoln Andrews. Mark watches how the bricks are mixed, formed, cut, and baked at the 100-year-old factory that provides bricks throughout New England. After several years with a tiny kitchen, Emily and Nick are excited to design the space of their dreams.  Kevin meets them at a cabinet shop in the quaint New England city of Bath, Maine, where kitchen designer Heather Krausse reveals her ideas for their project.  Back at the house, Kevin finds Tommy up on the roof changing the pitch of the two back dormers to match the pitch of the new gable created by the addition.

The homeowners want a unique look for their kitchen. They think a custom range hood will fill that vision. Kevin visits the shop of Ed Packard, otherwise known as the Tin Man, to find out how the range hood is coming together. The original chimney has seen better days and needed to be demo’ed. Kevin goes up on the roof to watch Mark McCullough build a new one. Nick and Emily need to make some design choices in order to move construction along. Kevin finds Emily and Jill Goldberg, the designer, in the new family room discussing options for the fireplace. They want to somehow hide the television, which will be over the fireplace. Other decisions to make are tile for the first floor powder room and whether to paint the wood panels in the living room. Up on the third floor there’s a small problem that Norm and Charlie Silva need to figure out. All the way down in the basement, both the original floor and new slab floor are being coated with a speckled epoxy.

Demo of the old walls for the addition revealed a hidden doorway to the kitchen from the main hall. Norm and Charlie tackle the job of opening up the old entryway. The homeowners have a beautiful design plan for the new master bath, but it presents a classic plumbing problem. Richard shows how the open space below the bath must be traversed by drain and vent pipes. There are several distinctive features that will change the front of the house. The roof on the front porch has a special shape, as do the brackets on the side of the house. To create the elaborate cuts required for these features, Tommy’s team turns to a special shop that creates them with computerized cutting machines. Norm gets a tour of the shop and sees the brackets and porch rafters in the making. Back at the jobsite, electrician Scott Caron gets started with his work in the first floor powder room where he installs a ceiling fan, and gets ready for switches and outlets. The living room had three single-pane windows that did not open. Nick and Emily want to replace them with double-hung windows that fit with the Arts and Crafts style of the house. Today, Tommy and Charlie are putting in new, energy-efficient windows.

The project’s old front porch was a hodgepodge design: part permanent, part temporary. Kevin finds Tommy framing the new front porch using custom-cut and assembled rafters. The new design puts an Arts and Crafts punctuation mark on the front of the house. Nick and Emily have chosen special marble from Danby, Vermont, for their countertops. Richard travels to the world’s largest underground quarry, where the stone originated, to find out how marble makes its way from inside the mountain to inside the kitchen. Emily wants the new exterior color of the house to fit in with the Arts and Crafts design. She has brought in preservation specialist Sally Zimmerman to help with the color selection. Norm catches up with them to find out what they have decided. Stucco panels are part of the Arts and Crafts charm of the project house, but they need work. Mark McCullough, in the process of fixing panels, shows Kevin the lost art of stucco.

Homeowner Emily has always wanted an enclosed space for her yoga and decides that an outdoor shed would be the perfect solution. Kevin meets the foreman of the shed company who will oversee the one-day process. The walls come preassembled and are raised like an old-fashioned barn raising. Tommy comes by at the end to inspect the construction. On the main house, a standing-seam copper roof is installed over the front porch. Kevin and Tommy watch the final pieces go on. Tommy shows Kevin how to trim a window using a PVC product. He shows Kevin his special technique of using a rabbet joint to connect the joints. Down in the basement, Richard watches as plumber Kevin Bilo installs a state-of-the-art boiler. This new system will take a huge bite out of the high heating bill. Next, Richard takes a road trip an hour away to visit a newly built house that uses advanced building techniques and eco-friendly materials to achieve remarkable energy efficiency.

The house gets new shingles – pre-primed and ready for paint. Inside, homeowner Emily and the interior designer start measuring for various window treatments with a stylist. Radiant tubing is installed in the new bathrooms as well as the entire first floor. The large existing fireplace gets a makeover. Outside, the side deck gets built.

New exterior decorative features, lazure painting, Arts & Crafts door restoration, wood paneling installation, and planting evergreen trees.

Everyone is covering their walls with shiplap.  Homeowners Emily and Nick love it too and want to finish their third floor with it.  Kevin finds Tommy installing shiplap in Nick’s office. Outside, the landscape plan calls for a walkway from the front porch stairs down to the street.  It will consist of brick pavers and granite steps.  Kevin helps Roger’s crew lay the second set of steps, using reclaimed granite from a New England bridge site. The marble slabs that we saw being quarried in Vermont have made their way down to the shop of Roberto Martinez.  Roberto works with Emily to find the best piece of the slab for the kitchen island and then he goes to work cutting it. Back at the house, Emily makes her final decision on the oak paneling in the living room.  Originally, she and Nick wanted to refinish the paneling.  Then they decided to paint it white.  Now Emily and designer Jill Goldberg meet with painter Mauro Henrique to review the paneling once more after the old finish has been stripped off. In the new family room, mason Mark McCullough builds the cast stone mantel surrounding the new fireplace.  The decorative mantel was fabricated in Texas and shipped to the house in pieces.  Mark and Kevin put the pieces together.

The journey of the Vermont marble continues from the cave to the counters. Richard watches as fabricator Roberto Martinez and his crew install the largest piece of marble at the kitchen island. Nothing says New England like a fieldstone wall. Kim, our landscape architect, calls for one that starts in the front yard and bends down along the driveway. Kevin finds Roger and his team laying the first giant stones for the wall. There is much more involved than just stacking rocks. Upstairs, Kevin finds Mark Pehrson hanging textured wallpaper over a wall that contains a secret door. What was once the master bedroom closet has now been switched to an upstairs foyer closet, but the homeowners want to cover it with a door that blends with the wall. In the basement, Richard looks at the finished radiant floor heating as well as a new state of the art air conditioning and supplemental heating system. The mechanical room wall is well organized and all hot water pipes, valves and pumps are labeled for the homeowners’ reference. Fresh air ventilation is needed in the super tight space and Richard explains how the system works. Finally, the dog gets her own door as Tommy and Kevin install an extra-large dog door in an exterior wall of the mudroom. Soleil stops by to give it a try.

The Arts and Crafts house in Arlington is at completion and the guys come to take a last look and celebrate with the homeowners. Kevin and Tommy arrive at the new entrance where the old Silver Maple tree and telephone pole once stood. Kevin tours the front yard with Roger and landscape architect Kim Turner. Kim points out the new plantings in the front yard and all the hardscape that Roger and his crew have worked hard to finish. Meanwhile Tommy goes around the back to meet Norm and look at the three-story exterior addition. They reflect on how the addition was designed and built to look like it was always there. Inside, Kevin looks at the refurbished front door with homeowner Emily. The foyer ceiling has been covered with an embossed paper made of linseed to give it a decorative feeling. Emily points out other updates and they check out a new stair runner being installed on the front stairs. In the dining room, paneling has been added to the walls and an Arts and Crafts style wallpaper is above it. But the biggest change is the beautiful new oak pantry cabinets that replace what was once the outdated galley kitchen. The cabinets have a pass-through that connects to the dining room so that glassware and dishes can be accessed from both sides. Richard heads upstairs to the second floor and meets homeowner Nick. With the new addition, the entrance to the master bedroom was changed to allow for a suite with two closets, the bedroom, and a spacious new bathroom. Richard looks at the new technology in the bathroom – the shower, bathtub, and toilet all have control panels for a variety of functions. Norm finds Emily putting the finishing touches in her daughter’s room. Not much was changed in there except for a special wall painting style similar to watercolors. They head up to the third floor and look at the new craft/play space that the addition allowed. Originally the idea was to move the third floor.

Kevin introduces the city of Detroit and describes some of its history. He meets journalist Stephen Henderson in front of his childhood home, and learns about how the city and its neighborhoods came upon hard times. Kevin pulls up to the project house and meets Frank and Tamiko Polk, as well as Frank’s mom Carolyn, in the front yard. He heads inside with Tamiko and Carolyn to tour the first and second floor. Frank finds Tommy in the back yard, and they assess some of the repairs needed, including repointing the brickwork and rebuilding the front stairs. Richard shows Frank some of the plumbing issues in the basement, and then Scott makes suggestions for upgrading the electricity. Frank and Kevin start demo on the roof by pulling up three layers of shingles.

Kevin meets Detroit’s Mayor, Mike Duggan, to learn about the city’s efforts to eliminate blight and revitalize the neighborhoods. Kevin meets Land Bank Executive Craig Fahle, who shows him around an abandoned home in the Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood. Through a program called Rehabbed & Ready, the city plans to renovate the property and sell it to a family who plans to stay. After the mounds of trash and abandoned belongings are removed from the house, Kevin meets general contractor Tom Abbott and lead contractor Darrick Scruggs, who will manage the renovation. Back at the Russell Woods project, Scott Caron meets Wes Kasperski, who is installing an alarm system to keep the house protected during renovation. Due to a unique ceiling design in the study, proper insulation is a challenge. Frank works with Tommy and Kevin to blow in new insulation from the roof.

At the Russell Woods project, Richard snakes a camera down the main plumbing stack to rule out any major blockages to the street. Frank asks Tommy for help with the leaky parapet at the front of the house. They find the parapet is filled with dirt. After removing it all, they use a rubber roofing material to properly seal the roof and prevent further leaks. Kevin heads to nearby Dearborn to tour the sprawling estate of a famous automaker. After decades of wear and tear by various owners, the mansion is finally getting a much deserved makeover, using preservation techniques to preserve the history throughout the home. Back at the house, Kevin and Tommy work with Frank and his friends to demo the kitchen walls and investigate whether a beam is needed to open up the room. At the Grandmont Rosedale project, a large tree looms over the house, with a root system that threatens to compromise the foundation. Kevin speaks with removal contractor Rick, who explains the process of taking it down.

At the Grandmont Rosedale project, Kevin tours the demo on the house, and then meets electrician Lenny Rodriguez to learn about his electrical plan. Back in Russell Woods, Tommy teaches Tamiko, Monet and Christian techniques to remove all the peeling paint in the living room. Richard and Frank begin rough plumbing repairs in the basement using PEX tubing. Tommy shows Kevin the issues with the framing around the leaded stained glass windows in the living room as glass artist Ann Baxter begins the repairs. Richard traces the history of Motown through the Detroit neighborhoods, then visits the studio where it all began.

At the Russell Woods project, Tommy repairs crumbling decorative molding with a plastic replica created by a 3D printer. Frank and Tamiko head to Kohler, Wisconsin to look at plumbing fixtures, while Richard gets a tour of the nearby factory. Back at the house, Richard and Frank repair some compromised joists in the upstairs bathroom. Tommy teaches Frank and his friends how to install kitchen ceiling strapping, and then Kevin heads to the project in Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood to see the efforts to repair the foundation.

At the Grandmont Rosedale project, a new exterior wall goes up, from the inside. In Russell Woods, Scott Caron and local electrician Shane Masters rough-in new kitchen wiring. Richard finds Joe Burke installing a brand new HVAC system. Richard then heads to Flint, MI to learn about the ongoing crisis that has residents without clean tap water. Back at the house, Tommy, Frank and local contractor Josh Engle install more substantial fascia in preparation for new gutters.

At the Russell Woods project, Tommy uses a clever fix for some damaged oak flooring in the living room. Frank and Tamiko meet with Jerusha Kaffine, a local kitchen designer, to see her plan. Mark McCullough joins the crew in Detroit to repair the front steps, and then new gutters go up. Kevin visits a nearby pottery to see how they’ve been making tile for a century. Then he heads to the Grandmont-Rosedale neighborhood to show the progress.

Kevin stops by the Grandmont Rosedale project to find the kitchen tile and cabinets installed. He watches as the granite countertops go in. Back in Russell Woods, Tommy works with Josh and Frank to reinstall all of the restored leaded glass bay windows. Now that drywall is up in the kitchen, Frank is ready to install the wood grain tile on the floor. First Josh puts down a decoupling membrane underlayment that supports an electric wire heating system. Kevin and Roger explore urban farming in Detroit. First they visit a resident who has purchased the lots surrounded her property to grow her own food. Next, a neighborhood farm that helps feed the immediate neighborhood residents who live in a food desert. Finally, a farm closer to the city with an apprenticeship program that provides area residents with job and education opportunities. Back at the house, Roger installs a drywell at the front and back of the house in order to move rain water away from the house and prevent it from getting into the basement. Tommy, Frank, Josh and Kevin team up to install the cabinets in the kitchen.

In Russell Woods, Kevin finds Frank and Tamiko prepping the guest room walls. Their kids join in to begin painting. Kevin finds sod farmer Mike Thompson in the front yard, planting some low maintenance plants under the bay windows and laying sod across the rest of the front yard. Tommy repairs decorative crown molding in the living room by making his own template from a putty knife. Kevin and Contractor Josh Engle work together to install plumbing fixtures in the upstairs bathroom, starting with the toilet. Tommy and Frank work together to install a new interior door in an existing opening. Kevin finds tile installer Roger Dutcher giving the fireplace a much needed facelift, using handcrafted tile from a 100-year-old pottery only a few miles away. At the Rehabbed & Ready project, Darrick gives Kevin a tour of the nearly complete house. Once the carpet is installed on the 2nd floor, doors are re-hung and the paint is touched up, the house will be ready to go on the market.

Kevin and Tommy pull up to the completed Russell Woods, recalling their time in the city and the restoration efforts they’ve witnessed. Frank meets Tommy out front to review the exterior changes to the house. Tamiko shows Kevin the new living room, dining room and den, featuring the restored bay windows, refinished floors, new fireplace surround, fresh paint and inviting furniture. Richard gives Kevin an overview of the improvements to the mechanicals in the basement, which had been ravaged by thieves. A new furnace and water heater will keep the house warm and cool, and a whole house water filtration system will keep the drinking water clean. Franks shows Tommy the changes to the upstairs: 2 bedrooms and an office featuring fresh paint and beautiful woods floors; an office with an attached sun porch that will be the perfect place to relax; and a spa-like bathroom with a soaking tub, rain shower and dual vanity. Kevin stops by the Rehabbed & Ready project during its first open house. Land Bank Executive Craig Fahle discusses some of the logistics of selling the property, and Kevin interviews prospective homebuyers to get their feedback. Back in Russell Woods, Kevin and Tamiko tour the brand new kitchen. The whole crew and those who helped along the way join in to celebrate Frank and Tamiko’s beautifully restored home.