Seasons & episodes

A busy day at the site, as several weather-sensitive jobs are brought to completion. The crew puts in the final touches on the cedar clapboarding and window trim, explaining to us the fine points of keeping out the water. A new fiberglass bulkhead is installed, while painter Seth Knipe shows us the proposed colors for the main house. Inside we watch the insulation contractor Don Sawyer and crew spray a fast-expanding foam into the open stud bays of the media room, into the joist bays of the crawl space, and down into the cavities of the master bedroom's walls, whose old fiberglass has been pulled out. Outside landscape contractor Roger Cook supervises the installation of an in-ground sprinkler system to take care of the lawn-to-be, which a hydroseeding company sprays over the prepared soil. Elsewhere on the property, paving contractor Larry Torti shows us the new MacAdam driveway he's laying, using recycled paving as a base, liquid asphalt as a binder, and rice stone as a surface coat.

Our host arrives to find the site thick with trucks delivering drywall, cement board, and interior wooden doors. In a rapidly filling barn, he meets electrician Allen Gallant installing a lightning arrestor on the workshop panel - it's a simple $25 device that protects all the house's and barn's outlets from damaging power surges. Off of the exercise room, a prefabricated cedar sauna goes in, while arborist Matt Foti trims and props up the old apple tree outside the workshop. Down by the road, stonewall builder David Nyren and crew build a farmer's wall across the old driveway opening and a riprap retaining wall at the bank cut for the new drive, and lanscaper Roger Cook and crew lay in the shade garden's brick patio. Landscape architect Tom Wirth shows us choices for the latticework around the shade garden, and tells us about the specimen terrs he's ordered for the property: a lacebark Chinese elm, two American hollies, and a cornelian cherry. Plumber Ronald Coldwell checks the state

The show opens at the Milton gravesite of Captain John Crehore (born 1694), the builder of the Milton house. At the house, our host checks out a new clogfree gutter system, a prefabricated wine cellar, and the central vacuum system. He and plumbing & heatind expert review the hot water plan for the building: radiant tubing on the first floor, a high-efficeincy gas burner and hot water tank downstairs, and a superinsulated pipe to take hot water to the barn. The This Old House team installs a prefabricated wainscoting in the house's dining room. In the kitchen, designer Phil Mossgraber checks in and unpacks the new cabinets, while writer Daniel Levy gives us a short historical tour of the old house, including a look at a secret passage that may have played a role in the Underground Railroad. In the patio garden, landscape contractor Rodger Cook works with members of the Milton Garden Club to plant the newly arrive shade plants, and accepts delivery of new trees from the nursery.

The finishes have begun at the Milton project. We see the shellac and wax work painter John Dee is applying to the stripped old-growth white pine in the front wall - it now matches the look of the adjacement parlor. The crew directs a crane as it swings the new, 490-pound soaking tub through the master bath window. We visit the Wisconsin foundry where it was made. Meanwhile, tiling contractors the Ferrante brothers prepaer 16 x 16 limestone tiles for the bathroom floor using an extra-tile wet saw. Outside, our host meets a termite exterminator who uses an insect growth hormone bait to wipe out subterranean colonies. Upstairs, HVAC contractor Ken Winchester shows us the very important air-to-air heat exchanger, which introduces fresh air that picks up the house's exiting stale, damp air. In the courtyard, the new iron fountain has arrived, and the crew puts the finishing touches of the green lattice cedar fence. We meet Glenn Bowman, who is cutting and installing soapstone countertops i

The show opens to find landscaper Roger Cook and crew putting in a granite block curb around the driveway island to protect it from wayward vehicles. Inside, Charlie Abate shows us the butcherblock island countertop and discusses its care and feeding. In the old front rooms, painting contractor Steve Kiernan explains the steps he and his crew before painting the woodwork in the library and shellacking the wood in the parlor. Outside, the crew installs the new gas barbeque and side burner unit, while mason Lenny Belliveau shows us how he's dry laying a brick floor in the screen porch. Our plumbing & heating expert installs a chimney cap over one of the fireplace flues and shows us the aluminum liner he placed in the flue that handles the moist and relatively cool gas burner exhaust. Chiller units outside and barely detectable outlets inside make up the visible portions of the house's air-conditioning system. Jeff Hosking shows us the cleaning-screening-shellac-wax process by which he i

Interior designers begin their work as the construction crew scurries to finish up the job. Painter John Dee uses a wood fillerto repair the deteriorating front door, while kitchen designer Phil Mossgraber shows us features of the cabinets and the newly installed appliances. A designer from Laura Ashley Home Stylings discusses the family room's while painted woodwork and ""crackle-coat"" wallpaper, while Glenn Bowman routes out an integral drainboard in the kitchen's soapstone countertop. Upstairs, we see the new electronic shower control, and designer Cheryl Katz describes the progress by which she went from raw space in the master suite to a finished design. Jeff Hosking and the crew lay a new wide-plank pine floating floor in the dining room and we see the ceiling mural decorative painter Julie Williams is putting up in the media room using a unique color-transfer medium.

The show opens to find Roger Cook and crew laying down a sod lawn and we recieve a one-button key-fob controller demo from security expert Steve Yusko. Inside the house, we see the new flower sink and check out the new high-efficiency front-loading washer and dryer. In the wine cellar, Quarterly Review of Wines editor Randy Sheahan tells us some of the hows and whys behind the 216 bottles he's chosen. In the media room, a padded fabric wallcovering goes up, while upstairs, carpet and a master closet system are installed. We meet Robin Raskin, editor of Family PC magazine, to see some of the must-haves for the home office. Lighting designer Josh Feinstein and electrician Allen Gallant shows us the lighting and control package in the kitchen, while our master carpenter gets a test-drive of the new media room with a/v contractor Steve Hayes. Tom Silva shows us the old-fashioned brushed-brass rim locks he's using throughout the house.

The grand finale in Milton, with the house completed furnished with the work of 10 separate decorating teams. We tour the house, the barn and the grounds. The wrap party begins and the contractors and subs get a big thank you for a huge job well done.

This Old House's team goes to San Francisco to take on a unique project: the conversion of a 1906 church (lately a synagogue) into a home for Mark Dvorak, a store designer, and his fiancee Laurie Ann Bishop. A tour of the building reveals cavernous spaces, an institutional feel, dated systems, but a fantastic view of the Bay. The homeowners invite our host to their current apartment , full of striking furnishings they plan to set off against minimalist palette of finishes in the new building. Architect Barbara Chambers is the ideal professional to help on the project, living and working in a similarly minimalist home of her own design. At the church, she the homeowners thgrough a model of the proposed conversion, complete with a two-car garage in the basement, preserved chapel space, and kitchen, bath, and three bedrooms in the rear, two-story addition, formerly the synagogue offices. General contractor Dan Plummer check out the basement area, with its inadequate seismic enigneering,

The crew start the workday at the Powell Street cable car turntable, where cars are spun around by hand for the return trip over the Fisherman's Wharf. On site, general contractor Dan Plummer has three weeks of work to show: the woodwork in the chapel has been sanded, the baptismal fount has been filled with concrete for the new fireplace's foundation, and the entire rear addition has been gutted to the walls. The reason: termites. We meet exterminator Bill Pierce as he sprays down the plywood for the new subfloor with a borate solution; the new floor joists are of a pressure-treated Douglas fir that contains no arsenic or chromium, unlike conventional PT lumber. Richard sees a blown-in cellulose insulation treatment of the floor joist bays, while our host visits a Gap store that homeowner Mark Dvorak helped to design - the simple, monochromatic finishes are meant to push the clothes forward visually, and Mark and Laurie Ann plan a similar scheme for the church to highlight their furni

The show opens at a spectacular spot: the top of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, 48 stories above the Bay. At the site, Richard Trethewey shows the recycling Dumpster - almost everything coming out of the job is reclaimed at a facility across the Bay. In the basement, Richard gets the underfloor heating story from Larry Luttrell, who is using a aluminum plates to direct the heat up through the chapel's old wood floor. Our host meets mason Jim Dayton, who explains the workings of a modern Rumford fireplace, while the master carpenter sees the framing work of Jim Pitcher and crew up on the second floor. Jim shows a rigid 3-4-5 framing square he's using, then we catch up with the window manufacturer's rep Glenn Eige to see the features of the new windows, including sound-deadening and infrared blocking. Richard visits a Berkley salvage yard where Mark and Laurie Ann have picked out some vintage fixtures, including two stunning lavatories. Back on the site, general contractor Da

The show opens with a walk through the magnificent Muir Woods, home of the coast redwood, the world's tallest tree. At the house, where general contractor Dan Plummer is dealing with yet another of heavy rain, we see the lighweight concrete mixed and poured over the kitchen's radiant floor tubing. Our host gets the rundown on the building's sprinkler system from installed Fred Benn, including a dramtic demostration. We visit the workshop of Peter Good in Oakland to see him building new exterior doors for the church - a matched pair for the front and a Dutch door for the side entrance. At the house, Jay Fenton shows the stainless steel flue he's installing above the new Rumford fireplace, while Dan Plummer and the team review the new stairs and the old-growth Douglas fir joist he's recycling into treads and risers.

The crew visits Coloma, California, where the Gold Rush began in 1848, to see Sutter's Mill and try their hands at panning for pay dirt. At the house, a break in the rainy weather means the crew can put up the new redwood siding, while inside Richard Trethewey helps plumber Jeff Deehan retrofit a vintage lavatory with a modern mixing faucet. Homeowner Laurie Ann Bishop shows us the transforing effect of the new windows in the chapel, and an energy consultant demonstrates their heat-retaining capabilities with a thermographic camera. In the basement, Richard discusses the new heating plant (a combination boiler and hot water tank) and the manifold system that will control the building's radiant floor heat. Our host accepts delivery of the church's custom exterior doors, and a cleverly disguised garage is installed.

Our host visits Alcatraz before heading off to the jobsite, where our master carpenter is hard at work installing the new front doors. First step: trimming them to fit the out-of-plumb opening. Progress in the chapel continues, with industrial halogen light fixtures being hung from the ceiling, while paint going over the dark waiscoting, and a cleft-slate surround gracing the Rumford firebox. Upstairs, the drywall has been treated with a bonding agent so that a two-coat finsh plaster can be applied, the result of a last-minute decision by the homeowners. A zero-clearance fireplace centers the master bedroom, and plumber Jeff Deehan wrestles with an old-wall-mount sink, retrofitting it with a foot-pedal-controlled faucet. Our master carpenter continues on his on his doors, using a mortice jig to position and installs the hinges. Homeowner Mark Dvorak accepts delivery of the kitchen cabinets he designed - built in a computer-controlled manufacturing facility run by Paul La Bruna. Finally

The final episode on the San Francisco project begins with a visit to the Marin County Civic Center, Frank Lloyd Wright's only government building. At the site, Richard joins our master carpenter to do a little gardening in the ten square feet of soil in front of the church, then Richard gets the rundown on homeowner Mark Dvorak's new front-loading washing machine, which saves 60% of the electricity and 40% of the water used by conventional top-loaders. Our master carpenter trims out a window using a wood fiber and resin composite material, while our host checks out the last-minute work in the chapel, including bottom-up privacy shades, a clean up with a backpack vacuum, and the staining of the floor with a very dark stain. The next day starts off with homeowner Laurie Ann Bishop having fingerprints read into the new security system. We catch up with general contractor Dan Plummer as he puts togehter his second-floor punchlist, Mark shows Richard the finished kitchen, and lighting desi

Our 20th year on public television began with the renovation of a circa 1886 Victorian with a large circa 1915 rear addition, in the Boston suburb of Watertown, Massachusetts. Essentially untouched since it was built, the house was recently purchased by a young couple from nearby Cambridge, Christian Noen and Susan Denny, who were attracted by the classic neighborhood, spacious yard, and the relative affordability of Watertown. Along with the This Old House gang and designer/architect team Sandra and Tony Fairbank, they plan to address the house's many problems: a boggy basement and backyard. paint-encrusted siding, crumbling chimneys, outdated heating and wiring, and a labyrinthine floorplan that masks the house's spacious 5,000 square feet. The show opens with the This Old House team visiting a potential project project that the show decided to pass on: ac. 1720 colonial that was nearly destroyed by a chimney fire. They tour the house to see what a fire can do to a building, and meet

Our host opens the show with a visit to the Watertown Arsenal, now decommissioned and slated for redevelopment into office space. The highlight of the property is the Italianate Commander's Residence, a brick mansion being given to the town by the developer for use as a community center. At the project, the crew experiments with methods of stripping the exterior of its paint burden, while our host visits a renovated house in Cambridge, whose design was the reason Christian and Sue chose their designer/architect team, Sandra and Tony Fairbank. Richard Trethewey checks the state of the heating plant (grossly oversized) and the pipes (mostly OK), and Sandra Fairbank and Christian go over a proposed reordering of the house's tangled floorplan.

The crew begins to dismantle the grand oak staircase as the house's new floorplan comes into focus - seen in a vitural-reality walkthrough, it calls for removing all three staircases and repositioning one in the center of the house, providing a sensibleand easily navigated layout on both the first and second floors. We visit the house next door, which is for sale, with Realtor John Petrowsky, to get an idea on what the market is like and whether Christian and Sue are on the right track in the scope of their renovation. A professional crew removes abestos from the basement of the project house, and the staircase comes apart in the three large sections.

As a professionally installed scaffolding system rises up to the roof ridge, landscape archtect Clarissa Rowe walks around the lot, assessing problems - mostly an overabundance of weedy trees and terrible drainage - and possible solutions. Our master carpenter relives his western odyssey with the US Forest Service, 22 miles into the wilderness by horseback to repair parts of an historic Service compound. Back at the house, the old second bath floor is demoted, but not before the crew save the old sink and some of the tiles.

The landscape work begins with landscaper Roger Cook and arborist Matt Foti marking trees slated for pruning or renoval and Matt's crew relieving the yard of some of its overgrown burden. Inside, the crew begins to rebuild the old oak staircase in the center of the building while mason Lenny Belliveau assesses the state of the flues with the help of a tiny ""lipstick"" camera. Atop the scaffolding, we learn how he has rebuilt the chimneys from the roof up, copying the corbelled and decorated originals.

The team's work to complete the reframing of the second floor starts with the use of engineered lumber, which makes for wide clear spans in the new kitchen area. Landscape architect Clarissa Rowe shows us two plans for the yard. Thinking ahead, homeowner Christian Nolen visits a hands-on showroom to choose high-end appliances for the house, while Sue Denny and a/v specialist Steve Hayes review a new wiring and distribution system that will ensure that, no matter how data is spent or recieved in the future, the walls will never have to be opened to rewire.

The show opens with a walk along a newly restored natural corridor lining the banks of the Charles River in Watertown. The result of years of hard reclamation work by the Metropolitan District Commission, it forms part of an unbroken systems of walk and bikeways stretching from the mouth of the river west to Waltham. Back at the house, the crew opens up a water-damaged corner of the building to find rot, carpenter ants, and termites, Homeowner Christian Nolen is presented with a plan to heat and cool the building efficiently, while still using the existing ductwork. Our host visits the Browne House, circa 1690, the oldest house in Watertown, and one of the first restoration efforts by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. At the site, historic preservationist Andrea Gilmore explains the architectural features that make our subject house a Queen Anne Victorian, and she reveals its original colors.

A Dig Safe representative is on site to explain the nonprofit organization's function: to notify all utilities of impending excavation so that they can mark buried lines. Out back, Roger Cook and crew remove topsoil to begin the digging of a massive drywell that will hopefully control the water that drains from surrounding yards onto the property during rainstorms. The team review the extensive termite damage to the front sill; to replace it, they need to jack the balloon-framed wall above it - no easy task, since the floors are not really attached to the wall studs in this type of construction. Meanwhile, Christian and our host take a tour through the mocked-up kitchen, where Christian is asked a few pointed questions about the design.

Entomologist and pest control contractor Steve Marken takes us on a termite-damage tour of the house, pointed out the conditions that led to the original infestation. Out back, Roger Cook shows us the drywell and drainage pipe system he's installed to handle the water problem. The This Old House team work with excavator Jim McLaughin as they try to pull out the old galvanized water service, with a new copper pipe attached to the end, to replace the old pipe without having to dig up the front lawn. Homeowners Sue Denny and Christian Nolen experiment with exterior paint colors on the side of the building - our host advises them to consult with historic paint expert Andrea Gilmore. Inside, homeowner Christian learns the effect, or lack thereof, of the skylight he's considering installing over the central stairway.