19x7 - This Old House

The house's new spaces are framed and sheated, giving us a chance to tour the new kitchen and media room. The front facade is now completely stripped of its burden of 200 years' of paint, ready for primer and a new color. Architect Rick Bechtel and window specialist Mike Roach discuss the new windows they are specifying for the new work (all wood units, double hung, insulating glazing, applied six-over-six muntins), and decide that, rather than being replaced, the historic sash of the front part of the building should be restored and weatherstripped. At the workshop, we see now, low-cost, breathable building wrap, then watch as the crew installs one of the new skylights. Then a roll-forming machine spits out metal roof panels for the building's new standing-steam roof. Finally, we see the engineered wood product that is being used to trim out the house - it's very stable, warpfree, consistent, and cheaper than clear pine.