Old House My House

In an earlier post we showed some pictures of the surprise staircase we found behind a wall. Sadly, there wasn't a spot for it in our new plans, so it had to go. Here's a quick video of Tom and Kevin taking it down.

Here's the a quick picture of Kevin with the aftermath.

Bayhead -- April 18, 2013

(Picture: An annual dose of old christmas trees kept the dune grass healthy and thick, protecting the beach and house behind it.)

On parts of the Jersey Shore, people actually own the beach. Neighborhood associations can sell badges to visitors, limit parking near the beach, and even ask people to get off their sand if the person is above the mean high tide line.

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When we bought our home we loved a lot of things about it. But the kitchen wasn't one of them. While it looked nice enough and had some interesting cabinets, it was worn out and too small for our family. So we were excited to see the crew start the demo process.

Here's Kevin laying into the counter and cabinets.

Here he is after everything has been removed.

And here's a more recent picture with Tom. You'll note he's taken things to a whole new level. Not only have all the walls been gutted, but he's also removed the floor and ceiling.

In this picture you can see into the back office, which will soon be part of the expanded kitchen. You'll also note he took the opportunity to fix some of our joists. I think the chimney will be coming down soon, so stay tuned!

April 6, 2013 -- Manasquan, NJ

Our second homeowner is Rita Gurry, a single woman who lives in Manasquan on a fairly busy street less than a mile from the beach. She comes from a large Irish family, and it didn’t take long for Rita to tell me her mother hailed from County Tipperary and her dad from County Sligo. In fact it doesn’t take long for Rita to tell you anything. She’s an open book and she likes to talk. She’s also one of six kids who all seem to be pretty close. Her sister Mary lives around the corner and some of her brothers pitched in to help renovate Rita’s house less than a year ago. 

(Picture: Rita Gurry from Manasquan, NJ in front of her recently demoilished home.)

Super Storm Sandy hit not long after that renovation and Rita’s modest two-story house took on two to three feet of water. It is a total loss and the house will come down in a few weeks but surprisingly, Rita, like so many others along the Jersey Shore, is taking all this in stride as she moves forward. She attributes her attitude in part to her many years as a cancer nurse, seeing so many people get bad news. “I’m not one of those patients, waiting around to hear bad news,” she says. “I can control my life and the outcome of this storm, so I’m going to move on and build a new house.”

(Picture: Rita's house, after two and feet of water, before it gets torn down.)

Rita tells me how much she loves her house, and not for its finer touches or even for the new floors she put down just before Sandy struck. She loves her home because it’s where her family gathers, where her friends meet to talk and socialize on her front porch, and because it’s where she cared for her mother before she passed away. I suspect those are some of the same reasons we all love our homes, and as I look at her overturned furniture and mold-covered walls my questions about rebuilding fade and I start to look forward to the rebuild. Old or new, her house has many more memories to make. So we plow ahead.

(Picture: Workers use an auger bit to prep the hole for a pull down helical pile under our Pt. Pleasant house.)

April 17, 2013 -- Point Pleasant, NJ

What do you do when you need to install 30-foot piles under an existing house? Even after raising the house it is only going to stand about 9 feet above grade, hardly enough to slip something the height of a telephone pole underneath. Enter the Helical Pulldown Micropile, made by Hubbell Power Systems.

The concept is pretty simple: A 9-foot section of steel is screwed into the ground under the house. Once it’s set, a second section is attached and screwed in, then a third and so on until you’ve screwed thirty feet of piles into the ground. Engineers have used this technology since the1800s, first for moorings and lighthouses and today for commercial building projects. But going forward there will be lots of residential homes in New Jersey sitting on helical piles, including our house in Point Pleasant.

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The project is now in full swing. Demo started last week, and the crew is making real progress. Here's a view from the back of the house (what used to be an office) toward the kitchen.

Once the plaster came down, we were able to take a closer look at the original beams used to construct the house, and got a sense of some of the alterations made to the structure over the past 141 years.

Behind one wall we made a fun discovery: a stair case!

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April 16, 2013 -- Jersey Shore

(Picture: The Santos house lifted 9'3" from the sill and resting on steel and wooden cribbing.)

All three of our Jersey homes took on water, so all three of the homes need to go up. How far up and how we get them there will be different for each house, but at the end of the day -- up they will all go.

The lift of the Santos home in Point Pleasant is probably the most typical. The home is fairly new and has a strong foundation and structure so it gets lifted at the sill. The crew punches holes through the block foundation wall and slides steel beams under the sill until the entire house is sitting on steel instead of concrete; then we lift.

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April 5, 2013 -- Point Pleasant, NJ

(Picture: Carlos and Maria Santos from Point Pleasant, NJ)

Today I met Carlos and Maria Santos, the first of three homeowners we’re working with. We hit it off right away. Maybe it was the Jersey thing, or that they have three young kids just like my wife and I. Carlos also hails from the Ironbound section of Newark, which was a favorite spot of mine when I was going to high school in that tough city. But what I most connected with was their optimism. It was irrepressible.

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April 4, 2013 -- Mantoloking, NJ

Just one of thousands of homes destroyed by the storm. More pictures here.

It’s worse than I expected. I saw all the news reports about Super Storm Sandy on TV, of course, and talked with friends and family about their experiences. But that didn’t prepare me for what I'm seeing. Actually standing amid the ruin is an entirely different experience than seeing it on the news.

One of my first stops today is Mantoloking, N.J. a place considered by many to be “ground zero” for the storm. I walk along the coastline, with its pristine white Jersey sand and fresh tracks from the heavy equipment used to groom the beach. But right next to the perfect beaches of my childhood are huge piles of debris. No, wait -- that’s wrong. The debris isn't next to the beach, it is on top of it. There is no “land” here; it’s all beach. It’s all sand, broken up in places by asphalt or stones or wooden decks, but under that, it’s just more sand. And the piles aren’t debris – they are entire houses, or what’s left of them. You know it’s a house because, well, what else could it be? You can see the roof, the doors, the wires, and the furniture. But it’s all mixed up and tangled. It’s deeply unsettling.

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(Picture: Another summer for the O'Connors on the Jersey Shore.  That's me - bottom left - with four of my six siblings at our rented beach house.)

April 2, 2013 -- Mass Turnpike

The crew headed to New Jersey yesterday to do some scouting and get some b-roll, so this morning I'm driving alone. I have six hours to make it to the Jersey shore for a 1:00 p.m. call time. I know the route by heart but I still plug in the GPS just to count down the miles and see if I can beat the little machine’s estimated time of arrival.

It’s not hard to pass the time. An hour of silence is nice then the morning news on the radio and by 9 a.m. I’m on the phone with my dad. I want to get the history straight. Our family has been vacationing on the Jersey shore and in particular Long Beach Island since long before I was born. LBI, as everyone calls it, is a barrier island about 18 miles long connected to the mainland by a single bridge. To the east of the island is the Atlantic Ocean while Barnegat Bay is just a few blocks to the west. For many people, the O’Connors included, LBI is paradise.

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April 1, 2013 -- Boston

(Picture: Our project houses on the Jersey Shore.  We'll follow the recovery and rebuilding of all three.)

Tomorrow I'm going back to New Jersey. It’s a trip I’ve made a hundred times since I left the Garden State more than 20 years ago to attend college in Worcester, Mass. And even though I settled in Massachusetts and have called it home ever since, Jersey has never left my system. It’s where I was born and where most of my family still lives; my parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. It’s where I grew up, went to grade school and high school and played Little League. And it’s where I still go every Thanksgiving and every summer, to spend a week's vacation on the Jersey Shore.

But my upcoming trip and the ones that will follow won't revolve around fun or family—they'll be all about work.

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No, this post isn’t about filming This Old House—it’s about an amazing find that came to us through our fabulous interior designers, Dee and Andrew of Terrat Elms Interior Design. Dee told us that her friend Carrie Gustafson, a glass artist who designs beautiful bowls and light fixtures, was interested in designing a light to go over our dining room table.

My father and I went with Dee and Andrew to meet Carrie in her Cambridge studio and learn more about her work. Carrie usually works with colorful glass that she buys in foot-long bars. Two or three layers of glass in different colors are blown into the shape of the light. Through a painstaking process, Carrie cuts out and applies a sandblast-resistant material in a decorative pattern on the glass. The pieces of this material are tiny—it requires a great deal of planning and time to achieve the pattern that she has developed. Next, she uses a tool to etch away the top layer of glass in the areas that are not covered by resistant material. When the top layer is etched away, the layers beneath are revealed, leaving a beautiful, colorful design. When the fixture is lit, it reveals even more subtleties and color. 

I highly recommend checking out Carrie’s awesome website which has an excellent, pictorial explanation of her process. We look forward to working with her, Dee, and Andrew to design a one-of-a-kind light fixture for our dining room. 

I spent a couple hours at Roma Tile with our interior designers, Andrew and Dee, of Terrat Elms Interior Design.  I went in with a general idea of what I wanted to do with the master bath...I was thinking about using small “penny tiles” in white, with splashes of colorful blue mosaic tile as highlights.

I’ve never worked with an interior designer before, and I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical since I went into this project with a clear vision of how I want our home to look. I was unsure what the designers could add to the vision that our architect and I have had for the space. 

But while we were at the tile store, I got to see a glimmer of what working with an interior designer could offer. Dee and Andrew took my ideas and came up with suggestions of ways to make the tile choices pack more punch. For example, in the kids’ bathroom, Andrew suggested that we use a traditional subway field tile on the walls and then use the small white penny rounds on the back of the tub wall for an added dramatic punch, to let those tiles stand out as a focal point. 

Dee and Andrew also pushed me a bit out of my comfort zone in considering some very striking square white tiles with black “X”s on them for the master bath floor. In the end, I decided not to go with that choice, but I don’t think I would have seriously entertained the idea without their nudging me, and I'm glad that they expanded my horizons a bit.  

On days when This Old House is filming, it’s a whole different story from a regular construction day. The house is teeming with people—a couple of producers and guys who move heavy equipment and lighting; Dino, the cameraman; and Thom Draught, the director. Those people are all in addition to host Kevin O'Connor and the other folks who star on the show. We are grateful that they're all incredibly accommodating of our family.

On one filming day, I brought my kids to the house to watch the show film a scene where Tom and Kevin cut a hole in the roof to put the skylight in the master bedroom.  My girls love being around the crew and all the excitement of filming! They were hanging around with Deb Hood, the show's producer, and Thom, the director, peeking over their shoulders at the monitors they watch to see what was happening up on the roof.

My kids are too young to realize what “being famous” means. They talk about Tom, Norm, Kevin, Roger, and Richard like they are old friends. And I think part of that is because the guys are such genuine, real people that John and I feel like they are old friends too.  

We still can’t believe that Tom Silva is renovating our house! Often when I have unrealistically high expectations about someone, the person falls short. But in this case, Tom has more than lived up to our admittedly high expectations. In keeping with our project that is a mix of old (exterior) and new (interior), Tom brings the best of both worlds. He has a deep knowledge of old houses and what makes them work, and a willingness to make use of new technologies to improve on the old when and where it makes sense. 

Another thing that surprised us about our project is how small the work crew is. Most of the time thus far, it has been Tom and one other helper, Dan. You can see how Tom produces such impeccable results—he only has people whose work he trusts working on the project. At first I was surprised when I would arrive at the house only to find Dan there by himself. I kept waiting for the big crew to arrive! This may change down the line as the project starts coming together, but for now it's been 

On some days there are more people working, like when the roofers and house framers did their jobs. But the sense of ownership and continuity by always having Dan and Tom there gives us so much confidence in the quality of the work that’s being done.

I know our house will be not only infinitely prettier and more livable when they're done, but that it will also be more structurally sound, well insulated, and all around well-built than it was originally. I think that’s pretty rare in renovations of old houses.