mainstream. “Spray-foam insulation, cementitious
siding, stress-skin paneling, radiant floor heat, high-
velocity flexible-duct air-conditioning, insulated
concrete forms, laminated prefinished flooring—we
were the first to show them, and that accelerated
their adoption.”
“There’s still a place for wood,” Norm
says. Over time, he’s observed a downside to syn-
thetic trim. Since it doesn’t rot or absorb water so
that paint pops off, it doesn’t show what’s happen-
ing behind it. “There can be water infiltration prob-
lems that it hides,” he says. For his own home, he
likes Alaska yellow cedar for trim, painted on all six
sides. Tom adds, “Even with all the new materials,
never ignore the old best practices,” like proper
flashing, adequate drainage, and allowing the build-
ing to breathe. “Like I always tell people,” he says,
“water kills houses.”
Another thing that Tom has observed over the
years: “Be careful not to bring too many people
into the mix. Take the professional advice of your
designer and your contractor, plan out the project
as carefully as you can, but beware of listening to
your friends, relatives, and neighbors.” He’s found
that they sometimes bring their own agendas to a
project, and often late in the process, leading home-
owners to ask what Roger calls the most expensive
question on a job: “Can we change that?”
“The best way often isn’t the easy way,”
Tom says. That applies to “the stuff you don’t see,”
like insulation, air sealing, and high-efficiency
HVAC equipment, as well as things you see every
day. Referring back to the Manchester-by-the-Sea
project, an extensive restoration of a Shingle-style
beauty, he recalls how the most important view in
the house—from the kitchen, across the dining
room, and out to the harbor—was going to be com-
promised if the house’s original ceiling height was
retained. He spoke to the owners and got their
blessing for the crew to stiffen each existing ceiling
joist with a thin strip of steel and a new, narrower
joist of engineered wood—a flitch beam. They then
shaved down the original by a crucial couple of
inches, raising the ceiling and “making a huge dif-
ference in how the room felt and how the outside
came in.” It took about three extra days of work
and has paid off on a daily basis ever since.
Similarly, he made sure the ancient Acton Colo-
nial, circa 1710, looked right after it was re-sided.
How? By tapering all the clapboards so that the eye
sees them as parallel, rather than skewed by the un-
derlying out-of-square building. More recently, when
he saw how a newel post in the entry of the Belmont
Queen Anne was being extended to the ceiling to sup-
port a beam—a look that was not historical, and
would have blocked critical sight lines—he devised a
way to transfer the load elsewhere, allowing for a
classic newel and a clear look into the house.
The fun never stops. Ever since Silva Brothers
Construction showed up on a This Old House job
site, a tradition of pranking the television produc-
tion assistant has been solemnly observed (for more,
see page 12). However, it’s not been a one-way street.
Asked about their favorite TV filming take of all time,
everyone on the show agrees that it went down one
late afternoon in the fall of 1991, in the kitchen of the
Wayland House. Tom was enlarging and reframing
“ The Lincoln
Memorial in
Washington,
D.C., was my
favorite side trip.
The National
Park Service
person told us
that we couldn’t
film or speak
inside the
monument, but
the woman in
charge of the
restoration of
Lincoln’s statue
walked up and
said, ‘I control
the scaffolding,
and you guys can
come up,’ which
is how I found
myself eyeball-
to-eyeball with
Abe.” —KEVIN
“Don’t touch the electrical
service panel or the heating
equipment. Leave that to
the professionals.” —KEVIN
50 THISOLDHOUSE.COM SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 40 YEARS