This Old House

The Milton House - 13

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