This Old House

The Watertown House - 12

A busy day on site: the back decking is coming along with a new undermount system. The insulation crew is hard at work inside spraying on foam insulation. Up top, Mark Schaub and his crew prepare to line the chimneys with a concrete lining poured down around bladders in each of the flues, and in the backyard, Dick Washburn shows us a unique dipping tank for stripping one of the house's old mantles of paint. In the relative quiet of the workshop, our master carpenter is fabricating a quartersawn white oak raised-panel piece for the bottom of the stairway. Finally, mason Lenny Belliveau works on the newly arrived pink granite blocks for veneering the foundation at the front of the building.