This Old House Season 19 Episode 13 The Milton House - 13

Our host arrives to find the site thick with trucks delivering drywall, cement board, and interior wooden doors. In the 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 landscaper 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 trees he's ordered for the property: a lacebark Chinese elm, two American hollies, and a cornelian cherry. Plumber Ronald Coldwell checks the state of the pipes and installs a freeze-proof sill cock. Tile consultant Gene Walsh lays out choices for the back hall (a green Indian slate), guest bath (concrete tiles), master bath (limestone floor and vanity top, 3x6 white tile for the walls, and kids' bath (handmade alphabet tiles with glazed and matte finish ceramic tiles surrounding them). Finally, the crew reworks the old vertical pine panelling in the dining room as horizontal wainscoting, as the room originally had.