E21 | First Period Gambrel | Exposing Problems

Today on "This Old House," it's time to figure out exactly where they're gonna fit ducts and pipes in this building.

This is really dark.

This is gonna gobble up all the light.

I think this is where we get lucky.

I think we've actually found something that we all like.

Oh, look at that.

A spoon.

An old spoon.

You never know what you're going to find.

♪ Ahh, that's it.

♪ ♪ Hey, there, I'm Kevin O'Connor, and welcome back to "This Old House" and to our First-Period home here in Ipswich, Massachusetts, right on the Ipswich River.

They call it First Period because that front building right there was built in 1720.

In the middle, there was a two-story timber-frame L, and that has now been brought back to its original one-story design.

And in this big building right here, well, there will be an entryway down below with parking in the garage and then living space up top.

So this is our two-car garage right here.

There'll be a concrete slab poured over radiant heat because, remember, we've got living space and plumbing and such just above us, so we've got to protect that and keep it warm.

And then as you enter the house from the back, off here to the right there's gonna be a closet, a bathroom, a sunroom over there.

And then we've got the staircase, which is going down to the basement, as well as upstairs to the new living space, which is actually right up here.

Now, that space has got an office off to the right, a laundry room, and then a big primary suite with views of the river.

Then we've got this room right here, my favorite part of the house.

It is a big great room, and you can see we've got the original timber frame.

Now, this was dismantled, sent up to Maine, and repaired.

It's been put back into place, so when you're in this space, you're gonna feel like you're in that original timber-frame building.

This is gonna be a wall of windows looking out onto the Ipswich River.

And then you've got a formal entryway right here, and then you've got dining room, kitchen, and then into the original part of the house.

Not a lot of changes in here.

There was an old wood-burning stove that is gone and a chimney that's been removed because we've got a new fireplace going in on the far side.

And then we've got the front entryway and then this staircase, which we're not sure if this was original or not.

It's possible there was a chimney here, but even though this is kind of low, this is going to stay.

Hey, Tommy.

Hey, Kevin.

Wow, look at this.

This bedroom is looking completely different now that it's all exposed.

Don't you just love it?

I love when we can open up and see the old bones of these buildings.

You can tell how they built it back in the 1700s.

Right.

This is basically a 6-bent building, all right?

And the bents are the structure that holds everything together.

Everything is built off of those.

So if you look at this gable end right here, we have a steep pitch rafter that stops at this intermediate ridge line and then goes up with a shallow pitch up to the ridge there and down on the other side.

And it sits on this beam right here that holds this together.

So each one of those is a bent, and then there's just a whole series of them as you go down the house?

Right.

Now, you think of a typical roof, you're gonna see rafters that run this way, all the way down the building.

We ain't got those.

You haven't got it.

So to make the support for the roof system, this beam right here is called a purlin that runs all the way across, and that gives us a place to nail our sheeting.

So not that long ago, this was all covered.

We had a plaster ceiling, which I guess that was put in much later than when this building was originally built.

But now that the homeowners have seen this, like the rest of the timber frame, they've fallen in love with it, and I'm told that they want to keep this exposed.

Great.

Good idea.

Except, well, where do you put everything?

I mean, we got nails coming through.

And we got to insulate, too, right?

Well, we don't have to meet today's building code standards for insulation because it's so old.

It's grandfathered.

Yeah.

We are gonna insulate it in a way that we have to think about the cold air moving.

OK.

So let's go outside.

We've got it all laid out, I'll show you how we're gonna do it.

Tom: Hey, Charlie.

Charlie: How you guys doing?

Kevin: Charlie, how are you?

I'm all right.

All right, Kevin, so you can see how the house has a layer or plywood over the old boards to give a flat surface probably 20 years ago when they did the roof.

Kevin: Right.

So now we're talking about insulation on top of this, Charlie.

How you gonna pull that off?

Charlie: We have the solution right here.

We have a polyiso that is two inches thick, that is blonded to this engineered OSB with a water barrier that's infused to it.

OK, so that's going in there.

But that only gives us an R-12.

Yeah, and so if we were to go to code up in the forties, we'd be building out to here, and that screws up this detail?

Tom: Yeah, and if were gonna re-side the building, the clapboards could come up higher, and we could use the same size rake.

But we're not re-siding the building.

Kevin: We can't hide it?

It affects too many things, Kevin.

Look what it does to the dormers.

If we put it in, this is how thick it would be.

It's really a no-go.

It's gonna affect the windows and the sides of the dormers.

Kevin: So that screws up that.

And then you're saying over here, instead of the roof ending here, we're now talking about it being all the way out here?

Right.

But so this--now we still have to make the rake wider.

So we have a sample right here for the homeowners to approve.

So existing rake is right here.

And you're saying we build that up.

Yeah, and our new roof is way out here still, but this is where our new rake will be.

Gotcha.

So what is the total assembly?

Once we put our 4x8 sheets on, cut them to where the purlins are in the bents, we're actually going to put a half-inch piece of the same engineered OSB over the top of it because we're just not comfortable nailing our roof shingles through 7/16 material.

So we really want to have almost one inch to go through.

Water tight, air tight.

Right.

OK.

So are these ready to go in?

Yeah, we have a few cut and ready.

They're ready to go.

We actually cut one.

♪ So we have reached the point in our project where it's time for the HVAC and the plumbing teams to figure out exactly where they're gonna fit ducts and pipes in this building.

And that's always a challenge, Brian, isn't it?

It is, Richard, yeah.

We had some LVLs in the floor that came across over here, and one across over here, which really restricted me from getting any drain work from over here across.

So individually had to vent the shower and the toilet.

OK.

So Normally you'd wet vent that, right?

Yep.

But because I couldn't get across, that wasn't happening.

All right, so by definition, a wet vent, which is a standard component for plumbers, is normally there might be a toilet here, and these are the lavatories.

And from this point down would be the drain.

It would come down here into the branch where the toilet might be.

So this pipe between here and here would let water go this way, but also would double as the vent for both the toilet and the fixtures.

And that would be called a wet vent this way, and you couldn't do that.

Nope.

So individual drain to the tub.

Individual vent up, which was another obstacle.

Because of the LVL here, we ended up having to build a new wall in front of the wall to get our vent up into attic space.

There's always problem solving.

So all the vents work their way up through the building here, but you still have a full-size vent stack right here that has to get up and out of the building, too.

So typically we just go straight out, right?

Yep.

But they said no, no, no.

That's correct.

And the vent stack that we typically would just poke through the roof here, they wanted the vent to come through on the other side of the roof.

So I piped all my vents through the existing floor joists so that we could stay clear of the attic space above and connected them all on this side of the roof, which it will penetrate the roof right there.

Richard: All right, so that deals with the vents, but we still have the drains to deal with.

Let me take you down to the garage.

All right.

We're underneath that primary bathroom.

Yep.

So here's the LVL that we were talking about upstairs.

So there's your toilet drain working its way back with pitch right here.

And then you don't go into the building, though, you turn.

We had LVL blocking.

We had no interior walls, really, to come down.

So the easiest approach was to just run the 3-inch drain, make our way to our last fixture, which is our sink drain, and then just come down the wall, and go through the foundation.

Well, that's only for one bathroom.

That's true.

Let me show you down the basement.

So our 3-inch drain from up in the garage from the primary bath will come in right here.

And then we have another laundry and another full bath up here.

Yeah.

And then we have a whole 'nother building out back that's gonna be pumped in from down there... That's right.

up into the basement of the main house.

That's right.

If this was a typical unfinished basement, you could run all these drain lines back any way you wanted pretty much with pitch and get it back to the exit point.

But this is all completely finished down here, so you got to hide it.

That's right.

So we're gonna hide it behind a 2x6 partition wall, bury the 4-inch sewer main, pipe it along the foundation wall here.

And our challenge was is that we couldn't get underneath the stair landing.

Right.

So we're gonna exit the building here, exit it on that side, tie them together outside, and go to the sewer main once.

This job seemed really simple on paper.

Yeah, it did.

What's the next step for you?

Gonna finish the rough?

The next step is to finish the drain work on the other side of the building, and then start water piping.

All right.

I'll help.

Charlie: We dug this trench here under the old floor, which is gonna be the new pantry.

Oh, yeah.

And from my mechanical space, this is gonna be access for our sewer line going up to the bathroom above us, as well as probably duct work for our AC and heat.

Yeah.

The nice thing is that dirt's nice and dry, so you're not getting any rot in the joists.

But look at what we discovered, the sill.

That's the old white oak sill, and they will rot.

We're gonna see how bad that is.

So I figure we should probably pull a few more floorboards up, check the rest of it, see--maybe do some kind of repair.

It's hard--it's hard to grab those.

Yeah.

Yep, there you go.

Oh, yeah.

Look at that.

Look at that.

That's an old nail right there.

Sure is.

It goes in like a wedge, pushes the wood out of the way, and the fibers just grab it and hold it.

There we go.

There we go.

There we go.

Well, it's got some rot underneath it.

So the inside here where it's been dry, this part hasn't rotted too much, but the rot goes under, and it starts to go up, because that's outside the house, and all the rain and the water that runs off of the house sits on the wet ground, rotting the sill, and so it starts to rot like this.

And as it rots, over time with the weight of the house, the sill will roll like that.

When it rolls, it actually pulls the outside wall with it because they're all led into this sill, and that bellies the wall.

Hey, what the heck's this?

Ooh, look at that.

A spoon.

An old spoon.

Wonder if there was a wood handle on the end of that or something.

We can always turn a new one if we have to.

You could.

You never know what you're gonna find.

Never know.

Right there.

Perfect.

Leaves and stuff in here.

I bet there was a little nest here.

Ooh.

Ooh!

I found something.

Another spoon?

I don't think so.

Looks more like a rat to me.

Well, now you know what brought all that stuff in.

Yeah.

Take another board out.

You can see it's pieced right there.

Yeah.

You know, not as bad as I thought it would be.

Yeah, I agree.

I'm still surprised that they didn't half lap this joint, but I shouldn't complain.

It's been there for a long time.

Yeah, you know what?

I think we'll try to expose a little on the other side.

I don't think we have to replace everything, I really don't.

No, I agree.

Maybe just scarf a piece on the outside of PT.

Yeah, sounds good.

This first floor great room, dining room, kitchen is defined by the original timber frame that, as you know, was taken down, put back in place.

And then above it, even though we have the steel beam and a new framing of the roof, you have to remember that the old ceiling, the old roofboards that were on this house, well, they're actually going back up underneath this framing right here so that when you're in this space, you have the illusion of the original building.

Just like upstairs on the second floor, where you guys want to save all this original material, you're doing it down here.

We commend you for it.

And we have to tell you, it's a huge pain in the butt.

[Laughter] Bill: It was.

I mean, there's a lot to say for doing this, but it really causes a lot of challenges, whether it's the insulation upstairs, and then down here, lighting.

Are you still committed to the decision?

Absolutely.

Oh, no.

it's one of the things we were most excited about with this house is we're trying to preserve its original historical integrity.

So not just the beams, the wall plates, but also the rafters and the sheathing.

Kevin: So it will give us the effect, for sure, but obviously it's going to cause some challenges, many of which are going to fall on you, Heath.

We've got to handle task lighting, general lighting, and then you've got to deal with these conditions.

A lot of lighting.

You know, a kitchen is the most critical room in the house as far as lighting it properly.

You want to make sure you get it right.

And normally, it's not too big of a deal.

We can install recessed lights even with a small slope, but I made a mockup.

This is what we have for a pitch of this roof.

This is 45 degrees and a 12 pitch, so it comes with a lot of challenges.

The problem is a lot of devices just don't tip that far, and we have some adjustability.

Yeah.

I mean, that head does articulate, right?

But only about 30 degrees.

It's gonna shine out and not down even at the best angle that we can get out of it.

So the alternatives that you're thinking about?

So coming over to, say, the island.

We know we want to do something hanging, pendants of some type, and we have two options we're kind of looking at, right, whether we go to the ceiling or whether we go to installing a beam like this and hang them low.

I'm a little worried about too many things hanging from our, you know, beautiful new ceiling, so I kind of like the idea of hanging them from the original floor joists, which besides providing some structure and support for lighting also helps define the kitchen area.

And so if we have a pendant--looks like you got the bottom half of one right here-- even if we end up putting it on the ceiling at 45, we all know that that chain's gonna come down...

Correct.

and now we're hanging completely plumb.

If you're picking something to mount to that ceiling, just makes sure you pick something that has a canopy that has that flexibility.

Got you.

OK. And not to make matters worse, but, um, another curveball that I'm gonna throw to you, Heath, is, you know, instead of having plaster or drywall up on that ceiling-- typically white, or you can paint it a lighter color-- your entire ceiling is gonna be this color... Bill: That's right.

all throughout.

This is really dark.

This is gonna gobble up all the light.

I think this is where we get lucky.

I think we've actually found something... Bill: We have.

that we all like and does a pretty good job for this.

Kevin: And which is what?

So we're gonna install LED tape on top of these beams that you're not gonna see.

Oh.

This is very bright, very thin, very flat, and when we put that across and light that up, it's gonna give us an incredible indirect light.

It's really gonna make that ceiling glow and give you some comfortable feel in the room.

So we've actually installed one strip of the LED tape to kind of show what it's gonna look like at night, and we'll go ahead and plug that in.

Oh!

You know, that's actually quite a bit of light.

It's surprising, isn't it?

And that's just one strip of LED.

We're gonna have 8 times that on this ceiling.

Wow.

And so as you guys look at it and then imagine it sort of reflecting off of this wood up there, what do you think?

Helen: Beautiful.

Bill: Love it, and the fact that you can't actually see the lights but you just see the glow makes it all the more special.

Helen: Yeah.

One solution down.

4 problems to go.

Ha ha ha!

All right.

Well, that is progress.

♪ Charlie: So we're above the connecting L going into the, uh, garage, and here's our typical problem sometimes all these roofs connecting.

Valley, you know, getting some wash shield.

Yeah.

You have the shed roof, you have this gable roof and another gable roof coming into the valley.

I mean, this is a situation where you really have to know what you're doing when you're flashing a roof, and basically, the way to do it is it starts with the self-sealing membrane right here with granules on it, and what this does is actually sticks to the roofing sheathing itself and forms a nice, tight barrier.

Basically, when you penetrate it with a nail, it seals so water can't get under it, which is always good, and we ran it to the cheek wall and up the side wall.

So our step flashing will go over it, and then we'll have to counter-flash that, also.

That's right.

If we start right here and get this next piece of self-sealing membrane on, we could then work on the transition of the two high-pitched roofs.

All right.

So now I cut a short piece so we can see what we have.

I'm gonna take and cut this.

Take it in a little, Charlie.

And I'm gonna go out on my way to zero but not all the way.

Tom: Now no bubbles.

Keep it nice and tight.

So what we've done here is we've taken our piece of membrane, we've laid it tight to the roof here, tight to the connection or the transition right here.

We've also brought it in and up the wall and up high enough so that water will never get in here, and the molding and fascia board will come way down here.

So we're way above it.

Tom: What we'll do next is we'll run a piece on top of it in the direction of the valley, and that will really seal it well.

Push it down flat to the--nice and tight in the valley.

Tom: All right.

We have our self-sealing membrane on the shed roof right here and also our drip edge.

Our drip edge is copper with a zinc coating, and it's heavy, 16 gauge, I think.

Charlie: It is.

And the step flashing is the same.

It's nice and heavy, 16 gauge and the zinc coating on top of it.

This is gonna last for a long time.

OK.

So to get started here, I've taken a piece of clapboard that's tapered.

I'm gonna put the taper in behind this piece of counter-flashing so that any water that comes down the roof or the side wall will be pushed out away from the outside corner.

OK.

So now we're ready to install our starter stip.

I'm gonna start with a little piece of 6 inches.

Gonna place it in the corner.

I'm gonna overhang the starter strip by about 3/8 of an inch.

I'm gonna tack it.

We also want to make sure that we use copper nails so we don't have dissimilar metals holding them down.

Get my next piece, the starter where the 3 tabs were cut off, bring it out about 3/8 of an inch further than the drip edge.

You good?

Yep.

Take our step flashing that has already been pre-bent, and I'm gonna put one tack in it into the side wall.

Now I'm ready to start my shingling.

And after a long debate and about 4 or 5 different roof shingles and samples and colors and a lot of different colors on the house, this is the one they chose, the charcoal.

On a house this period, I would do a 3-tab shingle just as they're doing, and charcoal is a nice choice.

Yeah, I agree.

And we're gonna now tack the shingles, and I want to tack them right near the glue line.

Make sure I'm straight.

So now I want to put a second piece of step flashing on.

It's very important that I don't hang the step flashing down into the reveal of the shingle.

So this is a 5-inch reveal, so I want to keep it up about 5 1/4 inches so you don't see it below the tabs as they go, all right?

So that has to get nailed right there.

Next, I would cut my shingles, and each time--this is starting with a full shingle.

Now we're taking a shingle, and we've cut 6 inches off, and that goes on like that, and we're gonna line it 6 inches from the edge.

These shingles actually have a little slot right there where they bend up, and that lines me up exactly right.

The bottom of the shingle goes with the crown of the slot here and here.

Then we go right up the roof.

Then we'll have another piece of step flashing that's gonna go here, again, above the crown or 5 1/2 inches up.

A double.

So now we have two.

Put that down.

Again, I pull up the little tab.

That lines me up exactly where I want to be.

Down here with my slots.

That keeps me nice and straight.

Another piece of step flashing.

Another tack, and then we're now down from 2 to 1 1/2.

Drop it on, bring it down for the reveal, bring up my offset right here 6 inches.

Another piece of flashing.

Now we have a single.

Just grab me a single there.

Here you are.

Now we have a single.

Single will go on.

All the way up...like that, and then I could put-- if I wanted to, I could put another piece of step flashing and half... and all of these pieces we're taking off of the previous shingle that's gonna go up.

So if you look at the shingles, they're offset 6 inches.

A lot of guys will take it, and they'll stagger them back and forth like that.

I don't like to do that.

I think this is a better way to do it.

All the joints aren't in the same place, but it also looks better over time as the shingles may start to wear.

You'll never see how these shingles are put down, and then once the roof is done, we'll counter-flash everything by putting the self-sealing membrane right on the side wall and on top of the step flashing, so there's no water gonna get in there anyway.

No chance at all.

All right.

So what do we got next time, Charlie?

Next time, we're gonna be installing HVAC units down in the basement and gonna go all the way up through the first floor into the existing gambrel.

It's coming along good.

It really is.

All right.

Until next time, I'm Tom Silva...

I'm Charlie Silva... for "This Old House."

We've been making good progress.

Yeah.

♪ Kevin: Next time on "This Old House"... We're gonna take this 20th-century block and make it look like an 18th-century stone foundation.

And these brand-new claps have to match this century-old siding.

I want you to put that piece of siding on the piece that I have an X.

And today, we solve the riddle of how to fit a 21st-century duct system into an 18th-century house.

♪