One of the other improvements we're doing to the front of the house involves putting in a new front door.
The old wooden door that was here, you know, it's from 1921, and it's an okay door, except that it had a crack in one of the panels and it let the draft in, and the guys from Moynihan are here.
Hey Lou, why don't just join me for a minute to talk about the attributes of this door.
This is from Therma Tru.
Yes, sir.
And you guys deal in this product, what's it made out of?
It's a fiberglass skin door, poly resin interior, LVL siding , put in a wood jam.
So, that it's really ready to be installed.
Yes.
What's astonishing to me is that they managed to give it the look of an arts and craft style, you know, front door with the dentals and the shelf here and the look of it.
It's meant to look like fur, isn't it?
Correct.
This is part of their American series: Classic Craft.
It's an engineered door to make it look like the wood, so you don't have the swelling , you don't have the cracking, the warping, and you don't have to maintain it as much.
No maintenance at all.
And Bill, you're just about ready to...where's that going?
You're just about ready to, well you've already taken out the old one.
Yep.
What are all the steps?
Well , what we're gonna do now is we're gonna just finish cleaning this up so we got a clean surface to start with.
Then, we are going to give ourselves a solid base to set the door on.
So, we're furring out with pressure treated lumber down there.
Correct.
Okay.
We'll put this piece in, and I've nailed this out to fit in there and then sit out in the front.
And that's in good shape.
I mean, it's all nice and clean, but it's solid.
That's right.
No rot, no insect damage.
Do you have to worry about any kind of insulation in this area?
Yeah, what we're gonna do before before this goes on, is we're going tuck a piece of insulation in here, just to stop the draft, any draft that might come up from underneath.
Okay, alright.
Well, we'll watch.
Let me know if you need a hand.
We'll get this in first.
All right, now we'll put that insulation in.
Good.
Very good.
And now we will just lay this on the top here.
Now, we've got a solid surface.
You've obviously measured twice and cut once.
That's right.
All right, now what we did is we made up some studs.
We have windows on either side.
Mm-hm.
And we want to get ourselves to a point where we could just put the door in.
Right, so you're going to fill in space, right?
Correct.
So these would technically be jack studs then.
I guess.
That's right, that's right.
Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna try to make up this difference, and then put that the next stud and beyond that.
Alright, so this door is a little bit shorter than the one that was in there, right?
It is Bob, this door is a six eight and the door that was in there is a seven foot door.
OK, so that means we've got to four up in there too.
That's right.
Good.
It's too tight this space over here.
Tight.
Alright.
So the door is Cured and boy, does that look good.
And it sounds good too, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
Nice and secure.
OK, so, the hardware is something of interest, cuz it's a German hardware that's not just a bolt that goes into the jamb.
Correct.
They call this a three point locking system.
When you lift the handle up, those three points are locking in there, and you can throw your deadbolt.
Fabulous, and Bill, what's the last step you're doing here?
I saw you putting a bead of caulking behind there.
Yeah, what we did was we ran some caulking to seal this into the window.
Going to slide this right over, and now, we've taken care of the trim.
Ok.
Between the door and the window, we'll secure all that together.
Go ahead, all one piece.
That looks very good, and then you've got another piece of cedar that will go across the entire top.
Correct.
A piece of Cedar and a trim piece which is will blend right in , finish off the top.
Right, just along the same as the rest of the perimiter of it.
beautiful job guys.
Thank you.
OK, we're inside the house now, in the living room.
We haven't been here before but, just a few minutes ago we were on the outside talking about how we rebuilt this bay window and replaced some of the moldings.
Ken Henderson's here from Harvey Industries, which is a regional window company here in the New England area.
It's been around for a long time, and let's talk about the features of these replacement windows.
From the outside they're clad in aluminum, right?
That's correct, Bob.
They're aluminum clad replacement windows.
In this particular application, we do have an applied grid on the outside as well.
The other thing to note about these windows is that they are pine on the inside.
Tell me about the glass.
The glass is actually a high performance glass, it's low-e with krypton gas, excuse me.
What that does give you is an energy star rating.
An energy star is something that everybody's trying to achieve these days.
Just makes good economic sense to the energy star rated.
And the home owner here liked the replacement window that we put in the basement so much that she went ahead and got all 21 windows throughout the house replaced.
That's correct, she could not live without the rest of the windows.
So Jack Salverio and his group were here installing them.
It didn't take long.
We've been in business for 35 years now.
My father before me... It was a takeover business from my dad.
And we do all residential work in the North Shore area.
We do anything from kitchens, bathrooms, additions, remodelings, decks, siding and a lot of hobby replacement windows.
We have a crew of six men, we cover about eight to ten towns around area.
Alright, Ken show us how you can tilt these in.
Well, we have some release latches that will just disengage, let the sash come down, let it fall all the way down, and then you can see your aluminum clouding on the exterior.
But the key thing is that you can also wash the outside of the window yourself.
Absolutely.
From inside, no ladder
No, no...
Makes a big difference to the homeowner, to be able to do that from the inside.
The top sash, the same way pretty much.
The releases are engaged, or disengaged.
The sash is pulled down, and that can just rest right on top of the other one, very easy to clean at this point.
Here's where you can see your actual applied mutton work.
A simulated divided light.
You just basically you can clean the four areas and snap it back in.
You know, the big plus is not only from the energy and the Energy Star rating perspective, but also from the comfort, because this house is on a busy parkway, and not only do They have noise from the cars and trucks but they also have dust, et cetera, which means that they have to clean the windows more often than most people, but just from keeping out the draft and keeping out the noise it's a very very big improvement.
Thanks, Kev.
Thank you.
That's it.
Next time we're gonna be doing lots of work outside the house.
We're recycling old granite stones to create a retainer wall along the front of the property.
In the back, we're removing a giant tree that has no future.
We're also starting a little bit of the landscaping.
We found some insect damage, so we're going to be talking about how to deal with that.
And we'll be installing some beautiful patio doors.
Till then, I'm Bob Vila.
Thanks for joining
