This Old House

Norm

This small piece of wood is the key to saving these 130-year-old balusters.

Richard

I'll tell you how this wrench revolutionized the plumbing industry.

Kevin

You are gonna help us do Venetian plaster? What happened to all this plumbing here?

Richard

I've never seen anything like this before.

Roger

There's already rot going on in that trunk.

Kevin

So what have you found up here?

Tom

Well, a bit of a surprise.

Richard

It's really the classic plumber's lament.

Kevin

Nice!

Richard

It's five bathrooms, it's a kitchen, it's a full new mechanical. It's -- It's gonna be a biggie.

Kevin

It sounds like you guys have a plan.

Molly

I think we do.

Laughs

Tom

The money's in the detail.

Kevin

That is beautiful. Hi, there. I'm Kevin O'Connor. And welcome back to "This Old House" here on Cape Ann with our 1890s shingle-style house. Now, Charlie Silva has got to turn this back over to the homeowners in just about a month, so there is a lot to do. There is a beautiful stone staircase underneath this temporary wooden one built by Mark McCullough and his guys. Couple details still going in. These beautiful granite caps just went in, and there's gonna be a bronze railing going on right in there. It's gonna make it look terrific. Steve, how are you?

Steve

Kevin, how you doing?

Kevin

Alright. So what are you putting down for us?

Steve

We're putting 1x4 ip decking.

Kevin

Beautiful.

Steve

And it's a tongue-and-groove system, so you just put these little clips in and a screw here, and you're all done.

Blind fastener. Steve

Yes.

Kevin

Alright. Bulletproof, too. Love it. Check this out. Now, all of the space in here is brand-new, so new porch. We've got the beadboard up on the ceiling, and when you're out here, you can enter the house through the main entrance, or you can actually come in here through the new dining-room door. This space right in here, dedicated dining room. We've got the tray ceiling up on top. Heath, how are you?

Heath

Hey, Kevin. How's it going?

Kevin

Alright. How's the electric going?

Heath

Good. So we're at the point of doing the finish work now, which means we're doing the switches, receptacles, and starting to install the light fixture, as well.

Kevin

Love to see it. Finishes coming our way. What do you say we go upstairs and find out what's going on up there? We've got a big master bedroom just off the top of the stairs, and it includes a nice walk-in closet behind me and a beautiful master bath. Hey,

Richard. Richard

Hey. How are you?

Kevin

Look at this.

Richard

Beautiful tub sitting right in the window, and there was no logical place for a tub spot. You know, there was no place to put it, so the tub filler went over here. But look where the spout went.

Kevin

Check that out, huh?

Richard

We were really nervous that it was gonna splash when it got down here, but they've engineered it so there's enough volume, more than five gallons per minute, it actually will fill the tub and not splash.

Kevin

Beautiful spot for a bath. Alright, and a beautiful bathroom overall.

Richard

Kevin and Chris have done every inch of the plumbing here, and now they are jammed in this corner, and for these guys and any plumbers, it's always about the wrenches, and there was one invention, one wrench that was very special. It was the Stillson wrench. It was invented about 30 miles away from here, and it changed the plumbing industry. I'm gonna visit a plumbing museum. This is the Plumbing Museum in Watertown, Massachusetts. It's got a little bit of everything, but we came to talk about a wrench, the Stillson wrench. So, Michael Fitzgerald has fashioned himself to become quite the expert at the wrench. How are you, my friend?

Michael

Nice to see you.

Richard

How did this happen? How did you become an expert in this?

Michael

So I have a son who's interested in carpentry, and there were some tools in a cabinet in the basement, and I started looking through them, and one of the tools -- well, several of the tools were wrenches, and I said, "Oh, this wrench was made in Boston in the early 19th century. How big a deal is that?" And I just got really interested.

Richard

And you're a reporter.

Michael

I'm a journalist, and, yeah, it turns out that they're really important wrenches.

Richard

I know that, but tell us why you think they are.

Michael

Well, so, this is sort of the foundation of modernity, if you will. We can't be modern if we don't have running water because it keeps us safe and it keeps us healthy, so, you know...

Richard

You're speaking my language.

Michael

...without these tools, you know, it's really hard to -- you know better than I, really hard to make pipes work. And without pipes, we don't have -- Without that network, we don't have anything else.

Richard

So let's put some historical context. So, in the 1800s, the cities were growing like crazy, and people were moving into the cities, and they had -- They needed clean water to get to the buildings, right?

Michael

Right, and there were no public utilities of any sort, but there definitely weren't public water systems.

Richard

And back at that point, everything we would be running might have been lead piping where you would be pouring lead and shaping it and actually making the water piping, so you didn't need a wrench, right? But as the Iron Age came and we had to now start cutting and threading pipes, either galvanized or brass, you needed different tools to try and join them together.

Michael

Exactly, and with the advances in technology and standardization, you know, we had things like this.

Richard

Right, so this is one of the first wrenches I ever saw. This is called pipe tongs. Now, this is just like a pair of pliers nowadays, and you tighten them down onto it, and so it was the same issues you had with a pair of pliers that when you go like this, you're really relying on, how much strength do you have to hold that? If you're not strong enough, it slips, and if you're too strong, you can actually squeeze it out around. Now, before that, if you only had a hub like this, any of these wrenches could work, 'cause, see, they had no teeth and they would fit there, but it became more of a challenge with a pipe like this. So these were some of the other ones, the chain wrenches that would actually tighten it up. But then along came a guy named Stillson.

Michael

Dan Stillson, he was a ship's mechanic in the Charlestown Navy Yard in the Civil War and on board ships, as well. He is a mechanically gifted guy, kind of a mechanical genius, and he comes in one day with a wooden prototype of this new kind of wrench, this new tool, and the company's like, "Oh, this is really interesting. This looks like it could be really useful." They have him take it down to the machine shop that all the factories would've had at that time, and they gin up a prototype of it in steel.

Yeah. Michael

And they say, "Okay. You got a wrench. Here's a pipe. Go off in this room and either come back with a broken pipe or a broken wrench."

Richard

Yeah.

Michael

And he comes back with a broken pipe. They say, "We want this."

Richard

Right, so this is one of the original Stillsons? Which one?

Michael

This is a later-model Stillson-type wrench. This is a smaller one that's an actual Stillson.

Richard

So the key to it is, when you put it on -- and you want to make sure you have what they call a three-corner bite -- that you go here, here, here, and here. There is no way for it to slip. The more effort you put onto it, the more it tightens up, and because it's got the three corners, it doesn't take it out around, and that was the difference. And then he also invented this release, 'cause otherwise, if it didn't, you wouldn't be able to get it off, so it always could be released after the fact, so that was the real breakthrough.

Michael

And I think for your predecessors in that era who were, you know, inventing plumbing, the other thing that was really cool about this tool is that it replaces, like, all these other things on this wall.

Richard

Absolutely. You know what? This wrench built in 1869. You know, I've got an eight-inch one. I got a 12, a 24. I go up to 36, and I've had them forever, and I'm gonna have them forever, and I know my grandsons are gonna have them, too. Thanks for all your expertise.

Michael

It's a perfect invention,

and it's great to be with you. Richard

Thank you.

Kevin

Most of the 130-year-old plaster in this house was removed to make way for mechanicals, interior insulation, and to reconfigure a lot of these rooms, but there is one section where the original plaster and some of the wallpaper still remains. Mauro, we got a little patch up there. What condition is it in? What are you seeing?

Mauro

Well, here, during the construction, they replaced this whole ceiling, and when they demo'd the old ceiling, some of the plaster on the walls got damaged.

Kevin

Right.

Mauro

The plaster guys came here, and they fixed this section here, and they couldn't fix this because couple of the woodlet got broken.

Okay. Mauro

I'm gonna fix them. We're gonna mud it and get ready for new wallpaper. Ready for mud. Okay. We're gonna use this plaster repair. It dries faster than plaster, and it's hard as plaster, so we're gonna do a little mix, and it's gonna take about an hour, an hour and a half for the first layer to dry.

Kevin

So 45 minutes to an hour. This is gonna set up way faster than regular plaster.

Mauro

As regular plaster. With plaster, we're gonna have to wait about a week or two until it dries and cure it, and this one will do a much faster job, and it dries as hard as plaster. The secret here is get started with the mud that consistency like a peanut butter and force the plaster into the gaps.

Kevin

So this is the first coat of how many?

Mauro

First of three, and then the second one we're gonna make a little thinner mud, and the last one is gonna be a flexible mud.

Kevin

And flexible -- Why do we like flexible?

Mauro

We like flexible because that will keep the cracks from coming back so...

Kevin

Gotcha.

Mauro

Okay. All set. Last application done. It's gonna take about one to three hours to dry. It's gonna be ready for a light sanding and ready for the wallpaper.

Kevin

Looks smooth as glass, Mauro.

Nice job. Mauro

Thank you.

Kevin

Thank you.

Charlie

Well, these stairs are original to the house, well over 100 years old, and we really like the railings, and the homeowners really just want to restore it. But we do have some problems with the existing balusters where some of them have broke over time or become loose, whether it's, you know, somebody falling into them, maybe moving some furniture, but we thought about maybe making some new ones, but that could be pretty expensive. Any good ideas what you'd do?

Wayne

Yeah, these balusters, the broken ones seem to be right in this run right here. The rest of them are in very, very good shape. I think it'd be easier just to repair them. This run right here, the balusters are mortised into the handrail, so what I've done is I've loosened up these moldings, so we take these moldings off right here, and you'll see that the balusters are all dovetailed. You can see the dovetail right here. So if we just -- I'll find one that's broken, like this one, and then I just have to jump around the other side. And, Charlie, if you could just knock it. Yeah. And then they drop right out.

Norm

Well, this is Wayne's shop just outside of Boston, and they do a lot here. They can repair furniture and refinish the furniture. They can finish new pieces, a lot of architectural woodwork, and, boy, they do a lot of doors. It's quite an operation. Hey,

Wayne. Wayne

Hey, Norm.

Norm

So you've been hanging out with Charlie out at the construction site?

Wayne

Yes, yes, and he brought these broken balusters to my attention. And so we're going to repair them.

Norm

So why not turn new ones?

Wayne

Well, actually, we only have 12 broken balusters, so we figured it'd be more cost-effective to repair them and we wouldn't sacrifice time on the schedule.

Norm

Alright. What's the first step?

Wayne

First step is to strip the paint. Norm, this is our submersion tank. This is full of paint stripper, and what we'll do is we'll take a baluster. We'll put it in the stripper, and then what we do is we typically weigh it down so it's completely submerged, and we'll let it sit there for two, three hours to soften up the paint.

Norm

And then what happens?

Wayne

Then what we do is we'll take the baluster out of this tank. We'll bring it over to our flow-over tray, where we pump stripper over the item, cleaning the residual paint from the piece, and once that's completed, we'll take it next door, and we'll do the repair.

Norm

You have a great ventilation system in here.

I can't smell anything. Wayne

Yes, we do. It's very important for our safety. So the next step is to take the stripped baluster.

Norm

They look great, cleaned up.

Wayne

Yes, and then we'll apply glue to the break. Set it in this jig, which will keep it nice and square. We'll clamp it up, and then we'll let it set. So this baluster was glued up yesterday, so it's nice and tight, but as you can see, there --

Norm

Yeah,

a lot of voids. Wayne

Big void. Yes. What we'll do to remedy that is we'll use this epoxy stick. It's got a catalyst in the center of it. We'll cut a piece off. And it has a piece of plastic on the outside.

Norm

This stuff is great. I've used it quite frequently. It's amazing. It'll last forever, and you just have to really knead it

to get it all mixed together. Wayne

Yeah. And the kneading will activate it.

Norm

When it gets to be all the same color, you're ready to go, right?

Wayne

Yeah. And we'll apply it. And then we'll just... fill the void. What's nice about this is it's sandable.

Norm

Mm-hmm.

Wayne

It'll be dry within probably 10 minutes. So this baluster has already been filled and sanded.

Norm

So that was the break point right there. It's in a little different location than that one, but, you know, as much as we got that epoxy and everything in there, that is still the weak point. If this gets hit, it's gonna want to break here. As good as that glue is, it's still a weak point, so how can we make it stronger?

Wayne

Well, what we're going to do first is cut it. What's nice about that saw is it has a very thin blade, which will give us a very thin kerf.

Norm

Alright, so that way, it'll look exactly the same 'cause we're not taking away too much material.

Wayne

Correct. So now what we'll do is bring it over to the drill press. What we did here is we built a jig to allow this baluster to be held nice and square.

Norm

Mm-hmm, and it's vertical to the drill itself, so we get a nice, clean hole. It's straight.

Wayne

Correct. So we'll screw it in.

Norm

So I see you have a piece of tape on the bit, so that's the depth we want to go to?

Correct. Norm

Alright. That's half the length of your dowel. Alright.

Perfect. Wayne

Very good. Now we'll drill out the other half.

Norm

Alright.

Wayne

Now we're ready to insert the dowel and glue it, if you want to stick that right in there. There. Okay. And now in this end. And then on this dowel. And now you can assemble it.

Norm

Okay. Find our marks. That's all the way in there now.

Alright. Wayne

And then give it a tap.

Norm

Okay. Glue squeezed out.

Looks like a nice fit. Wayne

Very nice.

Norm

Once that dries, it's never gonna break right there.

Wayne

Not for 130 years.

Kevin

Our electrician Heath and his crew have been installing fixtures and pulling wires for weeks. They all come down here to the basement, Heath, terminate in two new electrical breaker panels.

Heath

They do.

Kevin

You're getting rid of the old kind, not using it anymore. Why is that?

Heath

So on a conventional panel, would've had a knockout on the side or the top that you would've knocked out. They put a cable connector in it, and that's where your wire would slide in.

Kevin

Right. It literally would've gone into the hole so we've got access and secured.

Heath

Exactly. Then once inside, normally the neutral would connect to the neutral bar, and the hot wire would connect directly to the breaker. And if we had to, we'd use an arc fault or a GFI breaker that had a pigtail.

Kevin

Alright. So we know about GFCI, right? That's near sinks, wet areas.

Heath

Outdoors, basements, that kind of thing.

Kevin

Okay. Arc fault is?

Heath

A little different. So arc fault would be used in habitable spaces -- your living room, dining room, bedrooms, kitchens. That's where it's required.

Kevin

And all of those breakers, GFC, arc fault, have that pigtail?

Heath

Have this pigtail.

Kevin

So what, now two white wires to this neutral bar?

Heath

So what would happen is we'd have to take this breaker, put this in, install this pigtail to the neutral bar, and then the white wire that would normally go here

actually goes to the breaker. Kevin

Gotcha. Okay, so that's the old way. Tell me about the new way.

Heath

The advantage to this is, first thing, as far as coming into the top, we don't need the connector anymore. It has a slot that we can actually slide the wire into -- or multiple wires.

Kevin

Oh,

interesting. Heath

Put those in. Put a cap on. Holds everything to place.

Kevin

And that's what it looks like when it's all done, but over here, you get a sense of what it'll look like -- You just literally push it in through here, and it kind of grabs it?

Heath

That's it.

Kevin

Okay.

Heath

The other advantage is, is this has a neutral bar that actually carries the whole way down that's picked up by the breaker. We don't actually have to bring that pigtail to the neutral bar itself.

Kevin

So you've got a neutral here, a hot, neutral on this side?

Heath

Exactly, and the advantage to that is, this breaker has both built in now.

Kevin

So built in meaning one of these represents the pigtail?

Heath

So one would be hot. That would be the neutral. That would replace the pigtail, and instead of tying that in, you just simply click this into place.

Kevin

Oh, interesting. So now you're not making up 20, 30 pigtails with that.

Heath

No, and the thing is, in Massachusetts now, we have to put arc fault protection on everything, which means this panel is full of all those pigtails. We're out of physical room to put these in. We'd have to put 40 of these in this panel into that neutral bar, a lot more wire, a lot more steps, lot more space.

Kevin

So what's so nefarious about arc faults that Massachusetts is requiring every breaker to protect against them?

Heath

So they're trying to stop any kind of arc and making sure it stops from a fire. So if you ever unplugged a vacuum cleaner when it's running...

Never done it. Heath

Never done that....and you see that little arc, that's what this breaker would sense, something like that. If it sees that, it's going to trip. So if you had a wire under a rug, if you had a nick in a wire in a wall, someone put a screw through it or a nail, that's when you're gonna have the potential for seeing an arc.

Kevin

And this would be your nick, your damaged wire?

Heath

Exactly, so you could have an arc from here to here with that nick, or it could actually jump across. The breaker would see that arc and shut it down and keep us from having a fire.

Kevin

But if we didn't have that breaker, we would have basically uncontained electricity.

Heath

No insulation on the conductors. They could sit there and arc, and it may not trip a conventional breaker.

Kevin

Alright, well, you did a beautiful job putting everything together. Your thoughts now that you've wired up your first one?

Heath

I like it. Hopefully next one goes faster.

Kevin

There you go. I'll leave you that 'cause you don't need them anymore. Thanks,

Heath. Heath

Thanks.

Kevin

Earlier, Mauro showed us how to repair some of the original plaster in this house, and now we're gonna go for a very unique plaster finish here in the dining room. The homeowners wanted to make it a formal space, and so the designer said, "Well, why don't we step up the plaster detail here on the ceiling?" So, Maurizio, nice to meet you.

Maurizio

Yes. Hi, Kevin. Nice to meet you.

Kevin

You're gonna help us do Venetian plaster?

Maurizio

Yeah, Venetian plaster today.

Kevin

What is it?

Maurizio

Venetian plaster is the popular finish in Italy where we using for houses and commercial place and give the beauty in the house where paint sometimes cannot give. So we give it that depth or three-dimensionality of colors and material. The material is 100% green material made from limestone base and cut out of marble stone. This is the base coat we use to prep the material with a white color.

Kevin

So you say limestone and then Carrara marble, which I'm familiar with for our countertops. You guys actually put it into this mud?

Maurizio

Not the countertop, but we're gonna use the stone. It's crush, and the powder, we mix it with a limestone base. And the Carrara marble helps to give it that depth, that sheen we're gonna see at the end of the process.

So that's the base. Maurizio

This is the base, and this is the color, the final color.

Kevin

And how do you make this?

Maurizio

We're gonna use pigments. Natural pigments come from the earth, come from the metals. They use a different kind of pigment.

Okay. Maurizio

With this spatula, we're gonna create that finish, give that sheen and that depth, the three-dimensionality.

Perfect. Maurizio

This material. We have Alessandra helping us to avoid the material dry too quick.

Kevin

So seeing these trowel marks is part of the process to get that three-dimensional look?

Maurizio

That's correct.

Kevin

So now time for the final coat.

Maurizio

Yes, this is the final coat.

Kevin

Maurizio, are you comfortable with me working the trowel?

Maurizio

Oh, yeah. Just press. There we go. You're good. Slowly. Now just remove that amount. We're gonna apply natural water-based wax, and then we're gonna buff in and gonna give us that glossy finish.

Kevin

It looks stunning. I mean, it looks like solid stone.

Thank you. Kevin

No, thank you. And you, too, Alessandra. Appreciate it.

Maurizio

Perfect. Thanks.

Kevin

Alright, well, we are down to the last couple weeks here, so in addition to the finishes, we've also got fixtures coming in soon in the kitchen, which means Richard has to start thinking about makeup air. All of that and a lot more coming up next time on "This Old House" here in Cape Ann. Next time on "This Old House"... Hey,

Charlie. Charlie

Hey, Kevin.

Kevin

So am I right that you've got just a little more than a week to get this whole thing done?

Charlie

According to this calendar, I only have six days.

Kevin

Six days?

Charlie

Six days.

Richard

I'll show you the right way to get smoke and exhaust out of a kitchen.

Mauro

This is chalkboard. It's specifically for you to put on surface to write on and erase easily.

Kevin

And we're giving new life to our 130-year-old balustrade.