Home Exterior Renovations

Repair first, replace only what has failed

Plenty of older New England houses still carry most of their original exterior: clapboards painted a dozen times, window casings milled a century ago, corner boards and cornices in profiles nobody stocks anymore. Much of that wood is denser and more stable than what you can buy today. The failures are usually concentrated in a few places where water has been getting in for years.

Our approach on these houses is to find those places, fix them properly and leave sound material alone. That means replacing a rotted sill and the bottom courses of clapboard above it instead of residing the wall, or rebuilding a window sill and apron instead of wrapping the whole casing in aluminum.

It is slower and more careful work than a tear-off, and it is the right choice when the house has character worth keeping. If a wall really is beyond saving, we will tell you that too, and show you why with photos.

Restoration also respects how an old house dries. Older walls without modern housewrap often depend on drying to the outside, and sealing them up with the wrong materials can trap moisture inside. We choose primers, sealants and patching materials that suit the wall that is actually there.

Rotted sills, trim and the clapboard around them

The sill plate, the timber the walls sit on at the top of the foundation, is where we find the worst rot on older homes. Overflowing gutters, soil built up against the house and splashback off a walkway can keep it wet for decades. Replacing a sill means supporting the wall above, cutting out the bad section and setting new treated stock, which is structural work done under the Construction Supervisor License Steve holds.

Window sills, door thresholds and the bottoms of corner boards usually fail next, along with porch roofs where they meet the house. We cut back to sound wood, replace with matching profiles, and prime every face of new trim before it goes up, including the end grain, which is where paint failure usually starts.

Damaged clapboard is replaced at matching exposure and thickness, with joints staggered and new boards woven into the old so a repair does not read as a patch. Where the profile is unusual, we match it from a sample cut from the existing board.

Houses on the South Coast and the Cape wear differently than inland ones. Salt air eats at fasteners and paint, and wind drives rain into joints from angles inland walls rarely see. We use corrosion-resistant fasteners on repairs and pay extra attention to the weather side of the house.

If you have young children or a garden along the house, we plan the work areas around them.

Lead-safe prep on pre-1978 paint

If the house was built before 1978, the paint on it may contain lead, and on a nineteenth-century house it very likely does somewhere. Scraping, sanding and cutting painted trim can put lead dust into the soil around the foundation, which is where children play and vegetables grow.

We follow lead-safe work practices under the EPA renovation rule on these jobs. That means ground covering below the work area, no open-flame stripping or uncontained power sanding, misting to keep dust down, and a thorough cleanup at the end of every day. It adds time to the job, and it is not optional.

Before work starts, we walk you through what the prep involves and how the site will look, so plastic sheeting on the ground is not a surprise. If you have young children or a garden along the house, we plan the work areas around them.

Lead-safe practice also governs the debris. Old painted trim and paint chips are bagged and removed instead of tossed loose into a dumpster, and the ground covering is folded inward and taken away so the dust leaves with it.

Historic commission review and old-house details

Many Massachusetts towns have local historic districts, and inside them the commission reviews visible exterior changes. Repair in kind, using the same material and profile, is often treated differently from replacement with something new, but the rules vary from town to town and we check rather than assume.

Where review applies, we prepare the material samples, photos and descriptions the commission asks for, and build its timeline into the schedule. Outside a district, we treat an old house the same way: match what is there, keep original details where they can be kept, and avoid materials that will look out of place in five years.

Old houses also need the right repairs underneath. Re-flashing at chimneys, porch roofs and window heads often does more for the house than any new trim, and it is part of how we scope these jobs.

Gutters and downspouts belong in the same conversation. Many of the problems we repair on old houses trace back to water coming off the roof, and fixing a sill without fixing the gutter above it only buys a few years.

How we report what we find

Restoration has more unknowns than new work. A sill that looks soft at one corner may be sound three feet along, or gone for the length of the wall. We price the work we can see in the written scope and list the areas we expect to probe once the trim is off.

When we open something up, you get photos and a plain explanation the same day: what is there, what we recommend, and what it changes in price and time. You decide before we go further. Steve built the company on keeping homeowners informed, and an old house is where that matters most, because it keeps surprising everyone, the builder included.

Some repairs are best done in a particular season. Paint on new trim wants dry weather and moderate temperatures, and a sill replacement is easier when the ground is not frozen, so we schedule the pieces of the job with that in mind and tell you why.

At the end, we walk the house with you, check the work against the written scope, and point out anything we noticed but did not touch, such as a chimney cap or a run of trim that will need attention in a few years. You come away with a clear picture of the house as well as the finished work.

See the rest of our exterior work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.