Leicester's mid-century houses, opened up and rebuilt

The 1960s and 1970s middle of the housing stock

With about 11,000 residents and roughly 4,300 homes, Leicester sits just west of Worcester, about 49 miles northwest of Raynham. Census figures place its median build year at 1969. About a fifth of the homes are older than 1940 and about a fifth are newer than 2000, which leaves the largest group in the decades between, when ranches, raised ranches and split-levels went up across Massachusetts.

Those layouts age in predictable ways. Kitchens are small and walled off. Bathrooms still carry colored tile set in a mortar bed, solid but hard to change without taking it all out. Split-levels have short stair runs and half-levels that leave a family room feeling cut off from the rest of the house. The upside is framing that is usually straightforward and rooms that are easy to reach from a basement or crawlspace. Raised ranches add a lower level that was often finished quickly, with low ceilings and little insulation against the foundation.

Anything built before 1978 may have lead paint, and that covers most of the town. We work lead-safe under the EPA RRP rule, which mostly means containment and a careful cleanup, and the time it takes goes into the schedule at the start.

Steve walks through both rooms with you and writes down what changes and what stays.

Rearranging a ranch or split-level layout

The most common request in a house this age is connecting the kitchen to the living space. In a ranch the wall between them is often bearing, carrying ceiling joists or roof load, and taking it out means a beam, posts carried down to proper support, and a building permit before the work starts. In a split-level the change might be a half wall at the stairs that opens the upper level without touching structure at all.

Bathrooms come next. Breaking out a mortar-bed tile job is heavy, dusty work, and it often uncovers rot in the subfloor where a toilet or tub leaked for years. We replace what is damaged, build the new shower over a properly waterproofed pan, and have a licensed plumber handle supply and drain work. Floors get checked for level before any tile goes down, because a mortar bed sometimes hid a dip that new tile will not.

More than eight in ten homes here are owner-occupied and about 81 percent are detached single-family, so many owners are weighing whether to update in place or move. A kitchen and main bath done well are usually what change how a mid-century house lives day to day. Steve walks through both rooms with you and writes down what changes and what stays.

Roofs, decks and the outside of the house

A Leicester house from 1969 is on its second or third roof by now, and decks from the 1980s and 1990s are reaching the point where boards go soft and the connection to the house is suspect. Inland winters bring freeze-thaw cycles and ice dams, and both show up as stained upstairs ceilings and rot at the eaves.

When we replace a roof, we go after what caused the damage, not only the shingles. Often that means correcting attic ventilation and air sealing so house heat stops melting snow at the edge. A deck rebuild gets footings set deeper than the frost line, which in Massachusetts usually means around four feet down, and a ledger through-bolted to the rim with flashing above it.

Leicester has more than a square mile of water inside its borders, and houses on low ground near water tend to run damper underneath. If yours does, we check the basement or crawlspace before any finish work goes in. That might mean grading or drainage work outside, or a vapor and insulation plan below, before the finished room goes in.