Remodeling New Bedford's century-old harbor housing

Half the city predates 1940

New Bedford is a city of about 100,600 people. Census figures date its median home to 1938, and just over half of its roughly 44,400 homes are older than 1940. Fewer than 5 percent went up after 2000. Only about three in ten are single-family detached, and roughly four in ten are owner-occupied.

Those numbers describe a city of two-families and triple-deckers, with plenty of buildings where the owner lives on one floor and rents the rest. They also describe a place where almost every renovation starts with materials and methods from before the Second World War: plaster on lath, old-growth lumber, fieldstone or brick foundations, and decades of other people's repairs layered on top of each other. Plenty of those repairs were done well. Plenty were not, and part of our job is telling you which is which.

The city lies on Buzzards Bay, about 19 miles due south of Raynham. That distance is easy to cover, and it puts the city inside our South Coast service area, where coastal exposure is part of nearly every exterior conversation.

We open a section, show you what is there and price the repair before anything new covers it.

Salt air and the outside of the building

A harbor city puts weather on every building. Salt air works through exterior fasteners, flashing and paint faster than it does inland, and wind off the water drives rain into joints that would stay dry farther from the coast. When we rebuild siding, trim, porches or decks near the water, we use corrosion-resistant fasteners and connectors and detail the flashing so water has a way out. Roofs take the same exposure, and in old buildings with shallow attics, ice dams in winter are a frequent cause of water damage that shows up as stained plaster on the top floor.

Old exteriors also hide trouble. Rot behind a porch ledger, sills softened by years of wet, and window openings that were never flashed at all are common in buildings this age. We open a section, show you what is there and price the repair before anything new covers it.

Winter adds its own wear. Masonry steps, chimneys and the top courses of old foundations take a beating from repeated frost, so we look at those during the walkthrough rather than leaving them for a surprise in March.

Inside a pre-war multi-family

Most interior work here involves lead-safe practice. Any house built before 1978 can have lead paint, and where the median home dates to 1938 we assume it is present on old trim, windows and doors. We contain the work area, keep dust out of the rest of the building and follow EPA RRP practices through cleanup. Old windows and doors are where lead dust usually starts, because friction surfaces grind paint into powder every time they open, so those get careful handling whether they are replaced or kept.

Balloon framing, knob-and-tube wiring and undersized plumbing vents turn up often in buildings of this period. Wiring and piping go to licensed electricians and plumbers, as Massachusetts requires, and the work is permitted through the city building department under 780 CMR with inspections at each stage. Multi-family buildings also need attention to fire separation between units, so any wall or ceiling we open between apartments gets closed back up to the standard the inspector expects.

For owners with tenants, the schedule is part of the scope. We note which units are affected on which days and keep you updated as the work moves, so a tenant's question never catches you without an answer. Steve started this company because he was tired of contractors who let that kind of communication slide.