Remodeling Hull's prewar houses by the sea

Census figures for a town that is mostly water

Hull has the oldest median build year in Plymouth County. The town counts about 10,100 people and roughly 5,800 homes on under three square miles of land, with more than 25 square miles of water inside its boundary. The median home was built in 1943, about 48 percent of the housing predates 1940, and only about 7 percent went up since 2000. Put plainly, the typical house in Hull was already old when much of the county's housing was being built.

That makes for an old, dense housing stock. Close to three-quarters of the homes are single-family detached houses and around four in five are owner-occupied, but with that many homes on so little land, houses tend to sit close together. Every decision about staging, dumpsters and deliveries starts there.

The numbers also show more homes per resident than most towns, about one housing unit for every 1.7 people, which points to smaller households. A smaller household often wants a compact house to work harder: a better kitchen in the same footprint, or a second-floor bath where there was never room for one.

You hear what we found, what it means for the plan and what it changes in the price before the work goes further.

Behind the walls of a prewar house

In a house this age, demolition is where the honest conversation happens. Balloon framing is common, plaster and lath cover most walls, and knob-and-tube wiring still turns up. Sills and the bottoms of studs near grade deserve a close look in any older coastal house, because decades of damp air find the weakest wood first. Foundations under the older homes may be fieldstone or early concrete, and both deserve a look before anything new bears on them.

We open enough to see before committing to a price on structural work, and the written scope separates what we know from what can only be learned once walls are open. If a sill needs replacing or a wall is carrying more than it should, you hear it the day we find it, with the options laid out side by side.

Lead paint is close to certain somewhere in a house built before 1978, and most homes here qualify. Lead-safe work practices, with containment and careful cleanup, are part of every Hull job we take. Old windows and porch trim are the usual places to find it.

Building for wind, salt and tight access

Hull sits between open ocean and Boston Harbor and takes weather from both. Salt spray corrodes ordinary fasteners, wind drives rain sideways into any joint that is not flashed properly, and ice dams form on roofs that lose heat into the attic. Exterior work here gets coastal-rated hardware and careful flashing, and roof work starts with how the attic is insulated and vented. Walls and windows facing open water get the most attention, since that side of the house takes the hardest weather.

Access shapes the schedule as much as the work itself. The town is about 29 miles north of Raynham, and with houses close together we plan deliveries in fewer, larger drops and keep the site compact so neighbors can still get in and out. Dumpster placement and any street use get worked out before day one, not on the morning of a delivery.

Steve built this company after years of working for people who did not keep owners informed. On a house with this many unknowns, clear updates matter more, not less. You hear what we found, what it means for the plan and what it changes in the price before the work goes further.