This Old House - Season 19 Episode 16

The show opens to find landscaper Roger Cook and crew putting in a granite block curb around the driveway island to protect it from wayward vehicles. Inside, Charlie Abate shows us the butcherblock island countertop and discusses its care and feeding. In the old front rooms, painting contractor Steve Kiernan explains the steps he and his crew before painting the woodwork in the library and shellacking the wood in the parlor. Outside, the crew installs the new gas barbeque and side burner unit, while mason Lenny Belliveau shows us how he's dry laying a brick floor in the screen porch. Our plumbing & heating expert installs a chimney cap over one of the fireplace flues and shows us the aluminum liner he placed in the flue that handles the moist and relatively cool gas burner exhaust. Chiller units outside and barely detectable outlets inside make up the visible portions of the house's air-conditioning system. Jeff Hosking shows us the cleaning-screening-shellac-wax process by which he i