Ask This Old House S24E26: Outdoor TV Enclosure, Granite Fire Pit, and Renovation Prep Before the Sledgehammer

Season 24, episode 26 of Ask This Old House runs three separate jobs: Heath Eastman hangs an outdoor TV in a weatherproof enclosure, Kevin O'Connor sits down with Tom Silva and Zack Dettmore to talk about what has to happen before a renovation starts, and Mark McCullough tears out a failing fire pit and rebuilds it from four granite slabs. The deck TV and the fire pit have nothing to do with each other on the surface. Both come down to the same uncomfortable truth: the parts you can't see decide whether the job lasts.

The deck TV: shade, studs, and why a tarp is not a plan

Joanna and her family of three boys watch a lot of sports together, and they have been hauling an indoor TV and a stand out to the deck for every game, then hauling it back in. The cord crossed the walking path, which she admits produced a couple of scary moments. Heath's first move isn't the screen. It's the wall.

He notices the rest of the deck bakes in sun but this particular wall holds shade most of the day, which matters for glare and for the panel's operating temperature. Then he reads the clapboard nails to locate framing at 16 inches on center. Not glamorous, but if you're hanging something heavy off the side of a house, knowing where the studs are is the difference between a bracket and a repair.

Size gets settled with a tape measure. The span between the vent and the light runs roughly 66 to 67 inches. The 55-inch set they'd been using was fine when it sat on a table closer to the seating, but pushed back against the wall it reads too small. A 65 fits the space and the sightlines.

Then Heath pulls out the actual answer to Joanna's question, and it isn't a TV. It's an enclosure. He's blunt about the alternative: mounting a regular indoor TV on an exterior wall and throwing a cover over it is common, and in some climates people get away with it, but temperature swings and humidity still get inside, and the failure is premature. The other option, a purpose-built outdoor TV, is a sealed all-in-one and also expensive. The enclosure splits the difference, letting you drop in a set you already own or replace one later without replacing the whole system.

The details inside the box are the ones that justify the price. Thermostat-controlled cooling fans pull fresh air in at the top and exhaust at the bottom. A cord pass-through grommet has an X slit you push the cord through so the seal closes behind it. There's a surge suppressor and power filter for whatever gets plugged in, plus optional heater and humidification control. The exterior is polycarbonate, which means the right cleaner and a wax-like wipe-down rather than whatever's under the sink.

Power behind the screen, not across the deck

Heath could have stapled a cord down the siding. He says so, and he also says why he doesn't like it: service the TV or take it in for the winter and you're pulling staples and patching siding. Instead the cord stays out of the walking path entirely, with a new receptacle behind the TV fed by a new circuit.

The safety detail worth pausing on is at the panel. Heath swaps the existing breaker for a dual-function AFCI/GFCI, which will cut power to the circuit if water gets in. That's the point of an outdoor receptacle, and it's the part the edit could easily skip past. The box gets putty around its edge before it goes in for a watertight seal. The receptacle itself is weather-resistant and tamper-resistant, made for an outdoor box. Heath wires ground first, then neutral, then hot, and notes he still tapes his devices out of habit from metal-box work.

On the wall side, the mount hangs on lag bolts into those studs. Silicone goes around the bolts before they're driven home so it gets drawn into the hole, and a bead runs the perimeter of the mount. The cord connection gets a sealing boot. None of that shows up in a finished photo. All of it is why the installation won't leak into the wall cavity over a winter.

What this looks like as a homeowner project depends entirely on which half you're doing. Hanging the bracket, setting the enclosure, dressing the cord: fair game for a careful DIYer. Running a new circuit from the panel and swapping a breaker: that's an electrician, and Heath is one. If you've followed his previous work this season, this is the same instinct. When he ran power to a shed in S24E21, the payoff was in what disappeared after backfill. Here it's a receptacle, a breaker, and silicone you'll never look at again.

Tom and Zack on renovation prep: budget cushion, selections, permits

Kevin frames the bench segment around a question most homeowners get wrong by asking too late: how do you start a renovation? Tom begins with disruption, not design. If the kitchen is coming out, decide up front whether you're living in the house or moving out, and accept that the crew will be at your door bright and early because the jobsite is their office. You leave for yours; they arrive at theirs.

Zack pushes the conversation earlier still. Everyone wants to talk countertops in the first meeting, but the real first question is whether the project is affordable. That means sharing a realistic budget range with the people you're talking to. Kevin's version: if you're two times apart, the whole thing falls apart and you've wasted everyone's time.

Tom's cushion advice is the kind of thing that only sounds obvious after a wall comes open. A $100,000 budget should be held in your head as $80,000 to $85,000, because surprises are not hypothetical. Open a wall, find a structural problem, and the money is gone before the first cabinet arrives.

Selections are the section I'd tape to the refrigerator. Homeowners tend to believe tile gets picked when it's tile time and counters get picked when it's counter time. Zack calls that the worst thing you can do to your budget and your schedule, and he's not exaggerating. Appliances, windows, tile, and specs have to be decided before drawings are finished and permits get pulled. Buy early, and pick a second-choice tile in case the first one is stuck on a ship. His line lands: don't start the job until you're ready to finish the job. If you're paying rent somewhere else, every week of indecision has a second invoice attached.

Permitting gets realistic numbers. A kitchen with no footprint change might run four to six weeks. Change the footprint and you're into easements, lot lines, conservation review, or a historical committee, and Tom says it can stretch to a year and a half. Small jobs like a water heater swap usually have the trade pulling its own permit. Whole-house work means the general contractor pulls the main permit and the trades feed off it.

This is the prequel to the contractor-vetting conversation from S24E23, which covered license checks, insurance, and jobsite visits. That segment assumed you'd found someone. This one is about the months before you call, when the decisions you haven't made are quietly setting the timeline.

Mark McCullough's granite fire pit: dry-laid so the stone can move

Marcos repaired his own fire pit, and he's the first to say it didn't hold. Mark doesn't push him toward another patch. Walking the yard, he notices the patio's mixed granite colors and says he has material that will match, then gets to demolition. The old pit comes out harder than expected, which is the first sign that the replacement shouldn't be casual.

The new slabs have a rock-face edge that gives the stone some character, and the color ties into the patio. Marcos asks the question that unlocks the whole build: will the heat crack it? Mark's answer covers the two decisions that matter.

First, no concrete. Setting granite in concrete stabilizes it too much. When heat expands the stone, it has nowhere to go, so it cracks. The slabs instead sit on compacted gravel or crushed stone, the same base already under the pavers, which both supports the weight and drains.

Second, no masonry joints. Small gaps between the slabs let the stone breathe. When the fire heats it, the granite expands into those gaps instead of fighting itself. Marcos gets it immediately, which is more than I can say for the last fire pit I looked at.

The groundwork holds up the visible work. The crew digs about 12 inches, deeper than strictly needed because Mark wants to reach hard clay, and works gravel in lifts, compacting as they go. Marcos runs the pick while Mark follows with the shovel and wheelbarrow, and then the labor reality shows up: Mark brought help to set the granite, because two long pieces and two bookend ends are not a homeowner-and-a-host job. The edit makes slab-setting look brisk. It is not.

Final height lands around 12 or 13 inches off the patio, matching what was there before. After backfilling around the stones, they fill the interior with lava rock so the fire keeps radiating after the flames die down. Mark leaves Marcos two pieces of homework: look up an optional screen, and sprinkle grass seed over the backfilled strip.

DIY Confidence Scale

• Outdoor TV enclosure and new receptacle: 5/10. The enclosure assembly, bracket, and cord dressing are within reach for a careful homeowner. The new circuit and dual-function AFCI/GFCI breaker are not. Split the job at the panel.
• Granite fire pit: 8/10. The excavation is real, the base has to be compacted in lifts, and the slabs are heavy enough that Mark called in a crew. The design logic is simple to understand and hard to execute alone.

Additional Resources

• Watch on PBS
• Official This Old House episode page

If you've priced out an outdoor TV lately, the enclosure route starts to look less like a compromise and more like the only version that lets you replace the screen without rebuilding the wall. Curious whether anyone here has run one through a full winter.