Restoration Episodes

Hand-wrought, machine-cut, and wire nails mark rough eras. How to read the shank, head, and taper, and when a reused nail lies about the year.

What the Season 29 West Newton house looks like today, how it differs from Newton Centre and the Bigelow House, and which later facts are still unverified.

Round two of the where-are-they-now series: the 1979 Dorchester original, H.H. Richardson's Bigelow House condos, the Westwood farmhouse fight that just sold for $1.45 million, a hidden Santa Barbara addition, Acton's Great Pumpkin, and a $29,100 Detroit land bank rescue. With a ranking.

Why wedge-shaped cut nails grip differently from modern wire nails, where you are likely to find them, and what to consider before pulling them from historic framing.

The Needham Victorian wraps on a 24-inch snow day. Charlie installs the mortise lockset Tom patched into the original front door, Kevin tours the open kitchen, mudroom, primary suite, and finished basement, and Richard explains why the old furnace stayed while attic foam and a new heat pump did the heavy lifting.

In Needham, Charlie reinstalls the original china cabinet in the new dining room, Jaclyn walks through a powder room that survived three wallpaper rounds, Heath Eastman explains primary bath lighting and blocking, the ducts get cleaned after construction, and Tom Silva cuts a mortise into the original Southern yellow pine front door.

One year after Hurricane Helene, all five families walk through the doors of their rebuilt homes. It's the finale we've been building toward for eleven episodes, and yes, you will cry.

Season 47 kicks off in Western North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene turned neighborhoods into rivers. But the real star of the premiere? Worker housing from the 1920s that Tom Silva can't stop admiring.