These old houses

With the popular PBS show breaking new ground in Weston this fall, homeowners from past seasons report how their projects are holding up

Christian Nolen with his circa 1886 home. In 1998 "This Old House" removed and repositioned staircases, rebuilt chimneys, created a new, more open kitchen, and repaired termite damage on sills and porches. (Mark Wilson/Globe Staff)

Ten years ago, Christian Nolen and Susan Denny faced the prospect of restoring their newly purchased old house - a grand, but deteriorating, Queen Anne Victorian in Watertown.

So they went to the experts: the folks behind a venerable PBS television show, "This Old House."

Now, as the producers of "This Old House" tackle a new project in nearby Weston, Nolen and Denny are still enjoying the same home. They have not made many changes since their home was featured on the program.

"We've been enormously fortunate," said Nolen, a 48-year-old real estate developer. "Everything worked out better than we could have thought."

The Weston project, which is set to premiere on "This Old House" in October, is the sixth area property to be featured on the Emmy Award-winning series. The show, entering its 29th season as a national program and its 30th locally on WGBH-TV (Channel 2), typically completes one project in Greater Boston and one in another city each season.

"The western suburbs have just been good to us in that it's been close for workers to get to and there are some beautiful, historic homes there," said Deborah Hood, a producer for the public-television show. In general, a restoration is covered in 16 to 18 episodes of the half-hour show.

Nolen is in the middle of some renovations on his home, including repainting the trim, remodeling porches, and installing a bathtub. But those are a result of changing needs and typical wear, not problems with the work by "This Old House" crews, he said.

"One of the things that's really neat is the renovation itself doesn't feel dated," he said. "It doesn't feel like 1998, the way some homes feel like the '70s or '80s."

Even though it has been a decade since the Watertown project first aired, the home still attracts some attention from avid fans of "This Old House."

"We call it being busted," Nolen said. "Every now and again, people will drive by and circle around again and stare at the house."

And Nolen is still occasionally recognized while playing golf, eating at a restaurant, or on vacation.

"We visited California once and a vineyard worker came up to me and said, 'What do we have in common?' " Nolen said. "I said, 'I don't know, we both like wines?' and he said, 'No, we were both on 'This Old House.' " The worker had led a tour of a vineyard when "This Old House" visited Napa Valley in 1995.

Nolen even reunited with a college roommate who was flipping through channels and saw Nolen's head pop out of a dumpster.

While the renovation brought up some unwelcome surprises, including rotted sill beams and porches suffering termite damage, Nolen said he would do it again "in a heartbeat."

"I learned more about carpentry and house-making in six months than I ever would have," Nolen said. "I've gone on to help my friends' renovations. We built a summer house, and I helped my parents remodel their home."

Nolen's advice for the Weston homeowners: Go all out.

"Don't try to skimp on the budget, because you'll never have the opportunity to have so much done so quickly and so effectively," he said.

"This Old House" representatives, declining to provide specific cost figures, said the homeowners pay for everything but whatever materials might be donated, which can vary by the project.

For the Weston project, which producers hope to finish by the end of next month, the show's team is building a new home, customizing a prefabricated structure with recycled construction materials.

"For years, we had been looking for the right opportunity to build new," Hood said. "When this project came to us, it was a great opportunity to incorporate state-of-the-art technology."

While the home is new, it is being constructed to resemble an 18th- or 19th-century barn, similar to those that dotted the landscape when Weston was a farming community.

"The key thing was, we wanted it to feel like a barn, including the inside, so that when you walk in you have lofted spaces and a very open floor plan," said homeowner Pete Favat, 46.

Wood for the project was donated by the Weston Conservation Commission from native trees cut from the town forest.

Workers are also incorporating old beams salvaged from the Boston Harbor waterfront during the Big Dig. They belonged to a building used by the shipbuilding company that built the USS Constitution, Favat said.

Some materials culled from the demolition of Favat's old home, which he described as beyond restoring, were recycled, with a portion going to the local Habitat for Humanity chapter.

The new home will be environmentally friendly, with solar panels, natural plantings, storm-water runoff controls, and the removal of invasive species.

Favat, whose wife Amy is a film producer, is enjoying the opportunity to work side-by-side with "This Old House."

"I wake up every day and it's like Christmas morning," he said. "I love woodworking and I love filmmaking. People talk about how much stress it is, but there's nothing else I'd rather be doing."

Favat's enthusiasm is not unusual, said Tom Silva, the show's general contractor, who guides the homeowner and television viewers through many facets of the renovation process.

"The homeowner just joins right into the team," he said. "They get very enthusiastic and they love the excitement."

Silva, who continues to work on some projects after they air, said he is pleased to see homeowners enjoying their homes without major problems.

"There's always some little thing they want to do," Silva said. "I want to see that it's held up perfectly."

So far, Silva has another happy homeowner in Newton resident Paul Friedberg. Last year, his 1897 shingle-style Victorian was renovated by "This Old House," with the project completed in December. Friedberg, 48, is completely satisfied with the results, he said.

"We don't have any other plans" for work on the house, he said while sitting at his kitchen table, overlooking a backyard patio and lawn lined with trees. "We did everything we wanted to do, and it came out beautifully."

The "This Old House" crew worked extensively on the backyard, turning a steep drop-off into a patio and a level, grassy area where Friedberg's two boys, ages 8 and 12, can play ball. Inside, craftsmen restored an old pool table, tub, and several stained glass windows, expanded the kitchen, and redid several bathrooms.

As with any renovation, Friedberg said, there were unexpected expenses, such as painting the outside of the three-story, 4,200-square-foot home.

"We weren't going to do the windows but decided to do them and then we had to do the trim, and if we're going to do the trim we might as well do the body."

One of the harder parts of the project was keeping pace with the numerous decisions that had to be made quickly, he said.

"It seemed like as soon as you figured one thing out, five more things were right behind it," Friedberg said.

At first, getting used to the TV crew and the show's structure was challenging, but Friedberg and his wife, Madeline Krauss, quickly acclimated to the cameras, he said.

"The way the show works, it's very low key," Friedberg said. "It starts out as a conversation and evolves into a script we learned on the fly." Their first scene, he said, "was a lot more pressure, because we were at the end of a four-and-a-half-minute shot, and if we screwed up, they had to do the whole thing over again."

As with Nolen, Friedberg has reconnected with old friends who found him through the show, including one from college who contacted him five minutes into the debut of the first episode. He has also found several previous owners of the home and three great-grandchildren of the original owner.

"You find colleagues at work who are 'This Old House' fanatics," he said. "They just come out of the woodwork, and it is fun to be able to share the experience."

The Weston project debuts at 8 p.m. Oct. 2 on WGBX (Channel 44) and at 5 p.m. Oct. 4 on WGBH (Channel 2). For additional information on program times, visit thisoldhouse.com/tvschedule.