(upbeat music) - I told them to run as fast as they could to just simply run, that this was a giant money pit.

(metal clanging) (debris clattering) - Boom, open concept.

(saw whirring) There's actually a note on the shower that says, "Please do not use shower.

"It goes through to library ceiling."

- We think that we have to redo all the plumbing.

- We don't know until this is removed if there was ever a foundation under this at all.

- I would say that my stress level is out of 10, probably around a 25 to 30.

- We're moving in to this in five days from today, five days.

(upbeat music) One wild and crazy Friday night we go on, you know, Zillow Realtor and we search for homes in Lake Forest and we were just so stunned that this kind of a home was available and kind of the price point we were thinking about.

- And so then we texted our realtor and she thought we were joking.

- Yeah.

- (laughs) So it took three or four text messages back and forth and saying, oh, okay.

Get you in there and that's really how we found it.

I grew up down the street from this home.

So being able to move here and restore it, not necessarily knock it down or build something else.

I think that gave us a really unique thing for our family.

- And I know that we can bring it back to its glory days.

(bright music) - We walked through the house and it was fascinating.

The history here and the stories behind it.

That's all I saw was a falling apart house, that they should have bulldozed down.

The house was in really, really bad shape.

There were holes in the siding, broken windows, nothing fit.

The upstairs bedroom had a vine that had come through the rotted windows and was crawling all over the walls.

They were definitely taking a giant, giant risk to move into this during construction with a two-year-old.

Who does that?

- [Jeannette] What sold me is when I first walked into the home, you immediately see the beautiful hardwood floors and it opens up into the library and it just had this presence.

Like, you just know something cool happened here at one point and I feel like we can make it happen again.

- The history of the house is pretty unique.

F. Scott Fitzgerald summered here and he fell in love with the original owner's daughter and she went on to inspire the love interest in "The Great Gatsby."

- The house was originally designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw in 1905, who was a prominent country house architect.

The architect of a renovation in 1938 was George Senseney.

He altered it in ways that introduced some very forward looking features that give it a very sophisticated look so that when you see the curving staircase in the front hall, when you see the Greek pattern in the soffit, in the dining room, those are all elements that George Senseney introduced to the design of the house.

(light instrumental music) - [Danny] I'm scared of the unknown.

The home was built in 1905 and as soon as we start pulling up floors and looking in windows and walls, I mean, there's going to be that unknown.

It is a 7,500 square foot question mark.

- We got one pine tree over there.

We're gonna take down that one first.

It's the one that is, like, making damage to the foundation.

- This tree is so close to the house.

If something went wrong, it could crash right into the house, go through the roof, go through the top floor.

It could be devastating.

(chainsaw buzzing) (Jeannette cheering) It's gone!

(laughs) (chainsaw buzzing) - My name is Cesar Lopez.

I'm the general contractor for this project.

I met Jeanette and Danny.

They were doing some flips, some houses and they needed some help, so they call.

Maybe we have a little bit of problems to get the plumbing into this corner.

In the beginning when I saw the size of the property, I was like, she's kidding, you know?

I mean as soon as I pull up in the driveway, I was like, this is not happening.

I mean, to be honest, I was thinking that it was gonna be just like one of those times that you walk in there and like, it's not worth it.

Walk away, that's it.

It's done.

But we walked together, we open the house and stuff.

I noticed the property isn't really that bad of the shape.

I didn't see no water leaks from the roof or anything like that, so I thought it was possible to do it.

- [Danny] The purchase price of the house was 685,000.

The renovation cost is anywhere between 300,000 to 500,000.

- [Jeannette] There are seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

- So I mean it really is every inch of every room is gonna need paint touchups and you walk around Home Depot, we probably need one.

- I'm gonna be here every day doing the mundane things like scraping paint off of doors and sanding the floors.

We hope to have it ready and livable in about six months.

I feel like a lot of what I do is to kind of honor my dad because I lost my dad.

He used to do what I do now.

He had his own construction company and I have all of his tools and so when I'm working I'm using his stuff and his inheritance went to help with this and we couldn't be in this position without him.

Do you wanna try lifting the sink a little and see if it'll go?

- [Cesar] The challenge is gonna be.

- Okay.

- Janet is being working with us, so she does hands-on, but I think what is gonna make it hard to work together is that she will have different ideas than I have or a different way to address the project.

So I think it's gonna be the hard part to agree on something.

- Here.

- Right now the biggest challenge here that we face is the unknown.

We still don't have gas to the home.

We still don't have plumbing to the home and electric is still needing to be updated.

So we have a better handle on the plumbing and electric aspects now.

But once you open up walls, who knows what's back there?

- So as we're talking about plumbing and disappointing things.

(Jeannette chuckles) I'm gonna mention it to you that I talked to my plumber, we got, we walk through the whole house and we think that we have to redo all the plumbing, all the copper have to be redone.

I mean, water lines, everything need to be redone new.

- No.

- I'm thinking that we might have another solution.

If you want I can show you now.

So this is the solution I was thinking about.

We can build you a new bathroom in here.

- Oh.

- Hey guys, what's going on?

- Hi, well, I'm happy you're here.

Cesar just gave me some pretty disappointing news, actually two things.

First, we're up here because we're talking plumbing.

- Okay.

- Cesar's thinking we need to re-plumb the entire house.

Everything.

- Everything?

- Everything.

- Oh, why do we need to do that?

- Because most of the plumbing in this house has been dated, is been sitting there for a long time.

Nobody kept living in this property for awhile.

The plumbing is in bad shape.

- The entire house has to be re-plumbed?

- The entire house.

- Right, okay.

- Back to you guys.

- And there's another thing, Cesar.

(laughs) - Come on!

- I think we have to go down in the basement for it though.

- Okay.

- So should we go?

- The reason we are here right now is because this is the panel, the electrical panel, and everything needs to be redone on this.

- But I thought fuses were still safe to use?

- In some parts they allow you still doing it, but this really is dated, you can see.

And the only solution that I can think about is to redo everything new as well.

- Redo the entire electric?

- Electrical.

- New service and everything?

I'm devastated with the news we just got from our contractor because he pretty much said we have to rewire the entire house with new electrical service and we have to do all new plumbing throughout the house, which we were not expecting to have to do.

- No, we were hoping to be able to save some of the plumbing, some of the electric.

- We definitely have a contingency fund for when things come up, such as this electric and plumbing disaster.

(laughs) But I don't know that our contingency fund can cover anything after this.

- No, and I don't think our contingency fund was thinking of a full re-plumb and a full electric.

- Maybe one or the other.

- Right, but I don't know right now.

- The exterior of the home is considered a Lake Forest landmark.

So now we've gone forward with the state and the national level and this house does qualify for a national landmark.

And so we're being guided through that process with our historian and that entails the interior of the home.

So that whole process has been incredible and very rewarding.

So many people have come out of the woodwork to offer their support and help with the whole process because it's just intense.

There's a lot of things you have to keep, guidelines you have to follow during the renovation.

The advantage of the historical designation at the state and the national level is you get a tax freeze.

So it's seven years, your taxes freeze at the time construction begins and then the following, I think it's four years, they slowly go back up.

So it's a huge incentive, especially with a property this size.

It's gonna be really beneficial to us and that's what's helping us then actually put the money into the home itself.

- It is a gargantuan project they've taken on and I give them so much credit.

Maintaining the historical accuracy of the building and yet bringing it forward for modern day amenities.

They're not museums, they're not monuments, but they're a part of our past and they really need to be preserved.

But I walked in, I looked around, I thought, I'm glad it's them not me.

(laughs) (bright music) - Today has been a really big day here at the Gatsby house.

We've had full crews on site all day.

We have window restoration company who's been in, they are actually restoring every single door and window on this beast of a house.

So that's 61 windows, 10 sets of French doors and then two huge bay windows that they're practically having to rebuild.

Besides that, we've also had siding delivery.

So our siding is a shiplap style siding.

It's a rather large board, which is unusual.

And so we've had to have it custom milled and we were lucky enough to find our new friend, Pete, and he just delivered our siding for us.

So this is the piece of siding that I brought to you.

- Correct.

- Oh, less than a week ago?

- Yeah, about a week ago.

- About a week ago.

And you took this and copied it and made me all of this beautiful siding so I can patch in what we need.

- So you could match in and it would look just the same.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

We needed to match the siding for the house and it's not an available pattern, so it had to be specially made.

And in order to do that we had to get pine of 12 inches wide, which is in itself hard to obtain of decent material.

- There used to be a window here.

You can see it's already halfway done to make a door.

My problem is I can't find a door that matches the rest of the house.

- Well, we could make you a door that matches the rest of the house.

- That's exactly what I wanted to hear you say.

(both laughing) So these are the doors that I would love to replicate for the mudroom garage area.

- I can see why, they're beautiful.

- Yeah.

So if we can make the three foot wide seven foot tall this.

- Absolutely, we can do that.

- We found a local architect that we're super excited to be working with.

He has worked with several historical homes in the area, specifically Howard Van Doren Shaw, which this home is.

And so for us it's really important to maintain the old of this home.

And so we are seeking his expertise, going through the historic process of gaining the house landmark.

We have to get approval for every little thing we're looking to do.

Pretty much, if we have an idea, we pick up the phone call the historian and ask, "Do you think we can run this past the committee?"

They have a meeting about it and they get back to us.

We originally were hoping to be able to take down this whole corner wall to open it up to where the kitchen's gonna be and have a little family room space.

- How you want to deal with it is gonna be a bit of a challenge because this is a transitional space and it's a public space.

It has got features that are significant and one of the features is the shape of the space, so you really don't wanna change that.

- We have to maintain this space, but we want to open up the family room to the kitchen.

I think what we'll do is remove this wall.

- The timeline is gonna be much longer now and we can't do demo or anything until we have these permits, which now we need him to draw plans to even get the permits.

With the architect, we are at least five weeks behind schedule.

So in here we're hoping to maintain most of this layout, but obviously update it.

Originally we were hoping this could come down, but those are a big question mark.

- Right, so we want to remove this wall and we'll have to look at what these are leading to.

These are probably heating pipes going to radiators upstairs.

The challenge in a project like this is maintaining the historic qualities that are inherent in the home while updating it.

So if we want to remove most of this wall, including this part, those will have to be redirected, shifted over.

I think we'll have a big challenge on this one in particular is gonna be working on that oval bathroom.

And so hopefully we can come up with a nice solution there.

- Obviously, this bathroom is something that is historically significant to the home.

However, it's not super functional for us to live here.

So I'd like to talk out some options of what we can do to preserve the space to meet the historical committee's needs.

- And so you want sinks positioned where he can use them easily.

And these are kind of short for, is he 6'6"?

- [Jeannette] He's 6'6", yeah.

I mean, these are short for me even.

- Yes, and so you raise the sinks.

I mean that would be an easy solution and but this room is truly unique and I say unique very seldom.

The use of structural glass in a curved space and the attention to detail that is unlike anything I've ever seen make it very special.

- So you're saying these half pedestals need to stay?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Well, how do we make those a little bit higher, right?

So they're kind of low, probably 30 inches tall.

- [Jeannette] Yeah.

- So it's nice that it has a nice pedestal on the bottom with some metal treatment.

Maybe an option is to remove these temporarily and get a taller base has to be custom made to match that.

A metal worker could do it, create a template.

- All right, so I brought you up here because I just talked to the historian and she gave me some disappointing news.

She says we have to keep this entire bathroom.

(laughs) - What?

What part?

- All of it.

- You cannot keep this.

- I don't want to keep it, but she says historically it's so significant that we would be doing a huge disservice by getting rid of this.

- Why?

If none of this is... - I agree, it's not functional.

I totally agree.

So originally we were hoping to do a almost gut renovation of the master bath and make it more functional for the modern family and keep a few of the details.

From her opinion, the historical committee won't approve that.

And so the three of us went through some solutions to maybe work around what the historical committee would really like to see us keep, which is the majority of the bathroom.

So it's a challenge and we're gonna work through it and figure out how to keep everybody happy.

The other issue we talked about was towards the kitchen area.

We're hoping to completely blow out a wall.

There are some posts there that are decorative.

It's a transitional room and Susan thinks we need to preserve the integrity of the whole space.

- If we want to open up the kitchen to the family room, we can remove the wall and create an opening.

So you can have a visual connection as well as a physical connection between the two rooms.

We'd square off the backside of this built-in and maintain the curved cabinetry on the front side.

So I think there's definitely ways to open it up while maintaining this space.

- Okay.

So right now we're in the servant's pantry and this wall right here is gonna come down.

So we're taking these cabinets off the wall.

We're being very careful because we're hoping to repurpose them in the main kitchen and also in the pantry space that we're creating.

- No.

- There's nothing back there.

- There's like, there's a piece of wood.

That is holding it.

Like, it's sitting on it.

So we kind of have to slide it forward.

- Okay.

- There you go.

- [Jeannette] To the mudroom.

- [Cesar] I can get that.

I got this side if you wanna grab the other side.

- Opening this all up is gonna just make more of a modern day open concept style kitchen.

Right now it is designed for function.

Every time I arrive at this home, there's that glimpse that I'm like, are we sure?

And then as soon as I walk through that front door, I'm like, yep, this is why I'm here.

You just walk in and it just feels right.

It feels good.

You look at the details and the flooring and the moldings and the doors.

I know that I can make this house beautiful.

(bright music) So we did meet with the landscape architect today.

I'm super happy with the progress so far.

We've done very little exterior landscaping just to kind of clean it up.

- Some of the features you're seeing now are gonna be the features that will remain.

And as we know some of the wall features we're gonna be able to do some rebuilding to.

But I wanted to kind of show what we had, and this is kind of an aerial picture kind of displaying what we thought this back area is gonna look like.

These trees are actually plotted from the actual tree survey, so we know they exist.

And if we move on to this area, imagine we're standing about right here.

So you can kind of see the staircase coming down.

This is the wall that we're looking to have reconstruction occur, and this is the wedding cake stairs that are coming down.

The actual fountain here, we don't know at some point we're gonna change whatever element you choose.

If you want to go back to the retro style that you had.

The beauty of working on the North Shore is, especially when you see some of the old historical estates and people that are still interested in keeping those estates.

This was one of those moments where you walked up and you looked about and said, whoa, the potential of this is amazing.

Because again, you have direction, someone already has put a footprint there and you have something you can go back to and historically look at and try to recreate that as much as possible with today's technology, with today's plant material.

So those are things that are very exciting to be involved with.

(bright music) - So here we're in the master closet and on the other side of this wall is the master bedroom.

There was a file cabinet sunk into the wall when we first saw the house.

It's kind of odd to have file cabinet in the master bedroom.

So we took it out, we closed up that wall.

But my husband's been complaining in this whole big house, there's no secret room.

So my contractor and I decided we are going to build him this little secret room.

It's going to hold our safe.

And so it's going to sink into the wall from inside the closet doors here.

Whoop.

So it'll be hidden back in there.

And then we'll build a false back to the closet.

And so when you open the closet, it'll look just normal.

You can slide this door open and all of a sudden he will have his secret safe.

(hammer thudding) (wood cracking) (sander buzzing) In-laws will be moving to this house.

So we're building on the in-laws suite.

So this is the area that was previously the servant's quarters.

What we did is we went ahead and demoed everything out, opened it up.

So this used to be one small bedroom.

Over here was a laundry room, bathroom, and then two small bedrooms back there.

So we tore this wall out, tore this wall out.

Beam went up and now we have this nice big open living space up here.

So Danny and I took sledgehammers to this wall.

I was very sore the next day, but it was totally worth it to get this open concept.

So we're doing demo on this wall right here, which is a plaster wall.

You can see it's really, really thick, probably close to an inch thick.

(hammer thudding) Back in the day when they did plaster, you had the option of using this metal mesh, which was an upgrade from the wood that you normally see, the wood slats.

And it makes the wall outrageously strong, hence why we're having such a hard time.

(debris clatters) Boom, open concept.

Done.

(bright music) - Our home that we live in right now did sell.

And so we do have about 25 days before we do have to move in.

It is around the clock work that needs to be done.

And of course the weekend that we're going to move in, we're actually gonna be out of town.

So everything is working in our favor right now.

- It's been a strain on us a little bit.

(both laughing) A lot of delirious days.

It's been hard.

Close quarters in our current living situation, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel or to the asylum, I'm not sure which.

(Danny laughs) (bright music) We're moving into this in five days from today, five days.

So you can see this room actually, actually doesn't look too bad.

You can see there's some areas that are not quite finished yet, but we'll just kind of shut the doors and it'll be behind doors for a little while.

We're getting some of the bedrooms up and running.

And other than that, we'll be roughing it for a couple of weeks probably.

So there's a lot of pressure to get this done on time and get in here.

I feel like the whole project's on me, I'm the one that's here all the time.

So it's a challenge.

My in-laws will be living with us and every day they're asking, you really think it's gonna be ready?

Are you sure it's gonna be ready?

Holy cow!

It's so pretty.

It feels so much bigger, right?

(bright music) It is Wednesday morning.

I am at the Lake Forest house.

The rest of my family is at my current home in Mundelein, about two towns away.

And they are with the movers, getting everything out of that house headed this way.

We've got about four or five hours before the truck gets here.

So I am here trying to prepare this house for furniture because we sleep here tonight.

(laughs) - I would say that my stress level is out of 10, probably around a 25 to 30.

- So the moving trucks just got here.

They came from my other house about two towns away and they're trying to figure out how to best approach the house.

It's gonna be an adventure right now.

All right, so just let me give you a quick.

- Sure, yeah.

We can just do a quick walk around.

- Walking around, okay.

So my contractor has built this secret room.

It's a surprise for my husband who's on his way here.

So if we could put the safe in here right away.

- Okay.

- And then when he gets here it'll be a, ta-da!

Right now they're hustling really big, So when Danny gets here we can reveal it to him and he can have his one secret room in the whole house.

That's a fancy dolly.

- Got it?

- This is wild.

- Not too much.

Okay, good.

(bright music) - Where's Cesar?

Cesar, come here please.

All right, so Cesar and I have kept you out of this room.

- [Danny] You have.

- And you've been kind of weird weirded out about it.

- I've been very weirded out about it.

- What's the one thing you wanted in this whole house?

- Secret room.

Oh, that's awesome!

- [Jeannette] We built you a secret safe.

- I'll take it, I will take it.

Thank you.

- Cesar did it.

- Come here, Cesar.

(Cesar laughs) Oh, that is awesome.

I have always wanted a secret room in this house.

I have gone through every inch of this place because you would think a home from this time would have a secret room or a secret hallway or something and it just didn't have it.

So now this, this makes the home complete for me.

(bright music) - So it's been about three weeks now that we've been living here.

We're still kind of glamping, it's rough, but we've quadrupled in the amount of usable bathrooms that we have since the last time since we moved in.

So that's huge.

Welcome to the kitchen.

So this is a really big space that we need a lot of help in.

As you can see, it's a little on the rough side right now.

- Yeah.

- Just a little bit.

- Today we were able to have the Thermador representatives come to the house and actually be able to do a full walkthrough of the kitchen layout of where we're thinking that appliances would go.

And we were able to get feedback on actual finishing touches to the house, which is such a blessing.

- So this vent hood is massive.

We're thinking it's 1938, that's when the big renovation was done on this home.

You can see the solder lines.

So somebody spent a lot of time making this.

Unfortunately, based off of what we've been talking about, I don't think there's anything inside here that in today's market could fit.

- I think the sizing is great.

One question, you probably think the same thing.

Do you like the stainless, the bold stainless at the top or do you think you're gonna want to cover it maybe with a cabinet?

- I'm open to either.

So the theme of the kitchen is gonna be white with brass.

Everything's gonna be white and brass.

- Okay.

- It's wild to think that we're thinking about finishing things now when it seems like this project has been going on for a little bit of time.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel.

- So we're really excited today.

We're in downtown Chicago.

We're at the merchandise mart and we finally get to shop for fun things, appliances and all the accessories to go into the house.

We have currently a 60 inch vent hood and so there's an opening under it for a 60 inch range.

And so we originally, we really wanted to keep the vent hood.

I'm not sure that's gonna be an option for us anymore just because of its size.

It's really skinny.

So I'd really like to see, I think we're, the 60 inch is what we're thinking.

- I think we're thinking the 60 inch, yeah.

- I think the 48 is gonna be too small.

(bright music) The painters on the exterior of the house, they're prepping for paint.

Unfortunately, we're behind schedule by about a week.

So emotionally when I started to see the paint coming together, it was just a huge sense of relief.

I had my cousin who was getting married and her rehearsal dinner was going to be here 'cause she was panicked and my husband couldn't see it and he was like, "No way are we pulling this party off."

So when the paint started happening and I could see how beautiful it was, so the house just was more proud and you could kind of just see it like sparkle a little bit.

It made me feel good sort of validated, like I'm not insane.

I knew it would be okay, I knew it would be fine.

So seeing my cousin just like, okay, I can trust her.

Like, it'll all be okay.

And the party was phenomenal and the house is stunning.

When I see the house from a distance, it's magical and I still can't believe it's ours.

(dramatic music) - For Bryson being comfortable in this house and in his own space, he needed to feel like this was home for I think really even us to feel like this was our home.

- So this room was finished first.

When the movers came, his furniture came in immediately.

So we let him pick out the color of his room.

He had very few choices to choose from but he still picked it out.

So we tried to make him feel like he was part of it.

So he knew this was his house and his room.

I think he's adjusted okay.

(laughs) Can I drive this one?

- Okay.

- Thanks.

We just really wanted him to have a place where all of his things were and he could be comfortable and not have to deal with the chaos that is our normal life.

- You can say, you know, where's Bryson's room?

And he'll run up to it and go in there and he's proud of it and that makes me proud of it.

And that, you know, that really puts into perspective everything that we're doing with the daily chaos.

When he's happy and 'cause he's the number one.

- Yes.

(Danny laughs) (bright music) - All right, so we're gonna uncover the onyx for the first time after it's been restored and the mantle's been painted.

It's so funny, like all the fixtures were sold, everything of value is sold off in this house.

Yet we have this, which is according to all the stone people I've talked to, irreplaceable.

Holy cow.

This stone again, it's green onyx, it's so super unique.

It's such a special find.

I had several stone experts come to the house hoping to fix it.

There's a small crack here.

Down here you can see a log or something rolled out at one point and caused this burn mark.

And so we wanted to have it restored so it wouldn't get worse.

Nobody would touch it.

Odd enough, I had my terrazzo guy here walking through the room and he just, "Hey, while I'm here, do you want me to fix that?"

Uh, yeah!

After I passed out and stood back up and I said, "Yes, you can fix that?"

And he says, "Oh, it's kind of my specialty."

All for glory.

Every time I see it, I'm speechless.

All right, so this is the new bathroom that we're building for the master because we're keeping the original, which is just really small and not super functional.

This is gonna be the shower.

So this is gonna be a rain shower head, regular shower head, three body jets.

So for me I get like a nice head massage with this one.

The floor will actually be raised up here.

So we're gonna build it up because this is the room that we're gonna terrazzo.

We really want it to feel like it fits in with all of the other bathrooms.

(bright music) To keep with the symmetry of the shower, we're gonna have this room over here will be a water closet so the toilet room will be there and then we walk in this way and just right here in front of the windows will be a nice, big, beautiful soaker tub taking advantage of the beautiful view.

- [Worker] That's gonna lift.

- Right now the guys are getting ready to take down the original vent hood, original thinking 1938 probably, that we were hoping to keep but we discovered we can't keep because it's not big enough for mechanicals to actually fit up inside it, so it wouldn't be safe.

No idea how easy this is gonna come off.

The way it looks to me right now is Cesar's up in there, all of a sudden the vent hood's gonna fall down and Cesar's gonna be wearing it like a skirt.

(laughs) That sucker's big.

Don't drop it, Cesar.

Ooh!

- I think it weighs probably 550 pounds.

- [Jeannette] Is it really heavy?

- It's incredibly heavy.

- God.

(both laughing) So now what's the plan though?

You want this stack to come down too, right?

Do you want me to just like hang from it?

Woo!

- So we have a 36 inch fridge coming and we went with a 30 inch freezer.

The specs are telling me we don't need any extra space and I was hoping to save this cabinet.

- You have to take the casing, it'll be very close.

My question is if you want me to build like a cabinet and then the three units would just slide in inside cross bend.

- So yes, let's do that.

We also need to, I have the fridge and freezer panel ready.

So we're gonna put custom panels on the front too.

- Okay.

- So they, I just want a flat panel because the cabinet guy is gonna paint 'em.

- Okay.

(bright music) - Here she is.

- Wow, what a difference.

It's so spacious and bright.

- [Jeannette] It's huge.

- It's great.

For in-law apartments, right?

- Right.

- It's wonderful.

- Get a little kitchen in here.

- Yeah, full suite of appliances.

- Plenty of space.

- Full bathroom.

Tucked around the corner.

We'll come into this room.

- Yeah, here is where the vault of the ceiling.

This is great.

They have their own family room.

- Yep.

- Beautiful.

- [Jeannette] And Cesar dropped cables, so if we want to eventually make this be a theater room.

- Yeah, right.

- We've got the speaker wires ready to go.

- That's all set up.

Well, it turned out great.

- Thank you.

- Nice work.

- Thank you, I'm pleased.

- Yeah, that's great.

What great space.

- It is November 12th.

It's been a little over a year since we've owned the property.

Do we know what that pipe goes to?

- No.

- It's been a long year.

(laughs) It's so behind me.

We are getting ready to open up the kitchen walls for the first time.

So we've got some support walls in place and we are gonna start cutting joists so we can flush mount a beam, actually three beams sandwiched together up into the ceiling so we can take down all the walls.

This load, the walls that are there right now is carrying the weight for the entire upstairs.

So the second floor and the attic are all on this one wall.

My contractor Cesar's got it supported really, really well.

So there should be no concern.

We're still gonna stay out of the second floor, just any extra movement, it doesn't help the situation.

So we're gonna just try to avoid that area today while we get the beams in place.

John, our architect, was able to stop by today and we had everything opened up and we were talking about the beams.

With John coming, there's always the fear.

The architect's coming, he could see it opened up and hate everything or we have to do a steel beam, which is very strong but very expensive.

So there's always that worry that he wouldn't be pleased with the supports we found behind the walls.

And he would want everything redone.

- Find out how many two by sixes are behind that.

So there's one there and I see another one behind it.

And so we may have to take this out so we could double up those two by sixes and make a post out of it.

- That takes time and we don't have the luxury of time right now.

Cesar's cutting the joists in the ceiling.

We need those beams to go up today or we can't use that side of the second floor of the house.

One of the problems that maybe you see right away is we thought that was steel.

- We did think that was steel.

So it's like, it's not a steel, it's a two by six.

- So we did have one surprise.

A beam we thought was steel, ended up to be wood, so he was actually happy with the size of it.

- Well, that's probably gonna be okay.

- He would just like to see one of the posts be beefed up a little bit, which is very minimal work.

So that's really good news for us.

And then one of the areas he thought needed beams actually isn't load bearing.

- So you can remove this without any worries.

Yeah, no beam.

Save some money there.

- So that's really good news.

And our main beams, he's thrilled with.

He was super happy with everything that we're doing.

So we can press on.

This is the heart of the home.

This is what everybody spends their day in.

When I saw this wall just open the way it is.

Ta-da!

I almost cried.

I was so excited to just get this open plan.

I cannot wait, so thrilled.

This is where the island is gonna be.

So it's gonna be a 10 foot long island.

Behind me is where the range is gonna go.

And then right in front of me is actually where the kitchen table is gonna go.

So this is all gonna be nice and open.

This direction, we're gonna have a wet bar, so you're gonna be able to get everywhere in the kitchen.

Super easy.

We'll maintain our triangle in the kitchen and then also the entertaining area over here.

All systems are go on the kitchen.

Let's wrap it up.

(power tools whirring) Today is December 20th, and we are getting our appliances delivered today.

Really huge deal, especially since we're hosting Christmas dinner on Christmas day in this.

We're not ready.

So it's just gonna be a shuffle of what can we get ready and what can we make work, so I can cook for my family.

(laughs) We need them on site so we can start building our cabinetry around them.

Some of them are gonna have custom panels put on the front so they can be sprayed to match the metal cabinets.

So we need those here really before anything else can get done.

Oh!

I have to admit, this is the appliance I'm most excited for.

- I can imagine.

- It's a lot of buttons on the top of that thing.

Is there a door for this one somewhere?

- This would take a like a wood panel or a decorative panel.

- No, it's gonna be a problem.

Supposed to have a door for this.

(laughs) So this is a mega wine fridge.

It's an outrageous amount of wine bottles.

It holds, it's three zones.

So you have your red, your white, and your champagne zone.

So right now we're going on a cabinet hunt.

We're repurposing all of the original kitchen cabinets.

- I can't see the other side of it.

- So it's gonna be a challenge because they came out of different places and we have to try to fit them back in and they're metal so it's not like we can just shave off a little bit and make it fit.

So it's just gonna be a giant jigsaw puzzle of hoping we can make this work out.

That's a good kitchen island cabinet.

- Yeah.

- We need to build the kitchen island out of our pile here and also where the new wet bar is gonna be and then the upper cabinets as well.

I think this is cool.

What do you think?

- Yeah, I like it.

Melissa, grab it.

- I'll get right on that.

- [Jeannette] You're not gonna be able to fit.

- [Melissa] What?

We got this.

- All right, now I'm feeling a little stressed.

I was hoping things would've gotten a little bit further today and everybody was just working on top of each other, so it was really challenging.

Will it work for the sink base?

- Yeah.

I think so.

- Will you be able to make the light work?

- For what?

- Just for decoration.

(Melissa laughs) - Yeah, I think so.

I'm not sure.

- Okay, that's good enough.

- It looks like it might work.

- So we were hoping to get the kitchen island in place today, just piecing cabinets together so my countertop guy can come in and measure and have an idea of what he's gonna be cutting for us and hopefully installing before New Year's.

And we didn't get that far today and we're losing our sunlight quickly.

So that might be a job for maybe this weekend.

All right, so here's the kitchen and I'm sorry we're not totally ready for you, but we are having a New's Eve party and I'm really hoping that maybe you can get the countertops installed before that.

I know a lot depends on how fast we can get the cabinets installed because we have a 10 foot island, 25 inch.

Plus I'm thinking we can- - Is there overhang?

- Plus an overhang.

- 36?

- Yeah.

I was thinking 36 to 37 depending on what your thoughts were.

- Yeah, I think 36 should be fine.

Or 37, 37 is fine.

- Danny really wants the waterfall.

I know we've, how many houses have we done?

And we've never let him have the waterfall.

(laughs) - Yeah, it looks real good, the waterfall.

- I know.

All right, we can have the waterfall.

- Oh.

- It's not a traditional feature, but I think he's gonna be really happy.

And then, so 10 foot waterfall, 12 ish, 11 to 12 inch overhang.

And then there's a wet bar too.

- Okay.

- And so that'll need countertop.

How many slabs is this?

- I have to measure 'em, but gonna be a couple slabs.

- Just a couple?

- Yeah.

- That would make me happy if it was just a couple.

(bright music) I'm really excited because today the guys are installing the Thermador refrigerator and freezer.

- [Worker] Three.

(bright music) - Beautiful.

It's been about a month.

We went through Christmas and New Year's and the kitchen has transformed.

Cabinets have been sprayed and painted and I am beyond thrilled with how they turned out.

The doors are still being worked on in the cabinet guys' workshop and the hinges are being polished up at the hardware shop.

So as soon as those are done, everything can get put together.

With the cabinets, there was a huge fear that it wasn't gonna work out because we kind of modified everything to keep as many original cabinets as we could.

We had to add wood boxes.

The fridge panels are MDF board and so to get a metal look on wood was a concern.

It took a lot of trial and error.

The cabinet guy played around with different materials and products and he ended up finding a really good primer that he was able to put on the MDF board and it turned it into this.

The appliance installers are here today.

They are going to put the final few pieces in place.

We have another oven coming into the island and then a drawer microwave coming into the island as well.

So we'll finally have everything in place and we can start to clean it up and get it going.

And maybe I can use it soon?

- I just noticed the electrical service you have right here is only 110.

We need 220 30 amp for that oven, so there's going to need to be additional wires pulled up.

What I can do is I can get the oven, I can put it in, you could wire it after it, after it goes in there.

Does that sound all right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay.

- There's always something.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- I'm glad he did run the wires.

- He was here until like 8:00 PM and he said that it was ready, so.

Will that go?

We just noticed a problem with the oven.

This lip is coming up about a quarter of an inch too high.

- Could get a piece of plywood or something, paint it black.

- The problem is we have a waterfall counter coming in.

- And he already cut it?

So that's gonna leave a gap at the bottom then.

See that little lip right there?

- What Adam says he can do is cut the bottom of this cabinet out.

There's a little lip down there that's gonna give us that quarter inch that we need.

And so he's thinking, let's remove the bottom of the cabinet, build a false bottom lower that the oven can sit on, and that should solve our problem for the countertop.

- Less than a 16th.

- Yeah, it's really, really close.

(bright music) What do you think?

Oh!

- Oh, it's everything I wanted it to be.

It's perfect.

It looks great.

It's everything I wanted a waterfall to be and more.

(drills whirring) - These are panels right here, full height.

We're gonna have two hinges, top and bottom on each panel, and then a nice big handle.

And just a simple, elegant design.

- All right, so what's next?

You're gonna put the?

- Yeah, next is just finishing the layout, making sure we have our hinges exactly in the right spot.

We're gonna mount both of those top and bottom.

And then the glass just sets right into there.

- How you looking down there?

- I'm good.

All right, Jeanette, we are all set.

What do you think?

- I don't know what to think.

- Give it a swing.

- I'm blown away and terrified at the same time.

These are huge.

- They are huge.

(bright music) (upbeat music) - It's mind blowing.

To think that from where it was to where it is now was a vision in Jeanette's mind and we didn't kill each other.

It's wild.

- It does give me a lot of pride and joy when new people come into the home and see it for the first time and they're just blown away with what we've done.

These buildings are so unique, they're so iconic and they're just built, like they don't build stuff like this anymore.

No one takes the time to do the details, to do the trim work.

You don't get that anymore.

So I think absolutely it was worth saving it from that perspective.

- I think the kitchen was the biggest project in the whole house, but it also is the biggest reward in the whole house.

- And so what we did is we had opened up two walls.

Both were load bearing walls that required a lot of work.

So we wanted to kind of combine those two vibes to have it be a beautiful kitchen to today's standards, but keep some of that old school, this is a working kitchen.

So we did that by bringing in a lot of stainless steel, kept the white metal cabinets, but then we popped it with the kitchen island, which was obviously a modern addition.

We did a waterfall edge to make it a modern addition and to keep Danny happy.

- From saving a home in the town that I grew up in, to all of the sleepless nights and rain coming in the ceilings and glamping with a porta potty outside, it was all worth it.

And would I do it again?

Yes, (laughs) I absolutely would do it again.

(bright music)