all in it together

The TOH team gives a fire-damaged triple-decker in Dorchester, MA, some long-overdue updates —and its owner the safer, more comfortable home she and her family deserve

-  DAN DICLERICO

Walking past the tidy new fence and neat foundation plantings, climbing the refinished concrete steps, and pushing open the old oak entry door, now brightened with high-gloss burgundy paint, Carol Wideman was filled with emotion. It had been nearly two years since the fateful July Fourth night in 2019 when a stray firework that ignited her neighbor’s house caused her home in Dorchester, MA, to catch fire. For many months afterward, Carol wondered whether her family home of four decades—where children were raised and countless memories made—would ever be livable again. “Before This Old House came in, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to put the house back together,” she recalls. Today, the 1905 triple-decker is transformed. “There’s a lot of history in this house,” says Carol. “It’s been a fixture in our family and this community for a long, long time. I’m so happy it will be here for another hundred years or more.”

The project, part of This Old House’s 42nd television season, was a homecoming of sorts for the show as well: The inaugural project house, renovated in 1979, is just up the road. “It was a rush of memories every time I drove by that old Victorian on the corner,” says TOH plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey. “Our work back then helped change the neighborhood,” he says of the area, which then suffered from urban blight exacerbated by discriminatory housing practices. “There was a similar goal this time around, not only to get Carol back in her house but also to do our part to keep the community strong and vibrant for years to come.”