What was required was clear, but I dreaded facing it. The 1935 vintage colonial we were rehabbing had an up-to-date floor plan. It was consistent with and typical of much newer, four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, two-story colonials. But the house was old enough that it had terminal water pipe problems. The badly stained ceilings made that evident to even the most casual observer. Expensive replacement was imminent – no doubt about it. It wasn't just replacing the pipe that was troubling. It was the overall havoc that generally accompanies such work – the access holes that would likely be punched in the ceilings and walls, and the broken plaster that always gets tracked around and ground into the strip oak floors, in spite
