17x19 - The Savannah House - 1

February 3, 1996

This Old House heads south to the historic splendor of Savannah, Georgia, where Mills and Marianne Fleming have purchased an 1884 Italianate Victorian townhouse on Monterey Square, one of the city's most beautiful. We tour the house, whose rotting back porches will be replaced by a permanent structure holding an expanded kitchen and dining room on one floor, and a master bedroom and bathroom on the second. Other needed improvements include restoring the heart pine flooring, adding guest bathrooms, installing HVAC system to cope with the region's high heat and humidity and improving the facade with an appropriate iron balustrade and wooden shutters. Mills leads a ""greatest hits"" tour of downtown Savannah. Then contractor J.T. Turner, whose firm has restored many homes and buildings in the historic district, shows us a job in progress and a finished restoration. Finally, Turner's job foreman, Mark Fitzpatrick, goes over the subject house and gives us his take on the main challenges facin