This Old House Manchester Project House

Call it the Big Kahuna by the Sea. Our Manchester project was the longest and most ambitious renovation we've ever undertaken with homeowners: about 10 months and $1.5 million. But what a payoff. The McCues' 1883 house, aptly described at the beginning of the project as looking like "a motel in Hyannis" (translation for non-New Englanders: "an unadorned shingled box"), is now once again the seaside beauty it was at the turn of the century, when the original Shingle-style building was done up in Colonial Revival finery.