Chad's Crooked House

Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse

It’s never too early to plan a kitchen

Well, it’s been a while! Instead of catching you up on how the last few years have been, I’m just going to get to the fun stuff. Even though we’re probably 2 years away from doing anything with this. My first thought about the kitchen was that after going from 90 square feet of kitchen…
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Introducing the Third Floor Bath

So, here it is. A clawfoot tub! Pretty exciting. Tub aside, it’s definitely the worst room in the house. What’s not to like? Well, to start, this shower faucet. Not sure exactly what’s going on here. Is this a sink faucet? Also, it leaks. And then the shower head? EEK! Where the tub crunched through…
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Big News Outside the Crooked House

First off, did you miss me? Some of you may wonder what happened. Basically, I had some techinical difficulties, and with the pandemic, work, and spending half of 2020 with Tito’s family in north central Florida, I just… abandoned it. I’m still having more trouble uploading images than I used to, but hopefully I’m back.…
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Scope Bloat: Appliacnes

This wasn’t part of the plan, but the dishwasher decided to turn itself into a dish rack in the middle of this project. And giving it a bit of thought, we decided that while we’re at it all the appliances should be stainless steel. As proud as I was of buying the opposite of what…
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Painting the Kitchen: What Took Us So Long?

Well, yes. working on the kitchen the last time around was miserable and I wanted to do as little as possible and get on with my life. But still. We’ve been living with woodwork that was just primed and then partly sanded off and marked up with the Irishman’s notes and further damaged from years…
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3 Room Non-Challenge: Getting to the Counters

So, apparently part of not challenging myself is not sticking to a regular posting schedule, but I will be writing because stuff is happening! Remember these secondhand Formica countertops I picked up at the ReStore and cut up with a saw to fit the space? Early this year, we were finally able to thank them…
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The Three Room Non-Challenge

Hi everyone! It’s October and I’m writing my first post of the year. There’s been a lot of awfulness that I don’t want to write about this year, so I’ll just give you the bare minimum. My mother-in-law bought a house. We spent half of 2020 in Florida, mostly helping her. I have no love…
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Can Mirrors Solve All Our Problems?

So you saw the headboard I bought in the back bedroom before, but since it’s been so long I’ll show you again. I bought it from a small-time dealer. She messaged me later that she had a mirror that matched it, and she had stuff piling up enough that she was giving it away to…
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Making Every Square Foot Count: Revisiting the Back Bedroom

At 960 square feet, the Crooked House is too small to have spaces that we don’t use regularly. Meanwhile, Tito and I both have demanding jobs and I have a soul-crushing commute and both of us would do well to have good space to work from home when we need it. That means a comfortable…
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A Not-So-Dramatic Makeover

So it’s been a bit, and what I’m about to write about is old. After we finished the bedroom, it might have been a good time to stop working for the holidays. But I was thinking about the unfinished state of the linen closet. I wanted to do it twice before, but life (as in…
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