Demo begins!

Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse

Demo begins!

My house is in pretty solid condition, but was unfortunately the victim to some pretty badly done renovations, apparently right before it went on the market. The worst of these was the disastrous floor finishing job that I’ll have to re-redo later on. Then the walls were covered in loose wallpaper, and instead of scraping it off, whoever did this work decided to smear joint compound like icing over everything. Also check out that angled piece of door casing covering the gap in the floor. Awesome.Image


ImageImage

Luckily it takes no trouble at all to get the wallpaper off, along with the terrible skim coating! That leaves my house looking more like this (until I strip the rest off with water)

Image

I also decided once and for all I was not going to stand for having my railing painted. It was once stained dark, but someone slapped paint on it so thick the runs look like candle wax. I started at the scrolly part at the bottom, and I think it’ll be that bad of a job to finish it.

Image

Almost too easy, right? But there was no way I’d let it stay that way. I took the plunge with exposed brick. Started in the vestibule so if it was horrible I wouldn’t be committed to a whole wall. Those walls, were badly sheet-rocked instead of badly skim coated, so I got to see that before the skim coating, the walls were actually in pretty good shape. There was just one layer of paint over old wallpaper. In the vestibule there was also pink and burgandy plastic tile, and just a bit of the old wallpaper unpainted so you can see the pattern. I guess someone had plywood paneling over the plastic tile at some point?Image

First I used a hammer and a brick splitting chisel, and hit my hand so many times the hammer cut my skin open. Then my awesome next door neighbor gives me these: 

Image

That’s a folding scaffold! And on it, a chip gun, or a chisel that hammers itself! Made the work faster, but more dust and noise than when I did it by hand! And that leaves us right about here: 

ImageImage

 

Looks like the next week or so will be more of these same jobs, but more fun to come!

 

 

No Responses

  1. CindyH says:

    I guess you love a challenge… I know it will be awesome when you are finished!

  2. Ethan Giller says:

    Chad – great meeting you the other day, and I’m excited to follow your progress on this rehab. What product did you use for stripping the paint on the banister? My place also has a thick coating of white paint that I’m thinking of removing… would like to get your input when you find something that works.

    • chadscrookedhouse says:

      Ethan, good to meet you too! I used CitriStrip so far. This is nice because it doesn’t have bad fumes. Actually, it’s made from orange peel and has a pleasant smell. Also I got it on my hands and didn’t get chemical burns. It’s apparently not the most powerful paint stripper though, and when I resume paint removal in another month or two there’s a good chance I’ll switch to something more toxic.

  3. Thanks for the like. Did the paint stripper have any knock on problems. Loving the blog. A great project 🙂

    • Not sure exactly what you mean by knock on problems. I used citristrip, which cut through the latex paint like nothing but only partially took off the varnish underneath. And had it left it entirely intact I’d have been thrilled. I’ll have to see if I should switch to something more toxic to get it all off. And the “original” doors that I bought have layers of who knows what kind of paint. I’ll almost certainly need a nastier stripper on those, but I’ve decided that a wet stripper is how I want to handle old paint.

  4. Melinda says:

    Wow! Okay, I eat my words from my last comment on your first post, this house needs you! 🙂 The newel post flower carving is lovely, and the brick looks great.

  5. The details on that bannister are beautiful.

Leave a Reply