Looking Back on the Year of the Facade

6 years ago today I bought the Crooked House. 3 years ago (not quite to the day) I finished my 6-month renovation and moved in. In Year 6, I finally faced my fear of the facade and took it on.

At the start, I was afraid to take the awnings down. The windows were horribly installed and surely leaky and there was peeling red paint on all of the brick. This, I was sure, would be dangerous for the brick. So to buy time I stripped my future front door. (Spoiler alert: it’s still propped up against a wall in my bedroom.)

In April I decided frost was no longer a danger and was ready to face my next fear: an original wood cornice that had been covered with siding so long I was expecting rot. I found virtually none!

I also got direct sunlight through the front windows for the first time when these bad boys came down.

And then began the paint removal, which ended up being a 4 month project.

In June, about halfway through the stripping, I hit a low point. The brick still looked horrible and I was bracing myself to paint over it. Meanwhile, the front door was getting harder and harder to close and I realized that the jamb was holding water. This one is a real headscratcher because someone spent a pile of money on mahogany jambs and then slapped them together in a way that makes no sense.

Things turned around in July though. New job, boyfriend moved in, and (most house related but probably least important) I switched to EaCo Chem AcryliStrip, and FINALLY got pretty good results. It’s still not perfect, but it’s pretty good for a 125 year old house that hasn’t been damaged with overly aggressive cleaning methods.

Then there was stripping the cornice, consolidating some bits of rot, and filling tons of holes. That took another month.

We also restored the original brick mold. I had the new windows custom sized so this could go back on and everything would look right.

I also had a new horror in September, when I used water glass as a masonry consolidant and got white stains all over my brick. I then faced my fears of caustic paint stripper (the stuff that burned a hole in my forehead) to partially remove them. Yes, partially. It’s still not perfect, and I might go over the worst spots once more when it gets warm.

This brings us to October. We were a little later than I wanted to be installing windows, but I also needed all that time to keep saving money. This was a terrifying job because I’m snobby and wanted full Marvins, and I was terrified about getting them sized just right with very skinny brick mold that doesn’t give us any wiggle room. Tito and I got them installed in just 2 weekends though.

And when with us behind and winter coming, my parents were there to help. We got the first coat of paint on everything by November 3, not a moment too soon.

Which gave us just 3 weeks to get the house presentable for – what? a wedding!

So yeah, it was a big year.