Author: admin

Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse

One Room Challenge Week 2: The Right Niche is Too Low!

I jumped the gun on this project a little – and now I’m glad I did. We have too many travel plans for our own good this fall, I have a lot of DIY work to do, and some other jobs were harder to coordinate than I would have expected. First, I came to grips…
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Front Bedroom: One Room Challenge, Week 1

For anyone who is new to this blog, welcome! I’m excited to participate in the One Room Challenge for my first and (in this house) last time. So far, I’ve been more of a tear the whole house apart and live in chaos and filth for years kind of a guy. The front bedroom is…
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No More Bad View

I’ve had a little bit of clutter in the back yard pretty much nonstop since I bought the house. Occasionally while I was working there was a lot of clutter. Now I’m down to a small stack of Belgian blocks back behind where I keep the grill and trash cans. Also, the dirt on the…
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Start with the rug

My mom told me that she did this wrong. She got rugs last and then scrupulously searched for rugs whose every hint of color matched what was already in the room. Worse, she roped me into helping with this. So I’ve thought the bedroom needed a rug, and it seems like a good place to…
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The Front Bedroom, Where Decorating Inspiration Goes to Die

When I finished “Phase 1,” every room except the back bedroom (which I finished to rent) needed a little something done to it, but the front bedroom needed the most. So now that the shutters are progressing at a glacial pace, it seems like a good time to go over it. So, from the beginnning:…
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Making a Complete Set of Shutters

First of, how was Puerto Rico? It was really great. I don’t know what to say about it so I’ll leave you with some pictures. Back to cold Pennsylvania and the shutters. We’ve been leaning the lower tiers against the windows for privacy while I procrastinated on the uppers. So I laid them out in…
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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…
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Figuring out how to build these shutter pockets

So far, I haven’t done much. In the 1920’s or 30’s someone redid all the woodwork downstairs and put deep sills right over the original 19th Century sills. I stripped these, trimmed them to fit in the slightly modified openings, and added little blocks of wood to get them level. Look how crooked the original…
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I can haz pocket shutters?

The first time I drooled over pocket shutters was, I think, at the Winterthur Museum when I was about 5. So naturally, when I found evidence suggesting the Crooked House originally had them, I was hoping for a way to recreate them. But I figured I could never justify the price of having them made…
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Getting the Price Down on the Bath Vanity

I’ve felt a little bit guilty about how much more say I had with the house Tito lives in than he has. He sold off most of his furniture. I decided down to the inch where every door was going. He said, “And you’re so good at it.” So that made me feel better. He’s…
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