Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
And I didn’t even notice! Which is funny because I’ve been fixated on the end for a solid 3 years now. And it was 3 years of scope bloat. At first it was the things I needed to make the place safe, like this chimney. (This is behind my bookcases in April 2014) To the “while…
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This reminded my mom of that terrible old show where women would tell their tale of woe and the one with the saddest story would win stuff. Can you guess why? It’s not because my life is impressively sad. No, it has something to do with my washer and dryer. And the big priority was…
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First of all, that last post was totally fake. Maybe my April Fools jokes are too subtle, but if you may notice that I did many, many things that were not cost effective to try to preserve or recreate my house’s character, and the facade is the very last thing I would want to modernize.…
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It’s been a while since I’ve written. But I’m finally done with those doors! They’re now stacked up in a closet upstairs again. For new progress, I’ve moved on to getting ready to spray paint. It might seem like I’m jumping around for no good reason, but (and I’m not going to name names) someone…
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I learned from being in the Crooked House that favors are a form of currency that can be held, exchanged, and transferred at will. I don’t know if this is because he’s Irish, he’s crazy, or he works in the building trades. Maybe it takes all of those things. But I learned from it and brought a…
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Yep, I’m finally back onto doing stuff. All my upstairs doors are now stripped of paint! A few that were never painted still need their varnish stripped! How did I manage this so fast? I found a corner to cut. I’m not doing anything to the back sides of the sliding closet doors. They’ll remain…
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Now that I’m getting toward the end of my burnout, it’s time to remember that the to do list before having the floors sanded is getting tantalizingly short. And none of it is going to cost me much! That’s important right now. I basically have to spray paint the radiators and furniture that I’m doing…
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What was the problem? We finally figured it out. It wasn’t that I drove a screw through a pipe when installing the sink. It also wasn’t that the Irishman did any damage with his power nailer. (And when I dropped by to offer this suggestion he didn’t take too kindly to the idea.) No, it…
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The start of the weekend was ordinary. I decided that yes, I do like that green in the bedroom. The photos I took at night show the color better even though the room looks better now. Even my dad, who is not a green person, likes it now. (Actually he had told me to ignore…
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My dad came down and helped me bang out some painting yesterday and today. We did the bathroom, all 4 closets, and the ceilings in the upstairs hall and back bedroom. Both colors I got in the back bedroom were MUCH darker than I was expecting. I don’t know if that photo shows the colors.…
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