Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
I’m having a problem in WordPress – most of my pages are all fine when I edit them but don’t show up when I publish and I can’t figure out why. The house tour can stay broken for now, but the h. Studs too short? Cut blocks of wood and/or stack up scraps of plywood to…
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I haven’t done anything to the front yet, but the plan is to restore it as close as possible to its original appearance. I’ll restore the original brick and marble, eliminate the plague of aluminum siding and awnings, restore or replicate the original wood trim, install wood windows (new or old). You can read more…
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Upstairs, the house had the original Victorian trim. I was kinda thrilled to have unique woodwork in not 1 but 2 unique styles. Sadly, almost half of it was missing or butchered, I made changes that required more, and what did survive I couldn’t get off the walls unbroken. So out it went and I…
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This was the first room I worked on. Of course it didn’t look too bad at the start. I got talked into the exposed brick on the stairway side and thought that this was going to nearly double what I had to do before moving in. Of course I doubled the scope several more times…
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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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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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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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