Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
So I’ve had a pattern. Do project, burn out, take time off, start 2 new projects. I was around that point in the cycle 2 weeks ago and, well, it was pretty obvious that sooner or later I need to finish painting the kitchen cabinets, get the knobs on, and get glass in the doors.…
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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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I’ve decided to move the end of summer back to sometime in the past week. It’s been warm and that lines up the change in seasons with big shifts in my house. This shift feels like a bit of a cleanse, as the piles of junk and mess are starting to shrink. Everything about how…
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Get your minds out of the gutter, folks. I’m talking about painting of course! That shirt’s really taken a beating. Mostly because the back of my house has all kinds of awkward tight spaces. You’ve probably seen before that I needed to hop the property line to lean a ladder against the side of the…
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This is probably the last you’ll see of my siding before the back side is really done. My agonizing over paint colors is done and culminated in going with the ballsiest suggestion I got, painting the siding (a slightly grayed out) navy blue. One criticism this idea got was that it would make my house…
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Well first of all, some good news: my roofer came and finished my fascia! Yay! And now some bad news: I’m unimpressed with how it looks.
That’s right, I started off with talking about pretty things, but I’m gonna go through the back story before we talk about paint colors. Skip to the bottom if you want. Making the back pretty (for real) is my next step! The bay on the back of the house is also the part of the…
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Not Christmas, thank God. I’ll take the summer for now. Instead of garlands, we’re hanging clapboards. And they look good! Hardieplank, just like any wood siding, goes in from the bottom up. And to start it you need a shim so that the first board slopes out properly. After that each board laps over the…
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Well, today is Father’s Day. I know we all should show our appreciation to our fathers, but I think I’m forced to point out that mine’s better. I may have attempted to move the holiday up 2 weeks to suit my schedule (and do something he liked), but he didn’t have to work outside all…
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Remember the list of things I planned to do in May? It’s looking like I should have one of the three done in June. I’ve ordered Hardiplank siding for the cantilevered bay on the back. This is basically a mixture of sawdust, sand, and cement, similar to asbestos shingles but without the asbestos, that looks…
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