Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
My sister and I were lucky enough to find vintage Wagner Ware cast iron skillets in my grandmother’s basement. The skillets hadn’t been so lucky though. After going unused possibly for decades, they were covered in an impressively nasty crust. Then my sister’s boyfriend got a Griswold Dutch oven from his grandmother’s basement. These are…
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There’s not much room for surprises in a high-rise condo with concrete ceilings, is there? Not much, but there’s some. Remember how I said the carpeting was beat and grimy? It turns out that the padding under it had also hardened into some strange mealy substance that was stuck to the floors and had to…
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I’m sorry my last post ended so suspensefully. Here’s the best material I’ve got from the condo, so I hope this makes up for it. To start, my parents (sometimes with my help) made some decisions about the kitchen to just get it done: The cabinets, countertops, and appliances all came from Home Depot. There…
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We’re going back about 8 years. My mom had wanted my grandmother to downsize for about as long as I can remember, but come hell or high water, Nana was staying put. In fact, she complained constantly that it was too small. She was 40 minutes away (without traffic), had to carry her laundry up 2…
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I took 2 extra days off this weekend – the longest vacation I’ve had in ages. And I spent it in New York doing a side gig. My friend Maxim just moved into a new apartment and he wanted to turn his living room into a bedroom he can rent out. This is the third…
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You know what they say about the best laid plans. Much like those wacky ideas I had about putting 20% down and starting an IRA after confirming that my house didn’t need much work, the furniture painting project was not to be. In this case, the culprit is once again old, beat-up, and painted red.…
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