Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
Of course I have a lot to do at home, but my parents needed help, too. They bought new shrubs for 2 beds that they had to overhaul and were eager to get them in the ground. One, we lost a beloved beech tree. Its memory lives on thanks to Google Street View. It was…
Read more
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…
Read more
After renting the back bedroom to a friend for a year and a half, I’m really moving up in the world. I have a guest room (Project 10)! First off, wow. When she moved in last April, I was scrambling to finish things that now I’d call basic necessities, like the drawers in the kitchen.…
Read more
Current 30 Projects in 30 Days count is 9. First I finally finished nailing the lath up to the house (Project 6). Between the casings, the tar paper, and the lath, the stucco prep took over 2 months. (Recycled photo but you get the idea.) And here it is with the stucco up (Project 7)!…
Read more
First off, I can already tell that I’ll be re-defining what a project is. There were a lot of things on my list. Second of all, it’s been a struggle lately to go to the gym, cook healthy food, and keep up with house work, let alone do remodeling on weeknights. But today I doubled…
Read more
I’ve never thought it worked for me to participate in blogger things like the One Room Challenge. Starting a room and finishing it in the same year? That’s not how things work in the Crooked House. And even my parents, who raised me with more normal DIY remodeling, leave rooms unfinished until they redo them…
Read more
Like I said before, I want the stucco to wrap around the corner where the downspout hides the ugly control joint. But there’s a problem. The cast iron pipe connecting my downspout to the sewer angles in toward the house so the top is right up against it. It’s original to the house (1890’s) and…
Read more
Yes, I’ve decided to drop everything and do something else. You’re probably wondering what I was thinking. Well, first I was having trouble with my garbage disposal. It would drain slowly and clog up often, so I’d have to run it just about every time I used the sink and use the little wrench to…
Read more
It’s happening, people! But it’s happening very slowly. No stucco yet! I should have known after it took 7 weeks to get fiber cement siding onto the bay in 2014. First, we had to flash around the patio door. This is one of those “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” jobs. We used ProtectoWrap, which…
Read more
My parents wanted to do my dad’s office on a shoestring budget (though they did put a little money into 3 days of Irish labor), so they happily took some free stuff. I picked an office chair out of the trash at work and my aunt happened to have a good Oriental rug in her…
Read more