Chad's Crooked House

Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse

Planning Post Part 2: Making the Cabinets Fit

Now we’re on to the part that’s (maybe) fun to plan. Fitting in the things that actually make it a kitchen.

Planning the Kitchen Part 1: Door and Window Openings

Yep, it’s coming soon! Well my kitchen walls are anyway. I have a LOT of small things to take care of first, one of which is planning obsessing over important imperceptible details. Yeah, I found a little more complication in the midst of blitzing the finish work, but for better or for worse, I brought…
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Progress, driving me up the (dry)wall

How bratty am I allowed to be? I spent a lot of time complaining about not making progress. Now? I’m going to complain about too much. Why? Because things have been a frenzy. I wanted a break after the patio door. Instead, the Irishman stepped into my house and said, “We should Sheetrock the living…
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Patio Door Post 3: The Aftermath

So before the patio door was going in I was starting to get junk out of the living room and restore some level of order to the house. Then that whirlwind of a week getting the door in a week sooner than I expected, and suddenly HOLYCRAPHOWDIDTHISHAPPEN???? The good news is it’s going away quickly.…
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Patio Door – In!

Yep, my neighbor was right. We did it in a day! (With the help of 5 evenings of prep.) It went well. The brick was in good shape but easy to cut. It was easy to square the sub sill. And it looks amazing. But let’s start at the beginning. The first step to tearing…
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Patio Door Post 1: The calm before the storm

I’ve wanted to put in this patio door all along for the light and a better kitchen layout. But actually spending money on it scared me. I started getting estimates, and then my next door neighbor, who is a master carpenter, offered to do it with me and my dad at a big discount. I…
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Putting the rooms in the bedrooms… and the beds too!

Yes, you read right. The last week and a half has been a drywalling blitz. It upset me terrible not to mention this in the last post, but there’s so much visible stuff going on I we needed a post taking the long view. As of now, the back bedroom is done! My roommate’s moved…
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Seasons change and so does my work

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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Upstairs: Floored!

Yep, as of today, they’re done! (pretty much.) And some fun things had to happen for this. After I got to a certain point in the room, I didn’t have enough boards that were the same width to run the length of the room, so I was coming up really, really short. Off to the…
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Drumroll please… a big milestone this week!

My plumber’s been in! That’s right, I have a working bathroom! Now it’s not all good news. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to tile all the way up to the valve, so my plumber got to have fun chipping out my work to make the trim piece fit. And he couldn’t make the one I wanted…
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