Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
First of, how was Puerto Rico? It was really great. I don’t know what to say about it so I’ll leave you with some pictures. Back to cold Pennsylvania and the shutters. We’ve been leaning the lower tiers against the windows for privacy while I procrastinated on the uppers. So I laid them out in…
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6 years ago today I bought the Crooked House. 3 years ago (not quite to the day) I finished my 6-month renovation and moved in. In Year 6, I finally faced my fear of the facade and took it on. At the start, I was afraid to take the awnings down. The windows were horribly…
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So far, I haven’t done much. In the 1920’s or 30’s someone redid all the woodwork downstairs and put deep sills right over the original 19th Century sills. I stripped these, trimmed them to fit in the slightly modified openings, and added little blocks of wood to get them level. Look how crooked the original…
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The first time I drooled over pocket shutters was, I think, at the Winterthur Museum when I was about 5. So naturally, when I found evidence suggesting the Crooked House originally had them, I was hoping for a way to recreate them. But I figured I could never justify the price of having them made…
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I want to take a look at the front wall before I bought the house. But first, here’s what it looks like now. And here’s one of those few I remaining spots where the before was nicer, at least in some ways. The casing on the left window was super super crooked even though the…
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I’ve felt a little bit guilty about how much more say I had with the house Tito lives in than he has. He sold off most of his furniture. I decided down to the inch where every door was going. He said, “And you’re so good at it.” So that made me feel better. He’s…
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It’s been hectic people. The last time I updated the blog I was frantic to finish painting the exterior trim and my parents gave up an entire weekend to save me. Since then this stuff has happened: Got all the construction stuff put away and thoroughly cleaned the house. Had my mother and grandmother in…
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This is my “Oh shit it’s fall” post, part 2. The wood: I had kinda put it on hold because the Abatron Liquid Wood epoxy consolidant I used looked so thick and shiny on the surface. And because the brick needed months of attention. Anyways, I did a few rounds of the epoxy consolidant and…
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Whelp, fall showed up this week. And remember how I never finished spray foaming the windows? Well, Tito was watching TV and said, “Babe, these windows are drafty!” So I had to fix that STAT. And light the boiler. Thankfully, this year started differently than past ones in that the heat works and making it…
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Don’t be fooled by my previous post. I don’t know everything. I’m just some guy who teaches himself how to do things on the Internet. And I had a non-standard situation to work with here. With Window Number 1, we had (and spoiler: resoved) a catastrophe. But only briefly. First off, I spray foamed the…
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