Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
I had goals of fiscal responsibility. Finance the renovation completely out of pocket. And when that failed, pay off the credit card while it’s still interest free. And when that failed, transfer the balance. It seemed like my scheme to give the banks $0 of interest payments was gonna work. And then I had to…
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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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My dad came today and we got the lower part of the stairway wall primed! Old house purists: before you bite my head off for painting my woodwork, the first floor interior is a Colonial Revival style remodel from the 1930’s and had always been painted. But getting it back to this point seemed insurmountable.…
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I’m having a problem in WordPress – most of my pages are all fine when I edit them but don’t show up when I publish and I can’t figure out why. The house tour can stay broken for now, but the h. Studs too short? Cut blocks of wood and/or stack up scraps of plywood 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’ve had a great time doing things that are not remodeling. Really. But I also want to get some things done sooner or later. Plus, I didn’t have a lot going on this weekend, so it was back at it. I was staring at dust bunnies under a table in the living room a couple…
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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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The front bedroom is the least changed room in the house. To start, it had a crazy 1-foot-deep closet and a door connecting it to the middle bedroom, which is now the bathroom. So there was enough of the middle bedroom left over to get me a good closet, but I needed a bigger door opening than…
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