Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
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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This isn’t the same kind of a surprise as I found under the basement stairs. I’m lucky enough to live near LimeWorks, which might be THE place to go for historic, non-Portland cement based masonry products and techniques in the United States. They’ve recommended a number of things for restoring my facade, starting with making…
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A quick review – I found the original brick mold in place and mostly in good shape under the aluminum capping around all 4 of my front windows. It has an unusual shape, very narrow when viewed head on, but deep and with an interesting profile. Also, look how badly the first floor windows slant…
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Sorry, I’ve had some technical difficulties trying to write this post. But anyways, I’ve had some good and bad news. The good? I’m officially done cleaning the brick! The bad? I’m done because further tests haven’t shown any noticeable improvement. My house looks a little dirty next to the house next door… and next to…
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We can breathe a big sigh! It’s been 4 months of early mornings and tedious work. But the brick probably hasn’t looked this good in 50 years. It looks extra good from a distance, but the cleaning didn’t get it completely perfect. I’d call this satisfactory, but if it’s feasible to do even better I’m…
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Quick progress update. I’m still plugging away at the paint removal. We’re getting there. Now let’s look at the condition of the facade. This weekend I used the scary caustic stripper again and got MOST of the caked in white paint out of the marble. Some small dots remain. I could do it again to…
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I’ve been in the habit of doing one task at a time to the whole house. This made sense when I was trying to be ready for ALL the plumbing, wiring, insulation contracting, drywall finishing, and floor finishing at once to get better prices from tradesmen. It made less sense when I decided to go…
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It started off well enough. I got the 2 parking spots in front of my house! This is super important for not getting sued. And my dad found safety gear. This Tyvek suit is older than I am. It smells like garage. The plan was to start with a few test patches and take it…
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My time this week went to some much needed filing, not to stuff you’d want to read about. But I did do something with the front of my house. I stuck my head out the window. That’s not much, but I haven’t looked too closely at the upper half of the brick what with a 13-foot-wide…
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If you’ve been with me for a while, you might recall that I wrote a mini-dissertation on my plans to restore the facade in Summer 2016. Here it is, if you want to read these old posts again: Existing Conditions A Cornice Vocabulary Primer How not to restore historic masonry In With Old Windows? But…
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