Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
I learned from being in the Crooked House that favors are a form of currency that can be held, exchanged, and transferred at will. I don’t know if this is because he’s Irish, he’s crazy, or he works in the building trades. Maybe it takes all of those things. But I learned from it and brought a…
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I was a little bit of a load the weekend before last, so I’m not as far along as I’d want to be. But that’s ok because now Sherwin Williams is having a March Makeover Madness sale. Someone needs to talk to them about these names. I think I’ve chosen my paint, but have to…
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People told me it would take 3 or 4 hours to roll primer onto every wall in the house with the electric roller. People lied. I was at it about that long last Saturday but got fed up and decided to pack things up and finish the next day. And then… I RAN OUT OF…
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I’ve decided that this round of heavy-handed repairs that took over the whole house should be called Phase 1. Phase 2 will be a bunch of smaller projects that can be done independently of each other… after I take a good long break. Anyways, if I want to make this sound fast and easy, I…
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Yes, it’s already over. If you remember, I ended year 1 with the house torn apart. Most of the functional things were in, but most of the visible things that make the house look good were not. I wrote 3 posts last year to commemorate the paper anniversary. This year the anniversary should be cotton, but…
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It’s nothing lame like dinner and a movie.* It’s gonna work like this. At the end of the month, Mario comes in. He’ll have another guy or two with him. I hand him a bank envelope. They’ll be in and out in about 2 hours. Wham. Bam. All the walls in my entire house will be…
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Whoo hoo! The hall done! (ish) And still crooked. If you were hoping to see boughs of holly on this blog, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Next year I’ll put up real Christmas decorations. This year, you can see a wreath though.
Not really. I’ve put a moratorium on a few things including working on other people’s houses and clothes shopping since I bought the Crooked House. And another pair of work pants just fell apart this week. So before we talk about actual work I have a story that’s too good not to share. I was…
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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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So you saw last time that my floor patches were kind of terrifyingly unsupported because it looked better that way. After I wrote that my dad and I fixed the problem by putting subflooring up from the living room. Yep, fun job. Before that could happen, out came the old gas light lines.