Decking the hall
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.
Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
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.
It’s a common sight in South Philly. But usually it’s being taken out to landfill, not in. The good news is, the woodwork is great quality, the price was good, and it’s in 16 foot lengths. All the baseboards in the house should have just one seam. Except in the closets where I’ll throw together…
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So my kitchen is coming together. The sink and interior doorway walls are mostly done, but the fridge/stove and patio door walls are not. You might remember this framing for the soffit on that side. Gotta love the crookendess, right? So to resume work in the kitchen I started with building this:
Yes, it’s getting close, but extra hard toward the end. First on Saturday I freaked out about the Irishman starting work while I was helping my dad fix his car, even though it turned out that everything he did without me was FINE. But I got down there to help/micromanage him for the second half…
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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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Now we’re on to the part that’s (maybe) fun to plan. Fitting in the things that actually make it a kitchen.
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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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.
Flooring progress has been slow and mostly more of the same. I decided to take out a few more damaged floorboards in the front bedroom; we’re better at it now. And reinforcing them from below, a two person job, hasn’t started yet. Instead, I did a floor reinstallation dry run in the back bedroom to…
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