Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
Not quite. I tallied up what’s in the archives and found that this is the 14th post about the kitchen and the 7th that’s more about planning it than building it. I figured that since the IKEA cabinet scare forced the issue this week, I may as well finish the job (of planning it). But first,…
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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.
You remember I said I had to cut notches for 5 beams at the other wall in my kitchen? Well, the Irishman did it. He did the same thing I would have done, but probably 3 times as fast. I’m not a master carpenter Here’s how it worked. First the piece at the top of…
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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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This weekend I got about half as much done as I had hope to. How many of you are surprised? Believe it or not, the Irishman is. You see, everything in the house is so crooked and wonky that he underestimated what he was up against. Scribing and cutting 2×3’s into wedge shaped shims everywhere!…
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Yep, my neighbor was right. We did it in a day! (With the help of 5 evenings of prep.) It went well. The brick was in good shape but easy to cut. It was easy to square the sub sill. And it looks amazing. But let’s start at the beginning. The first step to tearing…
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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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