Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
Well, yes. working on the kitchen the last time around was miserable and I wanted to do as little as possible and get on with my life. But still. We’ve been living with woodwork that was just primed and then partly sanded off and marked up with the Irishman’s notes and further damaged from years…
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Remember how I said I’d put dowels in the wall for the picture rail? Well that’s the first thing I did since last week’s post. It really wasn’t hard! But it made a HUGE mess. I closed the door and walked away from this. So is that peak dirt? Not quite yet. I had 3…
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For anyone who is new to this blog, welcome! I’m excited to participate in the One Room Challenge for my first and (in this house) last time. So far, I’ve been more of a tear the whole house apart and live in chaos and filth for years kind of a guy. The front bedroom is…
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I’ve had a little bit of clutter in the back yard pretty much nonstop since I bought the house. Occasionally while I was working there was a lot of clutter. Now I’m down to a small stack of Belgian blocks back behind where I keep the grill and trash cans. Also, the dirt on the…
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First of, how was Puerto Rico? It was really great. I don’t know what to say about it so I’ll leave you with some pictures. Back to cold Pennsylvania and the shutters. We’ve been leaning the lower tiers against the windows for privacy while I procrastinated on the uppers. So I laid them out in…
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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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The first time I drooled over pocket shutters was, I think, at the Winterthur Museum when I was about 5. So naturally, when I found evidence suggesting the Crooked House originally had them, I was hoping for a way to recreate them. But I figured I could never justify the price of having them made…
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So, I have 2 new windows in place, but neither of them really finished. Here’s how that went. (I did one per day so I’m consolidating a bit.) First off came the cheapie plastic blinds and the sheets of 1/8″ Eucaboard that I used to cheaply cover up just how much of a mess the…
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That’s right, everything is picked out now! A few weeks ago when I was getting neurotic deciding whether or not the windows should have muntins like I originally planned, or not like the house was originally, Tito looked confused about why this even mattered because he didn’t think it would look that different. Blog readers…
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