Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse
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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I jumped the gun on this project a little – and now I’m glad I did. We have too many travel plans for our own good this fall, I have a lot of DIY work to do, and some other jobs were harder to coordinate than I would have expected. First, I came to grips…
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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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Do you get the pun? Anyways, it wasn’t too long ago that I was doing mental backflips to be satisfied with an obviously inauthentic door because it’s mahogany and it’s there and I can’t get a 30 year mortgage on a replacement. Then I bought a period door, but the jambs started bothering me. So…
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The brick may be the biggest stripping job. Way bigger than I thought it was. But don’t forget the wood. I was super excited about how restorable it was… But it still needed restoration. And how to restore it? I decided from other paint removal projects went that heat was better than chemicals. Best would…
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This is an important question and I want lots of advice. I’m… ordering windows! Very exciting! And I want the windows I can to be at least somewhat respectful of the architecture of the house. To review, really cheap vinyl windows. Cheap vinyl windows that are showing their age because they are 20 years old…
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The colors I showed last week were a good jumping off point. By the time I shared this, I was already pretty much sold on dark window sashes though. It’s a more historically accurate look that I might have been scared of 5 years ago, but now I’ve warmed up to it. Also, my boyfriend…
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I’ve been holding out on you. I had some paint color ideas sketched into the Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer that I never bothered to show you in 5 years. But now that I’m pretty sure the brick will be unpainted we may as well have a look. But first, some of what I wanted to do:…
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