Baltimore Rowhouse

Basement Complete

2011-08-04T07:50:00.002-04:00

At last glance, the basement was framed and electrical rough in complete. Not pretty, but well along. At this point, I can proudly say the space is complete. We brought in a contractor to hang and finish the drywall as well as hang and trim the doors. At the time, I was unsure of using contractors, but in the end I'm glad we did this. The price was reasonable and in the tight timeline of getting the place rented out we needed this done quickly.

The contractors finished up on Thursday. Friday through Sunday we had a lot of help from the Bro in Law (BIL) and Sister in Law (SIL). By the time the dust settled and the carpet was installed, we went from a space with drywall and doors hung to this.

We are still amazed of the transformations. The ceiling height is only around 6'6" but thankfully it doesn't feel too short. I wish it were taller but it wasn't worth the extra money of digging it out. We painted it the same color as the master bedroom, and are glad we did so. We painted the area underneath the return duct semi-gloss white for contrast and to the right you can see how the window and bench turned out.

Looking back from the front of the house toward the stairs is the door to the utility closet to the left, the door to the unfinished area in the middle, and to the right the stairs up to the first floor.

Thus far our only regret is that we didn't do it sooner. With buying the new place we won't ever have a chance to truly enjoy this basement. Hopefully our renter enjoys it, and looking back, it is quite an improvement.

Basement Framing & Electrical Rough-In Complete

2011-07-24T09:55:00.004-04:00

Now that we are under contract on the new place, the basement renovation kicks into high gear. Much like in December of 2008 when we decided to refinance our mortgage and creating a deadline to finish renovations, we are now in a similar position. We want our house occupied by a renter on 9/1. Yowza. With a basement under construction, a new house upcoming, a trip to Irelend, and finding out what the hell we need to do to rent the place the next month will be crazy. Time to kick things in gear...

In keeping with this, we are bringing in some help on the drywall. We got a bunch of quotes that were surprisingly reasonable. We ended up picking a mid-cost quote of a guy that I trusted. We then got him to throw in a bunch of extra work like hanging all the door jambs and doors and fixing a three switch that had gotten the best of me. An aside, when picking contractors, I usually go with my gut. This is never the high cost bidder, but usually someone at the mid to low end that will end up working with me a bit. This sometimes means quality is 90% instead of 100% but the lower costs have been things that I've been able to help fix.

Here is where we stand. Coming down the stairs, all the paneling, plaster and lathe, and most importantly the stairs were ripped out and recessed lights on a 3 way switch were put in. It looks great now.

During the renovation it didn't look as good. I was hoping to keep the stairs as is, but after looking at them in detail they needed to be replaced. They literally bounced when you walked on them and were held up by about 6 nails total. Scary. Luckily, my amazing father agreed flew in from Detroit to help frame the basement and (little did he know at the time) replace the stairs. This basement would not be done if not for him. As you can see, the stairs were scary.

Walking to the bottom of the stairs and looking out things look much different than before. Before, it was a pile of crap.

The view looks much better now. All the recessed lights are in, the plumbing lines and electrical to the second floor have all been rerouted to increase the headroom, and insulation is in place to help isolate the sound from the first floor living room.

A look back at the stairs and portion of the remaining basement that will remain shows the recessed lights back in that area. I put the lights on a motion sensing/IR switch so when you walk in the space with your arms full of laundry you don't need to find a switch. We were talking about making a bar or closet in the area to the left but now that we are going to rent the space, this isn't a priority.

To the right of the stairs is the framing around the HVAC. I added a small step at the bottom of the stairs to steer you toward the center of the room and away from the framing around the HVAC return. I was going to put a custom wine rack in this area, but again, this isn't a priority at this point. I added electricals circuit here in case I want to get fancy in the future with lighting the wine or potenially add a small bar over here.

Walking a few steps forward, you can see more of what the living space will look like. A small closet is on the left, and I made a bench underneath the window to fill this dead space. On the right, there is a storage area that is accessed through the utility room door. Originally I was going to just do a soffit in this area, but the HVAC and water heater exhaust would still have been too low to make this area usable so I just closed this space in. The soffit change resulted swapping the seating area to the left instead of the right, but it shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Looking back toward the stairs you can see this utility room. This room required moving the water heater to allow one door to be able to service the equipment while allowing space into the closet space to the left.

While overall I don't like using contractors, it is nice to know that by the end of this week the drywall will be in and mudded and all doors hung. As I type, guys are loading drywall into the house. Hopefuly it will be hung with a first coat of mud in place by the end of today. :-)

The New Casa: A Sneak Peak

2011-07-22T17:10:00.004-04:00

We considered buying a "shell" and having a contractor do the work to finish it. After we found this house for a good deal, we knew this was the house for us. Take a peak.

Here is the outside of the house, which is just fine. No great curb appeal. Since this picture was taken they painted the trim black and the door a nice gray.

Through the front door is the living room, with a small 1/2 bath on the right. The ceilings are 12-14' tall on this floor, so while this house is the same width as our (about 12' interior), the ceiling height helps make it feel larger.

At the back of the house is the kitchen and dining room. The stairs of the house are in the middle, bisecting the space. Since they are an open stair it helps to make things still feel open. The kitchen has nice cabinets, counters, appliances, and a pretty good overall design.

Here is the second floor layout, showing the two bedrooms each with their own bathrooms. Also, having the washer and dryer on this floor is pretty nice.

I can't pull the pics of the bedrooms into this post, but both they and the baths are pretty nice. Here is a sample of the bathrooms. Overall the tile quality is good in all of the 4.5 bathrooms. I don't know what we are going to do with all of those bathrooms, but the more the merrier?

The third floor is what we fell in love with. It is a master suite with the bedroom at the front, the master bath in the back, and a wet bar leading out to the rooftop deck. Here is the landing, looking forward toward the bedroom.

Turning around 180 degrees and you have the wetbar to the rooftop deck.

There is a small deck landing on this level, and then up you go one more level to the main deck area. It has view of the harbor and will be great to watch fireworks from. :-)

The front of the third floor is the master bedroom, with a nice big walk-in closet with a glass panel door. All the bedrooms have recessed lighting and ceiling fans, and the master has the nice coffered ceiling.

The master bath at the back of the third level has a double vanity, a soaking tub, and to the left of the vanity there is a stand up shower with a bunch of a jets and a floating glass door.

Also, the ~~mancave~~basement is fully finished and runs the length of the house. It also has a full bathroom, just in case I need to shower in my mancave. You never know...

We have a parking space in the back, but our one major thing we gave up with this house was a yard. :-( For more pictures of the house, including the full floor plans check out the virtual tour.

Thus far, all things are heading smoothly, so hopefully all continutes to go well and we'll be moving in a little over a month.

Updated Mechanicals

2011-07-19T23:38:00.001-04:00

After looking at the blog, I noticed a draft I never completed. So I finished it. :-)

Looking back to '08, I was considering a new HVAC system. Our system was old, energy usage was up, and the system wasn't keeping up with the heat and cold. I should have redone the system then. But I didn't. And it continued to get worse.

Last October the furnace went down, and since we were in a better financial position than we were in '08 we decided to update the system. Since we had issues with both the furnace and the A/C it was time to update both. I got quotes, and ended up going with a SEER 16 2.5 ton unit outside, and a 80% efficient gas furnace inside. All said and done the costs came in at $5100. We then got $600 in rebates from Rheem, $500 from the State of Maryland and an additional $350 from BGE. With the combination of the SEER 16 outdoor unit and 80% efficient indoor unit, we were also eligible for $1500 in tax credits. What originally was a ludicrous cost became a manageable cost, especially since replacing the equipment late in the year minimized the time between our payment and subsequent tax return. Also, by negotiating our deal in late fall the HVAC companies were looking for work which allowed us room to negotiate.

While the up front costs were high, overall it was a good decision that I wish we would have done sooner. I don't know if we will ever get the money back for this, but doing this change two years later than we should have cost us a lot in extra energy bills. If I had to do it all over again I would have done it sooner.

Also, as we were looking at the HVAC upgrades we realized our ducts were undersized. Especially our return ducts upstairs. We decided not to undertake this task yet, as we wanted to see how much just changing out the units helped. While it has definitely lowered our costs, at times I can tell we need more air changeover upstairs. In the long run I think this task is something that should be done, but for the next few years it is definitely on the back burner.

And the Saga Continues...

2011-07-18T22:50:00.010-04:00

While some news of late hasn't been good, there have also been some positive developments too. The largest development as of late has been that we are now under contract for a new house. :-D

It is the three story house on the left. Isn't it beautiful? Yeah, not so much. But that is the before picture, and we are definitely purchasing this place in after condition. So, after renovating a house ourselves, why are we buying a renovated house, and more importantly why this house? Here are a few reasons:

and

Most importantly, I'm glad this blog will be able to continue, though probably more in a decorating/life updates stance versus a ohmygodicantbelieveimdestroyingthewholehouseblog. Hopefully this is ok.

At this point, we are hoping all contingencies are met and there aren't any issues that prevent the sale. We will keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best, and will keep you posted along the way.

P.S. I swear I'll post some pictures of the basement soon. It is framed, electrical run, and sound insulation in place. You'll have to trust me on this since there are no pictures.

Dear Grandma

2011-07-17T20:47:00.008-04:00

I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to say a proper goodbye. I was glad to hear that mom and dad were by your side when your time came and that it was peaceful. I'm also happy that after 31 years, you'll once again be reunited with Jerry. I wish I could have met him.

I want to remember all the good stories and times past. Like in Hawaii how we drove around with Aunt Harriett on the hunt for the perfect Mai Tai. And how happy Leigh and I were that you made it to our wedding. Or how when I threw fishfood at your feet and you called me a little shit (you were right, I was). And when after the in-laws came to visit Michigan you begrudgingly told them they were alright. The thought of no new memories with you in them is a tough pill to swallow.

While I wish I was there to say goodbye, most of all I'm just flat out going to miss you. I'm going to miss the sound of your giggle, the sight of you pushing your walker/chariot around with a martini on it, and your voice on a phone call. You always ended the call reminding me how proud you were of me. I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day, and Leigh and I would talk about how postively sweet you were. My heart keeps hoping you'll call but in my head I know that memories will have to suffice.

G-ma - I'm glad that your pain is over, but I'm really going to miss you. And most of all I am proud to have known you.

Love,

Corey

King Sized Bed Leads to Massive Upheaval

2011-04-03T19:23:00.005-04:00

When you last saw the bedroom, it looked like this.

While we definitely finished it off after that, and promptly forgot to take pictures, we then moved on to the next project. For years we lusted after king sized beds, but didn't think one would fit. We found a way around this and took the plunge. This started a massive upheaval in the bedroom design... Now that the house is pretty well done our style has shifted away from purely modern, and more toward something cozier. For the bedroom, the Queen was inspired by Restoration Hardware. We quickly tired of the bright blue wall and wanted something calming, so she picked the color palette from there, and we DIY'd a few pieces from there. Here is the inspiration.

And here is our final product.

Even Wally approves, and in this photo there is also a sneak peak of a future blog post... We even took time to finally put up crown molding.

We copied the headboard from the Wallace Headboard and redid a couple of dressers we snagged from craigslist to mimic the Zinc Dresser. I thought about making a bedframe myself, but decided it would be too much work so we bought the narrow leg bed frame from west elm.

While the bedding is actually from Restoration HW, it was on sale so we didn't feel too bad about it. :-) The Queen also picked up a new mirror from Home Goods, which matched the paint color and style perfectly. We also took the plunge and decided to paint our mantle the same color as the wall, and we are extremely pleased with the decision.

For the next post we'll talk a little bit more about the headboard and our restoration of the dressers. Both projects took quite a bit of time, but at a price savings of $4,200 off Restoration Hardware we are quite pleased. We are also waiting for a huge 50" x 35" vintage map of Istanbul that will be placed over the bed. Once the map is in place this room is considered complete.

Pit of Despair Design

2011-03-28T22:39:00.005-04:00

Now that you've seen the pit in all of its unfinished glory, here are some explanations of the space.

Pay special attention to my return duct in the way of the stairs and the pile of crap on the floor. Also notice the plumbing and electrical conduit lines underneath the joints through the middle of the space. It will be lovely rerouting this. I greatly look forward to this endeavor... Also, as we go forward please be patient with my adjustment of the space to make sure it ~~corrects for my screwing up the initial measurements~~ accurately represents what is really there. For instance, in the following picture I screwed up the return vent width at the foot of the stairs showing it as 24" long when it is really 61" long. Oops.

Here you can see the overall space and the new doors to the gas meter (it says "water meter", but I screwed up), the door to the water heater (I actually got this right). To the right side of this door is the furnace. On the right side is the new door back to the unfinished portion of the basement. Planning around the many obstacles is creating dead areas, and the fun part is figuring out ways to minimize these areas to maximize usable floor space. For instance, to use the space to the left of the stairs underneath the return vent that juts 24" below the joist I've thought about adding a bar counter high enough to add some glasses and a mini fridge.

I'm not sure what else I can do with this low space, other than adding a wine rack or something of the like. Also take a peek to the left to see where I put the couch, which is a way to use the 5'-6" height underneath the supply vent without eating into the space. I put it on this side of the house as I want a chaise or an L shaped couch and the new closet for the ~~water~~ gas meter means I can't put an L/chaise here. If I put the couch in space shown, it uses the dead space forward of the gas meter as a place to put the TV on the opposite wall. This is shown in the next picture where I was too lazy to create actual built in shelves in sketchup and instead just show an orange call out where I'd put the shelves. Hopefully you all have excellent imaginations.

The custom built-ins would create extra work for me and while I probably wouldn't get them 100% right it would allow me some good practice. The bad news about this is it would pretty much take up this whole wall. With the door to the gas meter where it is I'm not sure what else I could really put in this area though. In this view I also added a notional space for a closet in the dead space between the stairs and the unfinished portion of the basement. This could serve as a good space to hang winter/summer clothes during the off season, and since the space is so narrow I'm not sure what else I could use it for... One layout I'm considering for resale purporses is to create a space separate from the stairs that I can market as a bedroom in the future.

Making a wall here creates a deadspace at the bottom of the landing. While I can fill part of this space with a closet, it really chops up the space. That said, a chopped up space that creates an extra bedroom in a two bedroom house is something that deserves consideration.

Well, now that you've seen the space what are your thoughts? It would be nice to hear some opinions on how you would configure the space. I'm not sold on any specific design and am curious to hear peoples' opionions. Please help! :-)

Basement Beginnings

2011-03-27T23:04:00.005-04:00

Instead of spending the last couple of years renovating, I've been off getting married, getting fat, and doing many things other than renovating. But now it's time to get back to work. In the past few months the Queen and I have been busy finishing up the crown molding upstairs, redoing the bedroom in a Restoration Hardware style, and have started to finish the basement. The first two items will be covered in later posts, but for this post I'll focus on the basement. Or from now on, I'll call it the pit of despair, or just the pit. The pit has been so horrendously scary for the past couple of years we've been afraid to do anything with it. Check it out...

Scary, eh? And this is after I spent a long time cleaning it and selling a ton of crap on craigslist. After making it so I can actually see the floor I have motivation to now cover it with plushy carpet and make it ~~my mancave~~ a non-gender specific den. I have so much motivation that I told my father about it and ask him to come in from Michigan in a few weeks to help renovate it. Oh yeah, it's on like Donkey Kong...

In normal spaces renovation is pretty straight forward as there are usually flat floors and ceiling free of obstructions, and you are usually nailing into all wooden surfaces. Not in a basement. My basement has a crusty old uneven floor, the height is about 6 and a 1/2 feet to the joist, and the edges of the rooms are an obstacle course of ducts, plumbing and other goodies. To get ready for this I've started drilling holes through the joist to re-route the electrical and plumbing, and to draw the place up using Google sketch-up. It is going to be a framing nightmare, but once I figure out the floor plan I'm hoping I can do up the place pretty nice.

Since I bought the house in 2006 and did a quality renovation, there is zero chance I will get back all the money I put into it. I've come to accept this. That said, the basement renovation plan is to make a space that is usable as a second entertaining space for a very low budget. I'm hoping to to it for under $4,000. This means there will be sacrifices.

Next post I'll talk a bit more about the design and some of the design trades I'm thinking about such as whether to make this a future bedroom with it's own door, adding a closet vs. a mini bar area, and building a custom entertainment center with built-in book shelves.

Pat & Lisa's Engagement Photos

2010-11-28T11:16:00.007-05:00

If you are looking for an update on the house you will disappointed. Instead, I'm posting some engagement photos I shot of my friends Pat & Lisa. We spent a couple hours of Halloween Day in Havre de Grace, Maryland and at Susquehanna State Park. Pat did a great job scouting locations, and they both were both just easygoing and fun to shoot.

Yardlicious

2010-05-09T21:54:00.002-04:00

Now that tax season is over, the Queen has her weekends back. And when she has her weekends productivity at the rowhouse picks up tenfold. On Saturday we went and picked up some obnoxiously orange paint for the back door. While at the Despot we found an unfinished adirondack chair for $30 and also decided to paint it obnoxious orange.

The last month or so we've purchased more pots, a five sectional lounge, and a cantilever umbrella from Ikea, and had my parents snag some cushions for the lounger. We even finalized the beds and made a little litter box out of pea gravel for Wally. I was worried I had just wasted my time, but so far he uses the litter box area exclusively. The yard is really looking snazzy. So snazzy that the iPhone pics won't do it justice. Until I get out with my uber-cam all I'm going to show are pictures of the orangeness. :-)

Community Activism, aka Bureaucracy

2010-03-23T22:40:00.007-04:00

I went to my first community meeting for our neighboorhood association tonight, the Canton Community Association (CCA). Let me backtrack as to why I was there.

Parking on our street has gotten worse since I've moved here. With a tanking economy properties can't sit vacant, paying taxes and mortgages, while potentially losing value at the same time. This has brought renters or caused folks to sell. Both of these causes increased our population density enough to effect parking in the area.

I filled out an online application for angle parking to help increase our parking. Adding angle parking has the ability to increase the number of spots by up to 50%. In an area where garages are rare, and the primary means of parking is on the street, this is a big deal. The request said the city would come out and measure my street, and if it is wide enough (more than 38' wide), it is eligible for street parking. A month or so later we got a letter saying that our street was wide enough, and to contact the CCA. We contacted them recently and were invited to their meeting tonight, which was focused on parking. The city discussed angle parking, garages, permits, and other ways to alleviate the parking issues. Sure there were squabbles and whining about the best way to make parking happen, but I won't focus on that.

Overall it was a good meeting, and I met a lot of folks that will be helpful with this process. Adjacent neighborhoods were at the meeting, including Patterson Park and Fells Prospect. Both communities touting their approval of the angle parking and offering their assistance. It is one thing to deal with bureaucracy to improve your own parking, but offering to help other communities is pretty incredible.

I left the meeting 3 hours later, feeling pretty encouraged and energized. This will be a long process with many battles to come, but I'm glad to see there is some support within the neighborhood and an excellent support network in adjacent communities willing to help. I appreciated seeing neighbors in a room together discussing a common issue. While we may not all agree upon a common solution I appreciate folks willingness to come out and try to change things.

Lounging Around

2010-03-16T22:50:00.004-04:00

The Queen and I talked about the backyard and what kind of furniture we should get. Since most stores haven't come out with this year's line we are eagerly awaiting their unveiling. With that in mind, we are leaning toward a backyard lounge and away from a large table. I can imagine something like this.

It is all from cb2. While I like it, the costs would be at least $1500 for the chairs and cushions. That's not happening. Hopefully ikea has something similar to this or their arholma line (below) that is a bit more budget friendly.

Spring

2010-03-14T23:22:00.005-04:00

The days are brighter and the temperatures are getting warmer. We deserve spring after this year's winter. While we deserve some warmth I am totally unprepared for it. Last year we enclosed the backyard and spruced things up a bit. It still needs work though. Here are a few things I'm currently thinking about.

1. Figure out what to do with the left wall

The left side of the yard is kind of blah - it is just a big hulking concrete wall. I want to spice it up. I am contemplating cutting out a 6" by 8' section out of the concrete and planting something like bamboo to help add some texture and height to the area. Another thought is to build a neato looking planter, like this:

I've even thought about using this vertical space for vegetable plantings, but the planters would have to be pretty thin and would probably require constant watering. A budget option is to use gutters, but I think this has a high probability of looking like crap.

2. Get new furniture

While we appreciate the donated furni from the Queen's parents, it doesn't really match our style. I kind of like something like this (which they say will also work outside).

It is modern, and the glass top while tough to keep clean will help keep the space feeling open and airy. We are also keeping out eye out on other outdoor furni - hopefully the stores start carrying this year's design soon. Since the cb2 table isn't a true outdoor table we'd still like an umbrella for shade.

I'm thinking something like this, and fabricate some custom clamp against the wall so we wouldn't need a hulking base for it.

3. Grow veggies & herbs

I want fresh veggies and herbs, especially basil, at my disposal. I also want the veggie garden to look pretty. I'm thinking I'll just do a bunch of pots. Is there a good source for inexpensive, modern looking pots? I've found cool looking rectangular mod pots that look great, but they are big $.

4. Finish the back of the raised bed

I need to get some sod, and redo the ivy that I planted to climb up the back wall. I planted english ivy last year, but after rethinking it is too invasive and just isn't climbing quickly. I think I'm going to go with boston ivy.

I'm also considering adding some plants with height to the back of the bed, but I don't want to take too much space from Wally's restroom.

5. Actually finish the plumbing for the outdoor spigots

Yeah, that has been on the to do list for almost forever. After checking out some new rehabbers I'm starting to get a small spark of motivation. Gotta get'r'done.

Life Goes by and the House Stays the Same

2010-03-08T20:35:00.006-05:00

I should be full of stories of completed work on the house. But I'm not. Little things have been done. Even less has been documented.

At this point, we are in wedding prep mode. Or rather, the Queen is in wedding prep mode. In less than 3 months we'll be hitched and swooping off to Guana Island followed by a nice jaunt around the islands. Life is good. We even made time for the annual theme party. This year's theme was the Jersey shore. As usual it was a blast.

If you care to see more carnage, check out the slideshow. All this and landscaping needs to be finished in the back, crown molding to be hung, and a ton of other miscellaneous other tasks requiring attention. Life has switched gears for now but I'll soon be back in the swing of renovations.

P.S. I think I finally have the formatting fixed. I'm glad to finally have all my links back. :-)

Reflecting

2009-10-06T14:03:00.008-04:00

I came across this blog post from exactly a year ago today.

Top 10 Signs that Renovations Aren't Complete

OSB

certified letters for the weeds & junk in your back yard

I'll never forget moving into the house when renovations were nowhere near complete in August 2008. My brother's friend helped move all my stuff, and when he first walked in you could tell he was thinking, "Kevin, this is where your sister is going to live?" Everything was torn up, tools were everywhere, and there was a hole in the bathroom floor. We ended up just piling all my boxes of things in the guest room to the ceiling until the dust settled and I could unpack. I lived out of moving boxes for months because I couldn't put things in my closet while we were frantically finishing the master bedroom. At the same time, we went to the gym every day for several weeks, not because we were diligently trying to get in shape (I think we burned enough calories working on the house every night and weekend). But because we had no shower while the bathroom was being renovated. Ahhh, the good old days!

It's still hard for me to believe that renovations are 'done'. I'm proud of all the work we did ourselves, and I never thought in my life I would learn how to install wood floors or be a mudding and taping guru. Although demolition is still my favorite renovating duty :) Luckily, we don't have to worry much about drywall boogers these days, and we no longer decorate with drop cloths. In fact, now we spend many evenings relaxing on the most comfortable sofa in the world.

Kudos to anybody in the midst of renovating right now! You deserve major props for all your hard work - keep at it!

P.S. Don't forget to vote for Baltimore Rowhouse every day until October 9th! We are in sixth place now, movin on up!

Mobbies and a Birthday Present

2009-10-02T09:53:00.006-04:00

Yesterday we came across a contest for Maryland's outstanding blogs held by the Baltimore Sun. Some of our favorite nominees are daily food inspiration, a neighbor, a Patterson Parker, a fellow renovator, a photography favorite that we met at Patapsco Park last year, a new hilarious discovery, and a fellow dog lover.

We also discovered that Baltimore Rowhouse was nominated! Looks like we are in 7th place in the Neighborhood category right now. Voting is through October 9, and you can vote once daily in each category. We're feeling a bit competitive after coming in second on HGTV's Bang For Your Buck last month :) Vote for Baltimore Rowhouse!

On another note, Corey turned 30 on Tuesday and is now older than 42% of the population in the U.S. Last weekend, his best friend from college flew up from North Carolina with his wife to surprise Corey. We also had a big birthday bash. This weekend I am 'surprising' him with a trip to Lost River Modern. I decided to spill the beans this morning because he already was suspicious that we were going there. I have had this trip planned since April, and I'm glad the weekend is finally here.

We plan on posting about our HGTV experience soon. In the meantime, if you didn't catch us the first time around they are showing a rerun on October 13. Have a great weekend!

Fully Engaged

2009-09-20T18:41:00.003-04:00

My apologies for the lack of posts, but we've been busy with our engagement. I finally made an honest woman out of the Queen. From this point forward we are not living in sin. At least this is what we are going to tell ourselves. :-)

If you remember way back when I posted last we were going to be on HGTV. Well, the episode aired. We didn't win, but at least we didn't lose like the guys over at project rowhouse. (Actually, I think they won seeing as they didn't really spend $50k and did an amazing job on their place, but I don't want to say anything about that) After our loss the Queen and I headed over to project rowhouse to celebrate. They had a party going on, and it was great to hang out with Jon and Craig again.

If you missed the show, check out upcoming airtimes at hgtv's website for the episode and set the DVR. The next time it's on is October 13th at 9:30, and a few hours later at 12:30 am. Make sure to tune in and watch us look like fools.

P.S. All my links got wiped out somehow. I'll have to spend some time to reset them to their rightful place. :-(

We Have an Air Date

2009-08-17T17:52:00.003-04:00

Bang for your Buck contacted us last week and said we are scheduled to be on the air 9/18. HGTV's website says the show will air on 9/11 at 9:30. I guess we'll just have to tune in to find out. :-)

Here is the rundown of the show from the website.

Designer Taniya Nayak compares three great rooms in Baltimore that were recently renovated with budgets of $50,000 each. Along with a realtor, they look at a modern great room with horizontal metal cabinets, a contemporary great room with a wood-burning fireplace and a spunky great room with a built-in bar.

I'm assuming we are the spunky great room with the built in bar. I'd prefer bad ass over spunky, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.

More Turkey Pictures

2009-08-10T18:26:00.002-04:00

Houseblog Schmouseblog

2009-07-18T13:40:00.005-04:00

While I should be in the backyard slaving away at landscaping and plumbing, I felt like writing a blog entry about Turkey. Procrastination is a beautiful thing.

While in Istanbul we took a cruise along the Bosphorous.

The Blue Mosque was also pretty impressive. The intricate tile work was amazing.

There were tons of stray cats throughout Turkey. This one was escaping the days heat in front of the Blue Mosque.

I liked the look of these doors. I'm thinking about blowing it up to hang on the wall.

While the Queen was smiling here, we were less than impressed with the cave cities in Cappadocia. They are neat and all, but after we saw one we were ready to go.

The cave churces at the Goreme Open Air Museum were much better than the caves at Derinkuyu.

The town of Goreme in Cappadocia was impressive. Our hotel room was in a cave. If you look behind the Queen you can see the valley is filled with cave dwellings.

While riding ATV's around Cappadocia we stopped to pet a horse that was tied out on a hillside. Another lady was stopped by the horse reading a book and enjoying the view. The horse wasn't hers.

The highlight of Ephesus was definitely the Celsius Library.

Backyard Landscaping Update

2009-07-15T18:42:00.010-04:00

While I may not have blogged in a while, this doesn't mean we haven't been busy. We installed crown molding in the living room, had HGTV over for filming, and have been busy on the backyard. While I'm sure you want to hear dirt about HGTV's visit, I'm going to cover our progress in the backyard. :-)

The last post of the yard show the space as being a lot better than before the concrete work, but it still looking prison-esque. It was 342% better than the untouched version, but I think the place is now approaching 514% better. Here is the space as you last saw it.

The concrete work was done, but the gate and fence wasn't in and the planter bed is sufferring from a severe lack of dirt and plants. These problems have been remedied, and the Queen is now enjoying the space much better.

The horizontal fencing and gate is in place. I am quite pleased. This Saturday was spent creating a drainage system in the planting bed, and Sunday hauling 4,000 lbs of dirt to fill the bed. The low voltage landscape lighting is showing off our walls and new tree, and looking swanky while doing so. We even managed to get our fancy new Forest Pansy Redbud over the 2' tall planting bed. I wasn't sure how to get the tree in the bed, but after building a ramp it wasn't too bad.

The tree will have small pink flowers in the spring, with new leaves showing a purple color all through the season. I originally wanted a 'Bloodgood' Japanese Maple, but the redbud was only $115 and allowed instant coverage between our seating point at the table and our neighbor's back deck. The Japanese Maples were considerably more for the same initial size. Eventually the redbud will have a 18-20' diameter spread, which will help to canopy the area.

I still need to hook up the plumbing for the spigot in the back and plant the boxwoods and other plants, but all that will come in due time. And by due time, I mean this weekend.

Keep on the lookout for a guest poster to cover the first two topics I mentioned early in the post. :-)

HGTV, Here We Come

2009-06-18T10:56:00.002-04:00

A while ago Summer & Matt let us know that HGTV was looking for people in the Baltimore area who had recently renovated their space. The Queen contacted the show, we filled out the application, and over the past few weeks have been communicating with the Bang for your Buck folks. We found out yesterday that we were selected. :-)

The week of July 6th a film crew will descend on the rowhouse to film our great room, and a realtor and designer will critique the space while we look on. We are excited to be on the show, and are also really happy that Jon and Craig from Project Rowhouse will also be on the same episode.

While I'd love to spend every last minute fixing up the minor things before the film crew comes, we are off to Michigan for the week before July 4th and are out of town this weekend. Hopefully this will give the designer and realtor more items to critique. :-)

The Invasion of Grillasaurus Rex

2009-06-16T00:24:00.005-04:00

We are back from Gallivanting across the pond and back at work in the backyard. The gate and garbage corral are built, and looking HAWT. We even got some inspiration from Jon & Craig's backyard and got some planters, plants and a fire pit for the backyard too. But the planters, plants and fire pit were minor additions. We also got Grillzilla.

We already have a charcoal Weber grill, but the Queen said she would cook more if we had a gas grill. We now have a gas grill. Now that I've blogged about it you are all witnesses, and as such this will allow me to guilt trip her into using it. Anyway...

We went to Home Depot hunting for a grill. I just wanted a small grill. Nothing too fancy. We didn't need anything with 43 feet of grilling surface, a 1/4 acre for a prep area, and side burners to keep my non-existent side dishes warm. But this is all Home Depot had. It was either a $100 piece of crap, or grills with saddle bags and sidecars. I liked a smaller Weber grill, but with half the heat output and double the price it was out of contention. At the end of the day we decided Grillzilla was coming home with us - the other options sucked beyond belief or required our first born child as down payment.

I got around to putting it together tonight and got about half way through it before it got too dark. I am damning it already. While it appears to be a fine machine I just wish it were half as big. I fear this grill will turn me into a meatatarian. I will try to resist it's urges. I may have to use the side burner to steam some broccoli. Oh hell, who am I kidding. I'm sure in another week I'll be using the sideburner to fry up some bacon to top my cheeseburger.

Ballooning Over Cappadocia

2009-06-14T09:38:00.002-04:00

The day we arrived in Cappadocia there was a ballooning accident. One died, and eight to ten injured. Our flight was the next day. The Queen was worried, but I figured the day after an accident would be very safe, as people would be extra worried. The flight was beautiful. We floated over Goreme, dipping into Love Valley and touching down in a field to the west of town. We can now check hot air ballooning off of our bucket lists.

Turkish Adventure

2009-05-31T12:50:00.002-04:00

We have now been on our Turkish Adventure for about a week. It has been amazing. So far we've been to Istanbul and Cappdoccia, and we still have Selcuk, Fethiye and Kas to come.

Istanbul is a wonderful clean city, with excellent public transport. I wish I could say the same about Bmore. :-) Haghia Sofia and the Blue Mosque were pretty, but the Egyptian spice bazaar and all of the street food is even better. I loves me some street food. We then headed to Capadoccia and have been doing activities that would frighten our mothers. Things like hot air ballooning one day after 1 died and 8 were injured, riding an ATV around to different sites, and renting a scooter to head to a winery the next town over. It has been a blast, and we are taking lots of pictures.

And now it is time to return to drinking my beer on a comfy patio and watching the peple walk past. Life is good.

P.S. The loud group of Croatians that were on yesterdays tour just sat down behind us. *sigh*. Looks like we have to find a new spot.

Fantastic Fencing!

2009-05-01T13:10:00.006-04:00

I found the holy grail of fence materials. Well, at least I think it's the bees knees. I went with a pvc fence material made by timbertech. I'll use this material to build the gate and the garbage corral. Monica commented to the last post with a fence style suggestion. She has great taste, as I had the same style in mind.

I've seen some other horizontal fences with varying board size, but a lot of these required applying lumber to both sides of the fence so you wouldn't see though the slats. This would have increased my fence material costs. Since I am using a PVC fence, I also wanted to avoid ripping the boards, and this design lets me just hang the boards as is. I figured I can do this design with a minimal amount of labor.

So why did I choose PVC over a composite or lumber? One reason is weight. If the back gate were double faced with trex, it would have weighed over 200 lbs. I decided to single side it, but 100 lbs would still have made it susceptible to sagging. A PVC gate will be closer to 60 lbs. Also, the composite materials (like trex) still have wood fiber in them. Wood rots over time, and can mold/mildew over time. Not good. The reason I didn't go with lumber is I didn't want to deal with warping, or the maintenance over time. And the real kicker of why I went with PVC? The local lumber yard was selling it for at about 25% off. Score! It looks sexy too.

I'm hoping to also build some custom 4' planters to hang on the walls eventually, and maybe build a bench on top of the 2' planter bed. That is if the Queen approves my plans. :-)

Courtyard Foundation Complete

2009-04-29T20:07:00.003-04:00

As you can tell by my elation in this pic, the concrete work in the back is done. I think the walls help to cozy up the space, and I'm glad to have some decent looking planting beds and a concrete pad that isn't buckling up. It looks 342% better.

Before

After

The yard feels much larger, and despite it being gray block I like the feel of it. Some folks have suggested painting the block, but I like it the way it is. Frank Lloyd Wright was able to use concrete as a main material, and by mixing in other materials and textures was able to bring warmth to the space. This is what I'm hoping to do. I like the industrial/modern look of the material so I'm hoping to embrace it rather than attempt to hide it.

The raised beds in the back and on the side help to break up the space, and once I get some plants in it will help to add texture to the space. Wally has even gotten used to hopping in the bed to do his business, so once we fill it with dirt he is going to be one happy pup. Seeing as I used to own a landscape design company through college I'm excited to be able to have plants again. The current plan for plants is to use a Bloodgood Japanese Maple, some boxwoods, and black mondo grass. I'm not showing you the details on this yet. You'll have to be patient. :-)

The area around the A/C unit has 4 pressure treated posts set into the concrete. I'll pick up some lumber within the next couple of weeks and create a fence around this area to hide the unit, garbage cans, and any other crap that would otherwise clutter up the space. I'm still pondering over the fence and back gate design. I want it to have a modern look, but I want it to be easy to build. I'm also still debating what material to make the gate corral area out of. While I love the look of cedar and redwood, costs can be high and they require maintenance. The other end of the spectrum is pressure treated lumber, but I'd still have to stain it and deal with maintenance. I'm leaning toward material like trex, as it will have better strength properties that will resist warping and there is zero maintenance on the product.

I'm sure most folks would look at the back yard and would want more greenery and the open space that a place like the suburbs would provide, but for a yard in the city I am very pleased. I feel as if we've created an extra 450 sq ft of living space out of nothing. When you've only got 1300 sq ft to start with this feels like a big deal.

If I Could Think Of a Clever Title It Would Go Here

2009-04-28T17:07:00.003-04:00

It was nice to hear from other local bloggers that Apartment Therapy featured the blog. This was a pleasant surprise, seeing as AT randomly stumbled across the blog via their flickr pool and we had no idea they were writing about us.

Badass!

Manager want to write god damn login page himself

2009-04-22T00:39:00.007-04:00

When you can't sleep why not cruise youtube for Code Monkey.

Or Blondie cover tunes.

This message brought to you by insomnia.

The Queen is Amazing

2009-04-20T22:01:00.009-04:00

After getting a few bids on the backyard, we finally signed a contract. The work starts Wednesday. The design is approaching something that resembles Design B.

Design B

There were pros and cons for either keeping the trash near the alley or near the house, but with bids coming in higher than we decided to go with the cheaper option and put it closer to the house. It's easier to get to in the winter and allowed us to delete the 4' block wall near the alley. Summer said Bmore may be switching one 64 gallon trash can pick up per week, so the enclosure is sized for 2 of my garbage cans, or 1 new larger can, and my recycle bin. Other cost cuts included removing the few steps up into the planting bed, and the counter top area. It pained me to remove the counter area from the design, but in a tough economy it's tough to add design details that may not return your investment. This renovation hasn't been about making money, but we don't want to throw it away.

I'm exicted for the work to begin on Wednesday. The contractor said he thinks he can be done by the weekend. I seriously doubt he'll complete the job of laying all the masonry walls, hammering half of the back pad out and re-pouring this section of the pad. That's ok though. He may not be done by this weekend, but I'm pretty confident by next weekend the backyard will be looking much better.

Impromptu Happy Hour

2009-04-10T12:26:00.004-04:00

I'm thinking there needs to be a happy hour tonight. Come out and meet up. Watch my twitterings for where we're headed - probably somewhere around Canton or Fells. Local housebloggers (or other intarweb locals) unite!

I'm a Twit

2009-04-03T14:51:00.002-04:00

I started twittering. About halfway down the page you can follow my tweets, and if you've been watching that you would have known some I was up to some reno stuff. If you are a fellow renovator looking to see what I'm up to, or a local and are wondering where I am at the moment, then follow along - my name on twitter is 'bmorerowhouse'.

Courtyard Musings

2009-04-03T14:24:00.006-04:00

Remember last year when I posted about the backyard? I decided getting the interior of the house done was a better use of time and funds. Now that Spring is here and interior is looking good we're thinking about the yard again. The design has changed a bit in a year, as we now have a dog so I modified the design to be able to accomodate him. We've even had a few contractors come by to give us bids.

Here is what the yard looks like today, as seen through my back window (I was lazy and didn't want to open the window or screen).

It is 34' deep, by 13' wide. It is mostly a concrete slab with a small dirt area. The dirt area is currently used as Wally's potty, and houses a few city kitties. I tried putting veggies and herbs back there one year but the city kitties ate most of the fruits of my labor. Not good. There is a alley behind the house, and you can see across the alley the houses I mentioned in my last post. In the front right corner of the pic is my AC unit, and beyond this are some concrete blocks the neighbors gave me. The concrete pad for the back half of the lot is pretty much shot, so it needs to be redone. So that is the tour of the place. It's not pretty. Now here is what I'm looking to do....

I'd like to enclose the space with a 6' tall cement block wall. Not the most glamarous of surfaces, but it's relatively inexpensive and it will keep the vermin out. It also provides a good mounting surface to mount lights on. I considered a wood fence, but the vermin could still get in. I'd also like to use some raised beds in the area for some plantings, create an area for a grill and a prep/serving area, and enclose the AC unit and garbage. So here is what I've come up with.

It has a 6' perimeter wall, a 2' planting bed, the garbage would be hidden behing a 4' concrete wall at the back of the property and the AC unit is enclosed with a wooden slate structure that I would build. The brown slats in the middle are a table and benches that I would also build. The donut looking thing near the middle is a fire pit that we'd put there when we aren't eating (the table would move up to the benches for chow time).

I also did a minor modification where I deleted the 4' concrete wall, and enclosed the garbage cans in with the AC unit. I think I like the first design a bit better, but this would be a bit cheaper.

We are really trying to keep costs down, and that for now we are focusing on getting the foundation work done with the finishing details coming later. Which option do you like better? What other suggestions do you have?

Local Effects of the Housing Downturn

2009-03-19T12:17:00.005-04:00

The continued souring of the economy leaves me with mixed feelings.

Positives.

Negatives.

put up for sale due to back taxes

bidbaltimore.com

In the meanwhile, we are still enjoying the house being done. There is a mile long to do list that I have been happily ignoring in my post renovation bliss. Maybe I'll get to it this weekend. Or next weekend. Or maybe next month…

I've Been Interviewed

2009-03-12T12:21:00.005-04:00

Danny over at Urban Discoveries Living Blog graciously interviewed me. Head over and take a look. They have a great blog that follows Baltimore and urban life - I highly suggest following it.

While perusing Urban Discoveries I came across a link to Ziger/Snead Architects. A few clicks later I found myself ogling pictures of their Rappahanock River House. I'm in love. Or at the very least, lust. Make sure you check out the interactive tour, or click through the full slideshow.

Eventually this is the type of place I want. It is on the water, modern, looks like it belongs on the lot, and all that glass.... *le sigh*

Magnetism

2009-03-08T14:11:00.002-04:00

In the quest to ban clutter from the counters I picked up a magnetic knife holder. The butcher block knife holder was banished to the garbage. In the block's place the magnetic Goddess holds my knives on a lofty perch atop the glass mosaic tile backsplash.

One day I'll be able to place a Global Knife in it... Some day.

New Transom

2009-03-04T20:52:00.008-05:00

Ever since we ordered the transom from Steve at Wholly Terra we've been excited to have a piece of art that our neighbors and us can enjoy. Steve stopped by again tonight to install the transom.

I love it. All this for around $500 bucks, and that includes the 2.5 to 3 hours of installation. Totally worth it. I promised Steve I'd take more pictures of it in the light, but I got impatient. Expect more pictures showing it up close, during the day and some more at night. Pictures in better light will show all the different textures of glass he used, and all the various colors in the circles.

Also notice the brushed nickel numbers, new black door, and stainless steel chiasso mailbox and our new light. Our facade is looking sexy.

Turkish Delight, on a Moonlit Night

2009-03-02T19:10:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago I made a resolution to wander more. Making good on my word, the Queen and I are headed to Turkey at the end of May.

We chose Turkey due to low cost and having a good comination of things to do - a good mix of city, country and even some beaches thrown in the mix. That said, the tipping point for Turkey was this article from Budget Travel. Specifically, the pictures below sold us on Turkey.

We are excited to see Istanbul, sea kayak over the ruins of Kekova, and most importanly take a hot air balloon ride through the canyons of Cappadocia. We'll be there for two weeks and are also looking to spend a few days in another European city. Paris, Rome, Munich, and Vienna are all on this short list - hopefully we can find an inexpensive direct flight from Istanbul. Hopefully I'll be able to update the blog while over the pond, and of course I'll take plenty of pictures.

Simplisafe

2009-02-28T16:30:00.012-05:00

With the house looking so good we thought it was a good idea to protect it. After watching HBO's, The Wire, some of you understand Baltimore. While you may think having a rottweiler is a big enough deterrent, with a face like this and his love for coach leather collars (Thanks mom!) we're not sure he'd scare an intruder.

In order to supplement our furry security system we ordered the Simplisafe system. The total cost of the sysytem was $320, $15 monthly monitoring fee, and it took about an hour to install. I am very impressed.

I first heard about Simplisafe from unplgged, and it seemed promising. I was skeptical, but after doing some research we decided on this system for the following reasons.

Easy installation - After all the work we've done on the house I was not about to rip open the walls to run more wire. Hell no. This meant we isolated our choices to wireless solutions. I read reviews on some wireless system there were many comments of how difficult they were to install. The review I read for this system said it was easy, and after installing it I couldn't agree more. The key fob is actually a thumb drive too, so all you do is plug it into the computer and the software contained on the drive walks you through the install. The folks who made this install software must have been trained by apple, because the process was idiot proof.

Details like batteries and the double sided tape were included. Simplisafe even has little pull tabs that activate the sensor batteries, so no need to open the units to activate the sensors. Most other systems I found online were BYO-Batteries and even charged extra for the double sided mounting tape. This attention to detail really helped to install this system quickly and easily.

Doesn't require a landline - We don't have a landline and even most of the wireless systems require a landline. Not quite wireless, eh? With land lines running $25 a month, and then ~$15 a monthly monitoring fee this didn't seem like a great deal. The other option was an extra $250 up front equipment cost for a GSM chip and the monitoring would then be $26 a month. Again, hell no. This system uses the REFLEX wireless network - the same network the "I've fallen and I can't get up lady" uses. If it's good enough for g-ma, it's good enough for me.

Inexpensive base system - The base system with a main keypad, siren, key fob, motion sensor, two door/window sensors and a panic button runs $225. Very nice!!!

Inexpensive components - After paying only $225 a month and it only having 2 door/window sensors, I figured additional sensors would cost a small fortune. Not so. Each extra door/window was $10 and $15 for an extra key fob. Me likey.

Competitive monthly monitoring costs - Cruising around the intarweb we found deals as low as $9 a month, but this required a landline. Without a landline, things were looking more like $25 a month (plus the up front cost). Simplisafe monitoring runs $15 a month. Not the cheapest, but totally reasonable.

Looks cute - We spent time making the house look nice and modern and we didn't want some clunky system. You can barely see this system at all, as all the sensors are small and sleek.

This system isn't for everybody, as does not have fire monitoring. This wasn't an issue for us. My concerns going forward are that this is a relatively new system, so we'll see how easy parts are to get in the future and and if their customer serivice is any good. In another few month's I'll post a follow up review on my thoughts on the system, but so far I am very impressed. Another bonus of the system is that we can even take the system to our next house - all we'd need are a few new pieces of double sided tape.

Another Look at the Living Room

2009-02-08T20:00:00.005-05:00

My parents have been ~~begging~~asking me to post pictures of the house. I've been feeling lazy. Not much has changed since I posted pictures a month ago, other than some base trim, paint and other miscellaneous crap.

Here is a before picture of the dining area looking into the kitchen before the renovations.

We moved the kitchen from the back right of the house to the left side, and added a half bathroom in the back right corner. In the dining room we removed the faux fireplace, changed out the light fixture, laid floors and decorated. It looks much better now.

A lot of the items we used in the dining area and living room are discussed here. A new addition is a 5x7' wool rug we score for $123 on clearance from rugsusa.com.

Backing up a few steps, you can see the redone stairs.

The stairs were very squeaky. The old stairs treads were screwed into the base thingamajig (I don't know the technical name of the main stair girder) to remove any squeaks. New treads and risers were laid over the old stairs. We used pine treads custom stained and polyurethaned by moi, and 1/4 luan plywood for the risers. The trim up the stairs was redone, and after a coat of white paint to the risers and trim the stairs look like a million bucks. Our teak and peacock blue MCM rocker we scored off ebay looks hawt too.

The TV wall and bookshelf area is also looking a lot better. Before.

After.

I still need to shim a few shelves, run some wiring for the home entertainment center, and straighten the tv. All in due time. I must say that we love our 50" plasma tv. The Queen likes watching the Real Housewives of Orange County, while I prefer to spend time playing XBox 360 games on it.

We finally got our white leather arielle ottoman from Macy's after over six months. We keep it at the front of the house when we're not using it to avoid cluttering the space. We got around to hanging the drapes from Ikea; the pattern helps add some intrest to an otherwise boring wall.

I also changed out the old light with the Fado light from Ikea. We figure it will go well with the custom transom that is forthcoming.

Wanderlust

2009-02-06T12:21:00.004-05:00

"Not all those who wander are lost"

-J.R.R. Tolkien

It may be a bit late for new year's resolutions, but I haven't felt like I was ready for a resolution until now. I couldn't make a resolution until after we had gotten the house in a fully livable state and the refinance was over. With that complete it has allowed me to reflect on a resolution.

My resolution is to wander more.

When in the middle of a renovation your life is consumed by to do lists, list of materials to buy, lists about lists and other miscellaneous lists. Now, I just want to wander. I want to explore things. I want to do things I've never done, see places I've never seen, and learn more.

I stumbled across a blog entry that was a year in review, of which the last six months of thier 2008 was traveling around Southeast Asia. Reading this made me want to go back to that area of the world. It made me want to go back and get lost in the 35 acres of Chatuchak Market. We probably only saw a couple acres of it. I want to again swim in the Andaman Sea, head to Chiang Mai, jump over to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat, skip over to China, or proceed onto Bhutan. I daydream of Bhutan often...

Since we went to Thailand two years ago we're also thinking of heading other places. A few other ideas are heading to Greece, Turkey, Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia), France, or the Netherlands. My mind is filled with endless possibilities. The euphoria of possibities excites me; I guess it my natural tendency to enjoy a state of maximum entropy - that state where anything is possible. Now we just need to formulate a plan to make this all happen. We're shooting for late spring early summer for our endeavor.

While this year will still contain small projects, and we will save for other larger projects, I want to make sure to make the time to wander.

Fiscal Conservatism

2009-01-29T10:41:00.003-05:00

We really appreciated all of the comments to the last post. There was definitely some sound advice, and as a result of this we've changed around what we're doing. To those people out there renovating who don't have a blog, I suggest starting one. Blogs provide a great means to ask a question and get responses from others who are in a similar situation.

We're avoiding PMI (called MMI for FHA loans). For an FHA mortgage greater than 15 years and an LTV greater than 0.78, but less than 0.95, you have to pay MMI. We are between this area. MMI stops when you reach a LTV less than .78. Unfortunately, you must pay this MMI for a minimum of 5 years. This adds up to about $6k for 5 years for us. I don't know about you, but I don't like paying $6k for nothing.

For a mortgage that is 15 years or less, there is no MMI for any LTV less than 0.9. For this reason, we are going with a 15 year loan. There is still an up front cost on both mortgages, but no additional monthly payments for the 15 year. This loan requires higher payments, but we can swing it, and we're viewing it as a forced savings plan as the extra money is going toward principal.

As for the loan value, we are only taking out enough to pay off the refi fees and the credit cards. The back yard and HVAC stuff, will be paid out of pocket. I thought about pulling out more money, but I don't want to pay $7200 over the life of the loan for every $5k taken out now. Even if we have to use a credit cards for short term needs it is still a much cheaper solution that the $2200 in interest (per $5K) than the loan would provide.

It feels good to own a smaller home that doing a 15 year mortgage is even an option. While home values may still go down, there is security in knowing that we have enough home equity to be able to move without having to pay money out of pocket.

How Much Equity to Take Out?

2009-01-28T11:10:00.003-05:00

Since we locked our 5% refinance rate in early December we've been working hard with the intent to pull some equity out of the house. Our hard work has paid off, and the appraisal came back with a value of $5,000 greater than what we were hoping for. All in all we've probably broken even through all of the renovations, but we love the house, and we've learned so much in the process that it has all been worth it.

Since the appraisal is done we're in the enviable position to take out more money than we currently need. We'll be using our equity to pay down credit cards that were used to buy reno materials, and putting some money away to deal with the backyard and keeping extra cash ready for when the HVAC system goes. Beyond this, any money we take out could be used for whatever we want.

The bad news is that we are going with an FHA mortgage, and our mortgage will be above the .78 loan to value ratio after taking out the money for credit card/yard/hvac. This means that we'll have to pay PMI on the money we take out. Any additional money we take out, is just more PMI.

I'm torn. Do we take out a little extra money now, or do we take out only what we need now since the interest rates are low. While I know the more fiscally responsible answer, if you had the chance for the money now, would you take it?

Pajama Jammy Jam!

2009-01-25T21:12:00.007-05:00

With the house pretty well renovated, and the appraisal done (you'll have to wait for more info on this), we decided it was time to have a party. A pajama party. Our friends came over last night for a joint housewarming party slash birthday party for my friend Sterling. We got a keg, a case of other alcohol, some hors d'oeuvres, and our friend Dave brought over his DJ equipment. Yeah, we know how to party.

People toured the house and were duly impressed with the work we've done in the past year. However, they were confused when they got to the second bedroom... In this room I set up my camera on a tripod, hooked it up to a TV, printer and a remote camera switch to it, and had three strobes placed around the room. People weren't sure if this was how the room looked normally. I assured them this was only for the party. What they didn't understand, is that it was a photo booth.

Click each picture for details on the gear in the picture

All people had to do was stand in front of the camera and hit the button on the remote to take a picture. When they hit the button three strobes went off, freezing their drunken moment in time. After the shot was taken their picture was shown on the LCD TV pointed back at them. If they liked the picture they could click a button on the camera and have it printed out. The whole setup was a blast.

And now is the time in the post where I get to place random commentary on some photos from the night. :-)

This was early in the night. Notice the sober look.

Apparently Shane wasn't pleased. Or was having a very emo moment.

Yeah, baby, yeah!

Saturday night fever. Work it. Work it.

When Matt opened his robe I was grateful he was wearing undies.

Why so serious?

The girls thought it would be fun to do some headbanging. The queen's neck is still sore for this endeavor.

Say cheese!

There are a lot of pictures like this, with people staring at the monitor and laughing about the previous picture.

The Queen and I. In all of our PJ'd glory.

Wally even got pulled into the melee. What you can't really see is that he was wearing a childrens robe we picked up at Target.

This is her poker face.

Why am I smirking? This was probably soon after we killed the keg. :-)

Jeff scaring his girlfriend away.

Check out the full slide show for all the pictures taken from the photobooth. The shots are in order from the beginning of the night until the end, and this set has every picture taken. :-)

Downstairs Reveal

2009-01-12T23:36:00.006-05:00

Hi - come on in and take a look at the downstairs.

Ok, maybe this picture was from a while ago after I climbed around in the attic, but the following ones are brand spanking new.

Notice the Queen and Wally snuggling on the couch as Joaquin Phoenix looks down on them.

It feels great to actually have the mango dining table and white ikea chairs in the space. We think they look great and fit well into the small'ish space.

There is still work to be done, but it feels good to have the end in sight. :-)

Basement Update

2009-01-08T23:40:00.005-05:00

I came home from work early to deal with B-dry and our basement water issue. When they came in I pointed to their newly done area, only for them to point out my sump pump wasn't working. It had come unplugged. I felt like a complete dolt whe they pointed at the home's deficiency, but was pleased when they volunteered to wire an extra outlet to make sure the sump didn't come unplugged for no charge. I'm a pro at wiring outlets, but I appreciated their willingness to please when they had no obligation to do so.

On a separate note, the Queen and I have been working like dogs from the time we get home until at least 10 each night. Things have been busy, but at least we're making progress. :-)

When it Rains, It Pours

2009-01-07T08:50:00.003-05:00

Remember when B-dry came out to fix the foundation because we had standing water in the basement? I do. I went in the basement this morning to find standing water which appeared to be coming from the newly repaired area.

*sigh*

One more thing to deal with. Joy.

Planning Ahead

2009-01-06T23:39:00.010-05:00

On Black Friday we braved the crowds and headed to Sears to pick out a new washer and dryer. The current dryer has been screeching like a howler monkey for months, and the washer has a constant pool of water in the pan below the unit. Not good. We got a great deal on an energy efficent front load washer and gas dryer, picking up the pair for $675 delivered, and the old units removed. Unfortunately the units were on back order until mid to late February. This wouldn't be a problem if our dryer stopped working last weekend... DOH!

My mother, the Queen's mom, and the Queen went to Sears to see what they could do to remedy our situation. They were able to somehow get us an upgraded washer and dryer, arriving next weekend. Regular price of this combo is $1490, and we're getting it for $675. In the words of Borat, "VERY NICE!"

As an aside, I'm always thinking about the future and how to upgrade the house to minimize overall costs. For instance, we are getting a gas dryer even though our current dryer is electric. Here is the history and reasoning that lead to this decision...

1. During the kitchen renovation, I noticed the electric dryer wasn't exhausting outside. I had the contractor add a vent, but knew the current placement of the dryer left it too far to actually hook the vent up. I want to finish the front of the basement, which means eventually moving the dryer toward the back of the house and since the wall was open at the location of the vent figured it was as good a time as any to add this. While a vent is a good idea to minimize moisture in basements, it isn't required for an electric dryer. I figured I'd add the vent for the future, and I'm glad I did as a gas dryer requires a vent because of the carbon monoxide gas exhaust.

2. When wiring the upstairs bathroom two dedicated circuits were added to bring it up to code. Previously, the bathroom didn't have any dedicated circuits. With adding two circuits my 100 amp breaker was now full. Since I want to eventually finish the basement, and I don't want to upgrade to a 200A service unless I have to, I needed to find a way to eliminate a circuit or two. With the replacement of the dryer looming, I figured that by switching to a gas dryer I'd be able to run a gas dryer off the same circuit as the washing machine. This would allow the elimination of the two circuits dedicated to the 220 VAC circuit for the electric dryer. This results in no panel upgrade required. Panel upgrades aren't cheap, so I think this is a good idea.

3. We need to add a gas line to the dryer. This shouldn't be a big deal, but with wanting to eventually finish the front of the basement the current gas line runs below the basement joists through the middle of the space. We could just add a gas line for the dryer off this old line, but we'd eventually have to rip it all out when we renovate the basement. Instead we are opting to have the gas line routed to the side of the space. This results in higher near term costs, but results in zero re-work in the future. Luckily I know a $30/hour plumber, so the costs for this are manageable.

The moral of the story is that we're getting a new washer and dryer, that will result in near term costs for gas line upgrades, but will save us money in the long run due to high efficiency and not requiring us to upgrade the electrical panel later. Sure it may cost more now, but the costs are worth it in the long run.

The List

2009-01-06T23:24:00.003-05:00

As we head down the home stretch to the appraisal, we've created a list on the chalkboard in the kitchen. The Queen loves lists, as it feels great to cross things off upon completion. To me, they are a bit overwhelming, but I understand their necessity.

I don't like having contractors do much work at all, as I am usually disappointed with the quality/cost ratio, but with a deadline looming we need a bit of help.

Pictures of the Queen

2009-01-05T23:55:00.003-05:00

This post has nothing to do with renovation, but I figured the Queen would smile when reading this post in the morning.

Guest Bedroom Transformation

2009-01-05T21:51:00.009-05:00

The last week and a half have been a whirlwind. I had off from Christmas Eve until today, allowing plenty of time to work on the house. And there is plenty of work to report. In the past week all of Leigh's family to help at one point or another, my mother and father drove in from Detroit to help out for a full week, my coworker helped lay wood floors, and I had contractors at the house for some of the time helping out too. So much work was completed that I can't cover it in one post. This post will document the transformation of the guest bedroom.

To start, you have to understand how horrible the room was when I moved in. The previous owner painted a beautiful mural in the room. My parents came to visit soon after I purchased the house and stayed in this second room. You can tell by the look on my father's face how much he enjoyed the mural.

By the time they left, a single coat of primer applied to hide the evil Medusa mural. It didn't hide it much, but at least Medusa was a bit subdued.

The room stayed this way until the Queen moved in. At that time, we needed a place to store her stuff while we renovated so the guest bedroom was turned into a storage shed.

Notice the cat in the middle of the room. She enjoyed the space just fine as a storage space.

As renovation progressed we've been able to slowly clear out this room. A few months ago I noticed one of the windows was broken. I knew this was a bad sign, as the window is on a 5' unsupported overhang of the house, so I figured this area was settling. When we ripped out the back wall a few weeks ago we discovered we had a bigger problem than I had previously thought. Termites.

In a matter of a few weeks we've come a long way.

Here is a rundown of the work done in the room.

The framing was ripped back to the stud, and the joists and walls sistered to strengthen against the termite damage.

We reframed the closet and around the brick bumpout (which we discovered hiding under some old plaster). I could have drywalled over all the brick, but we liked the bit of exposed brick in the space.

New outlets were installed, and the ceiling fan and ugly light in bedroom were also trashed.

The floor in bumpout was leveled with the rest of the floor. This took time, but it was needed to make sure the hardwood floors would go in properly.

3/8" plywood subfloor was laid upstairs over the existing heart pine floors. The floors were in horrible condition, so refinishing wasn't an option.

The back wall and floor had no insulation, so we insulated the spaces and then drywalled the back wall and closet.

The base trim was removed, and drywall issues were then repaired in the room. This sounds like a minor task, but it was a major issue as the drywall mud/tape job throughout the house was atrocious.

Another three coats of primer were applied to cover the mural, and then two coats of a pale yellow paint was slathered on. The color is Pina Colada by Behr.

Hardwood floors were laid. The floors are a 3/4" Brazilian teak and they look fabulous.

We then hung the west elm pendant light over the bed.

A lot more work was done in the past week, and there is a lot more detailed explanation of the work done, but I'll save that for later. There is still some more work to be done in the room, like completing the trim and finishing the closet, but we are very pleased with the progress.

Thank you so much for everybody's help - words can't express our gratitude.

Follow Up to Glass Lust

2008-12-23T12:54:00.004-05:00

The same day I wrote the post about stained glass transoms, we met with Steve from Wholly Terra. He talked our ear off for a while, but after the conversation was done we commissioned a transom be built for us. The Queen and I decided that it would be a joint Festivus present to each other.

Steve will make a custom design for us very similar to the design below. It won't have numbers on it, but will have the small circles and lines below the circles. It is single pane glass. We looked at getting double or triple pane glass, but Steve concinced us otherwise. Most likely it will be made in mid to late February. We are excited to have a piece of art that the Queen and I, as well as our neighbors, can enjoy.

If you curious, the cost is around $500, which includes installation. In my opinion, not too bad.

Contractor Woes

2008-12-23T12:17:00.005-05:00

Sometimes relationships come to a breaking point. There comes a time that you cannot see eye to eye, and either you accept the issue or you find someone else. This is true in relationships with contractors too, and we are leaning toward the latter behavior.

The kitchen contractor did a great job and was very understanding about us living in the house at the time of renovation. He was a very nice guy that I shared a lot of interests with. However, he had a tendency to not estimate add-ons in advance. When I got the final bid it had exorbatent prices for the add-ons, and some things which I considered in scope, he considered out of scope. I got pissed, paid the final bill and bid him adieu. He gave us an estimate for finishing off the rest of the house, which again was extremely high. Needless to say, he did not win this job.

For the upstairs bathroom we had someone else come in to help. He did a good job, though everything took much longer than expected. He was great with trading scope and was nice to work along with. However, in the past week he agreed to work and the day of or the day prior has continually come up with reasons not to work. Of a potential 40 hours to work, he worked 10. I don't like someone commiting to something and then backing out. We need things done. We are having someone else to possibly help finish things up, so hopefully they work out better. If they do, we'll get to part ways with our current guy.

For better news, we are now proud parents of a beautiful yellow boy. I name him Dewey.

Darkest Before Dawn

2008-12-21T10:24:00.002-05:00

I've never paid much attention to the New Year's day. To me the new year starts earlier; for me it starts today, on winter solstice. While some may see this time of year as the beginning of winter, or the darkest day of the year, but I know from this day forward each day will be a bit brighter. Happy solstice.

My House is Worth What

2008-12-15T19:04:00.002-05:00

Watching the show My House is Worth What makes me chuckle. At the time it was filmed a $1 into your house got you $3 back due to over-inflated appreciation.

These days most people would be happy not to have lost money, let alone make money. Oh how I long for the glory days.

The Difference Between an Issue and a Problem

2008-12-14T17:57:00.003-05:00

At work a lot of things don't go as planned. As things don't go as planned it means you have an issue or a problem. An issue is something that takes more time to fix, but is really just an annoyance because you know a solution as soon as you find the issue. A problem is when you uncover a potential issue, and you don't know how to fix it.

Yesterday I had an issue. The stairs are missing 4 balusters, and I need more balusters to reinforce the railing at the top of the stairs. The balusters in landing are spaced about every 12". They should be about every 4.5". I took one of the balusters to HD and of course, they don't match. Instead of buying around 25 balusters, it looks like I'll be buying 50-60 of them. This was an issue because I knew the solution. I just didn't like it because it costs more, and takes more time. Today was different.

Today I found a problem. As we were demo'ing the back bedroom we removed the drywall, plaster, lath, and trim from the back wall. Below the window we noticed the wood didn't look right. After poking around a bit I came to the conclusion we had termites. Not good. I'm not sure if they are still there, but I'll research this tonight. The termites ate some of the framing supporting the window. This explains why the upper sash of the window was broken... I wish the termites stopped at this. They didn't. They have eaten the main transverse support that is supporting the 5' overhang off the back of the house. This is a real problem. I have a few ideas of how to fix this, but it all involves more work than I expected.

Hopefully I can come up with a solution we can fix from the inside. The outside of the house is covered in formstone. If we have to rip this off the job will become very difficult, and a much bigger endeavor than I want to deal with.

Glass Lust

2008-12-12T10:41:00.007-05:00

Most rowhomes in Baltimore have a transoms above the front door and the front window. While some transoms have been bricked over most houses still have these transoms. They look great on the façade, and they allow much needed light into the house. When your house is only 13' wide by 45' long with windows only on the 13' sides, you need all the light you can get. In the past I discussed wanting a new transom over the door, but it's not on the high priority list. It's a wish list item - not a need item.

After looking at Steve and Marisa's custom designed glasswork from the local artist Wholly Terra, and Jenny's new stained glass transoms I'm lusting over a stained glass transoms. My house has transoms over both the front door and window (see above) but for budget reasons I'm only dreaming about replacing the transom over the front door. Here is an example of the type of transom I like from another local Baltimore artist, Terraza Stained Glass.

I love the modern design, and the estimate on their site shows a cost of around $300 for this transom. Since my transom is arched, it would probably be more. It's not in the budget for now, but it's something to dream about.

P.S. I emailed Steve at Wholly Terra and it turns out he did my favorite stained glass window in Baltimore. Check it out below. I want! Steve said his prices even include installation, so that would be one less thing to worry about.

Silver Lining to the Downturn

2008-12-04T22:25:00.003-05:00

There are positives to the economic mess. With the government announcing that it intended to drive mortgage rates down by buying up to a half-trillion dollars' worth of mortgage-backed securities, rates have been dropping. My mother, who works for a major mortgage company said it would be a good idea to check on refinancing. I called up the broker, then mom worked some magic, and as of tomorrow morning my rate will be locked at 5% for 60 days. We knew we wanted to refinance out of my 80/20 interest only loan, but we were hoping to wait until the house was more complete. With rates dropping and the ability to get a 60 day lock, we figured it was time to pull the trigger.

After we get back from vacation it will be a challenge to finish up the house before the appraisal. We figure we have about 45 days from tomorrow to fix things. We are going with an FHA loan, which will allow us to cash out up to 95% of the value of the home. To make sure we have the best opportunity to get money back we want the highest appraisal possible. There is discussion about rates going to 4.5%, but figured we didn't want to get greedy. Hopefully we made the right choice, but time will tell if we could have saved even more.

Heading to the SW

2008-12-01T16:35:00.013-05:00

On the heels of a four day weekend the Queen and I are looking forward to our upcoming six day weekend, starting this Friday. We are heading to Arizona for a wedding with a brief stop in Sedona before continuing on to Santa Fe. The Queen is in a wedding at the Arizona Biltmore, the site of McCain's wedding and concession speech. I'm sure it will be a good time. We took a trip earlier this year to Zion National Park in Utah, so I suppose it's a SW kind of year for us. It will give me a chance to dust off the camera (literally) and play with my photography toys a bit.

Since I promised not to write too much for my next post, here are some more pictures I've taken in and around the city.

This man is a reenactor at Fort McHenry. The defense of Fort McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner.

Loch Raven is North of the city in Baltimore County. It is beautiful in the fall.

Rawlings Conservatory is in a sketchy area of town, but it's a beautiful place to visit. During daylight.

I like this picture, and I'm not sure why. It just seems comfortable. It was taken at a friend's house.

Here is the Queen looking radiant while stepping into the light.

Gotta love the creativity of whoever thought up this sign. Must have been a marketing major. :-)

Based upon my last post you'd thind we'd be bunkering down and not spending any money. We've been planning on this trip for a long time, so there is no escaping it, and frankly we need it. It will be nice to rid ourselves of renovation dust, galavant at the Biltmore and gallop across the desert.

Our Response to the Economic Downturn

2008-12-01T11:47:00.003-05:00

In response to my post last week about how the economic downturn has affected you, here is how the economy has affected us.

1. We have a 100% financed house on an interest only loan. On the surface, this makes us a pretty high risk, at least from the current lender's perspective. I either had money for a down payment or for renovations. I chose to save on the down payment and monthly payments and put the money into renovations instead. A lot of people did this. I knew the housing market was souring, but I didn’t plan on making money on the house. I've only planned on learning how to renovate a home and hopefully be able to get out what I've put into it. Thus far, the money used for renovations has come from our bank accounts without the use of any loans. The debt we are currently carrying is some credit card debt, but no loans from other sources.

2. I had enough money for the kitchen renovation, but was planning on refinancing after this was complete and pulling out equity in order to fund the rest of the renovations. The economy fallout had begun, so I am not sure I would have been able to pull out the amount of money I needed. While I had put a lot of money into the house, refinancing has a lot of fees associated with it and the banks were no longer offering 100% financing. While I had effectively put a 20% down payment back into the house with the kitchen and downstairs bathroom renovation, the banks were moving toward 90% loan to value ratios and with refi fees I feared I wouldn't get back enough money to complete the renovation. I decided to finish the upstairs and refinance when the house was mostly done. The timeframe I made this decision was about the time the blog began, early this year. I am not sure this was the best decision to proceed on without refinancing, and it has caused a considerable amount of stress on us, but it's the path we have chosen.

3. The houses on both sides of me are both in trouble. One is in foreclosure, and the other one was in foreclosure (though I am not sure what state it is now). They are both rehabbed, though both not done particularly well. I am not certain what effect this has on me yet. It can't be good. The renovations I have made vastly exceed the quality of work in these other houses, but I am acutely aware that I could be overbuilding for the market. I am hoping that by doing a lot of work ourselves we will get most of the money out that we've put into it, but since we've paid cash out of hand for renovations thus far we are already invested. This means if we do move, we may not make much money but at least we most likely won't need to come to the closing table with a large check in hand.

4. The Queen's name is not currently on the mortgage. I've been waiting to refinance to do this, but renovations always take longer than expected (especially for such a large project like ours). I can't refinance until the house is almost done, as we want to be SURE that we have at least 20% of the home value into the home to avoid PMI and looking like we are high risk lenders.

5. What brought home the credit crisis to me was when I applied for a loan for the foundation work in the basement. Since the Queen's name isn't on the mortgage, I had to be the one to take out the loan. The loan was only for $2k. I was shocked when I was denied. My credit score is good (greater than 750), but I suppose the credit card debt coupled with a 100% financed interest only ARM made me too much of a risk for the loan. Also, without her being on the mortgage, from a credit perspective they don't see her as officially contributing to the mortgage thereby making it look like I am really in a bind. We found the money for the foundation work, but we would have liked to have a bit more cash on hand to continue with other work.

6. We seriously consider what renovations will really provide a return on investment. This pattern of thought has led us to do much of the work ourselves. Another example of potential cost/scope cutting is for us to reconsider digging out the basement to increase the height. It currently is about 6.5' of height, below the minimum 7' height for a habitable space. While we'd like to dig it out, a preliminary estimate (which is probably high) quoted us $45 a square foot to dig the space out. We'd only like about half of the space dug out, but this would still cost around $13k just for the dig. Add framing, electrical and moving things like plumbing and gas lines and the price only goes up. Now we're looking at just making the basement into a nice space without digging out. While it may not be perfect, it could work for a man cave. Other places that we talked about to save money on is the backyard. While I'd love something I planned out previously, it may just be overbuilding.

Going forward money will always be on the mind. While we'd love to make the house perfect, there is a point where it just has to be good enough. Finding that happy medium is the difficult part. Hopefully the money issues will work out OK in the coming months, but we are still proceeding on to finish what we’ve started. We have accepted that we are taking on short term debt, but feel that we are most of the way there and need to finish the main and second floor completely from a livability and a refinance perspective.

The next post I write will have pictures. Lots of pictures, because looking at all these words is boring me to tears.

Tying Up Loose Ends

2008-11-30T23:37:00.004-05:00

Between bouts of eating turkey over the holiday we got some work done on the house. Luckily, this weekend was more productive than the last one. The main things accomplished were finishing up shelves for the new linen closet in the bathroom and staining the stair edging.

The teak floors have been sitting in the dining room since July. With all the other dirty work they haven't been a priority, but with the dirtier work is nearing an end we're focusing on the floors again. We didn't purchase stair nosing when we bought the wood, and par for the course, the wood in the stain we purchased has been discontinued. Similar pre-finished woods were running $9-13 a linear foot, we have 60 linear feet, and the finishes didn't match our wood anyways. I don't like paying astronimical prices for items that don't even match, so we decided to buy some $4 a linear foot unfinished maple and stain it ourselves. This weekend has been an interesting experiment of trying various wood stains on the nosing we bought. So far we are pleased with the match, but there are still 3 coats of polyurethane to put on the wood.

The wood shelves went into the linen closet ok. I had some leftover plywood laying around, so I used that for the shelves. On the front edge I used the finish nailer to add a piece of trim to give a cleaner and more durable edge. The shelves were then primed and painted, and are looking ab fab in the closet.

Other things accomplished this weekend were getting the foundation issue fixed, eating turkey, building some shelves for the basement, repairing the upstairs sink, sitting in front of a fire drinking irish whiskey, and going to the dump to rid ourselves of building supplies. Not too shabby.

What Does it Mean to Me?

2008-11-26T16:28:00.008-05:00

With the economy falling flat on it's face due to the mortgage meltdown, what does this mean to you and your renovation projects? I'm curious to hear how the wall street issue hits home for you, if at all, and how you are dealing with it.

I'll post a response later about how it has affected yours truly.

Cool Rowhouse Info

2008-11-25T16:52:00.009-05:00

I was cruising around for rowhouse info and found a great resource on rowhomes, the Philadelphia Rowhouse Manual, which was just published this year.

The manual has a lot of great information and renovation guidance for rowhomes. With such a small space there are a lot of constraints on your design, with this manual offering a lot of solutions for the common rowhouse issues (like being so long and skinny). If you are looking to renovate a rowhouse this is definitely worth the time to read. It has info ranging from general roof pitch numbers, rooftop deck info, window anatomy definitions, general kitchen appliance dimensions, stair dimensions, to recommendations for adding a small bathroom.

It would be better if it was from Baltimore, as it has some information on building codes, but beggars can't be choosers. :-)

+++
On an unrelated note, I was looking at an old entry of pictures I've taken of Baltimore. It makes me sad that I'll be selling some camera lenses due to renovations, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Non-Productive Weekend

2008-11-24T10:38:00.004-05:00

After spending all Sunday toiling on projects, I feel like I got nothing accomplished.

I worked on insulating the front door. You see, when I replaced the front door this summer it took many passes with the power planer to make it fit. Seeing as nothing is level in the house, and I didn't want to cut up the beautiful trim around the door, we chose to use a wood door and trim it to fit. Apparently I went a little crazy with the planer on the bottom, and opened up a sizeable gap under the door. I also used a very thin threshold, which resulted in water running off the door and into the house. Not good. Fixing this was a monumental task that involved a new threshold, more power planing, a hacksaw, and a multitude of other tools and the better part of a day.

The door no longer has a screaming gale coming through it 24/7, but I must admit the door takes a bit of an effort to shut with all the sealer around it. There are a few more small gaps to fill in better, but it got cold so I headed inside for the day.

I then worked on installing shelves in the linen closet in the bathroom. The shelves are trapeziodal in space, and again the walls are not plumb or square. Also, I have no idea what some of the drywall is attached to, because in my flurry of drilling I couldn't find a stud in some areas. Each shelf and support is custom cut, anchored and attached, creating way too much work for such a minor project.

Also, the new tub's plumbing was leaking and the coldwater line to one of the vanity sinks is busted. Of course fixing these isn't straight forward either. Overall this weekend was a frustrating experience, and unfortunately each of the tasks I started weren't completed.

*sigh*

Taking a Jackhammer to the Basement Floor

2008-11-19T23:25:00.008-05:00

Last week we had an issue in the basement. The water is gone, but we decided to get this issue fixed ASAP. Now that the bathroom is done, we can focus on the second bedroom. The issue with working on this bedroom is that it is filled with stuff. The logical place to put this stuff is in the basement, so this means making sure the basement is safe for storage. This is where B-Dry comes in.

They came and gave us a quote on Saturday, and while the costs were lower than what we were expecting, some things they were offering just didn't make sense. I wanted a Honda of a foundation job. Something not too expensive and reliable. Their original offer was for a Cadillac. For instance, they originally said they'd have to replace my 3 month old sump pump in order to guarantee their work. They kept calling back with better and better offers, and finally we settled on a price about 40% lower than their original quote. They'll be here next Wednesday. I'll be glad to have this issue over with, and to be honest I'll sleep better because of it.

After this is done all we have to worry about is finishing the second bedroom, laying the teak floors through the whole house, eventually finishing the basement, replacing the HVAC system, insulating the attic, and 10,000 other miscellaneous things. Good thing my parents are coming over Christmas to help out. If only they knew what they're getting themselves into. :-)

Gratuitous Wally shot!

We are quite proud of our furbaby. He's in advanced obedience class, where we get to gush at how incredibly smart and well behaved he is. He'd be even better if he didn't eat remote controls, but I guess he can't be perfect.

Upstairs Bathroom Lessons Learned

2008-11-17T11:05:00.013-05:00

After each major project I want to write a Lessons Learned post about the mistakes (and a few successes) made along the way, and how we dealt with them. You can take a look at my past half-assed attempts by clicking on the posts tagged lessons leared.

Make sure you have enough tile, especially trim pieces - We purchased the wall tile back in February. There was 2-3 times as much tile as we needed, and there is a ton of cove molding and base molding. But there wasn't enough bullnose molding. We found this out while the contractor was tiling. I called Daltile asking where I could find some bullnose and they told me the tile in the exact color I was looking for, Ice Grey #1276, was discontinued. Not good. Instead of finding near matching tiles, we decided to just not use bullnose in a few areas, like in the niches and on one small edge above the linen closet door.

Also, deciding to tile the front of the tub and the niches with slate meant we were two floor tiles short. Luckly Home Depot was able to get the tile for us quickly. Moral of the story, make sure you have enough trim and buy plenty of extra tile (or plan better) and be wary of buying a specialty color/type of tile, as purchasing additional tile may be tricky. In the end, all is well as we spent about $600 on all the tile in the room, which is pretty cheap considering how it all came out.

Make sure you account for all door swings when laying out new closets/walls - The decision to add a linen closet was a late addition. We talked it over with the contractor, and I made it clear that we didn't need a large closet, just something that would take an 18" pre-hung door and would fit in the space without being obtrusive. I had thought he had taken into account the fact that the door swinging into the room would be able to swing a full 90 degrees and fit in the blank space to the right of the linen closet. He didn't take this into account, so the door is 2-1/4" too long and hits the linen closet when opening, creating a small dead space in the room. Eventually I'd like to switch this to a 26" door, but with tile laid and the door already in it was a bit late to ask for this change.

Make sure you get the matching diverter for your shower - I thought maybe we could use the old diverter for the tub. Wrong!

If using a floating vanity, make sure the plumbing rough-in is at the correct dimensions - While the floating vanity looks great, it has a lot of structure to make sure it is well connected to the wall, thus leaving a small area for pipes to enter/exit the vanity. Originally the plumbing was roughed in haphazardly, which had the supply and drain lines below the vanity. A floating vanity with plumbing hangining below is not hot. This is a change we had to pay extra to get fixed.

Find a contractor you trust - When it comes to contractors (and people in general), I trust my gut. We had about 6 folks come through the bathroom for estimates. We ended up going with the person who said they were willing to work with me, and really seemed to understand that the design may evolve as time progressed. He also wrote into the quote that additional work that was out of scope would cost extra at a flat hourly rate, and that if I did some of the work that he would take money off the quote. I worked along side him for a considerable amount, so many potential increases in scope were offset by work I did to help him out. This style of work probably isn't for most folks, but it was perfect for us as it helped get us the design we wanted at a cost we could afford.

We also did the quote as labor only, as we had already purchased the materials. If you are using high end materials, realize it might be better to pick out yourself and price separately as it is just too hard for a contractor to bid the job.

If you are purchasing a fan/light, do NOT get the flourescent version - The flourscent version uses a 42 watt, 4 pin bulb (GX24q-4 base), which is hard to find. You can't just plug a normal bulb in the light as the ballast is integrated into the light. We want to replace the light for two reasons (a) the color temperature is too cold and (b) the bulb is very dim when turned on and takes a long time to come to full brightness

The color temperature is easy to fix. I did some research and found our bulb is a 3500K bulb, which is a cool-bluish white. Not appealing in the bathroom, as it casts a ghostly bluish pallor to the sking. We want a 2700K bulb, which is a tungsten balanced bulb that puts off the warm and cozy orangish glow we are used to.

The issue of being dim when it starts up is more complicated. Looking up the light I found it's spec sheet. After skimming through a lot of gobbly'd'gook I finally found evidence of what I was looking for on page 6. This page shows a graph of lumen output as a function of time. At start up, this bulb only puts out 20% power, and take 2-3 minutes to come up to full power! If you are just going in to use the bathroom quickly, this is far too long to wait. Since the bulb is 4 pin, it requires an electric ballast be installed in the light for it to work. Now I don't know if the poor light output at start-up us due to the light, or to the ballast. With lights running at around $10 a pop plus shipping I am not excited about ordering new bulbs only to find out they take just as long to get bright. I wish I would have just gone with a normal incandescent fixture and fit it with a CFL. :-(

If installing tile, make sure your floor is stable enough to support it - Tile is very stiff and does not bend. While the tile is stiff, the grout in between it is not nearly as stiff. If you do not support your subfloor enough, then your grout lines will crack creating ways for water to seep into your floor. If your floor is really bad, you can even have the tiles crack. Not good.

I read up on prepping subfloors in Tile Your World, and even looked at John Bridge's Tile Forum. I suggest checking both resources before tiling a floor. He recommends a floor that has deflections less than 1/320 for ceramic tile and 1/720 for natural stone. My floor is slate, so I knew it had to be stiff.

After demo'ing the room I stepped in spots and could feel the floor deflecting below my feet. While the Deflect-O-Later said I was ok for tile, the deflections I felt told me otherwise. I had just planned to add a layer of subfloor over top of my floor, but after feeling this we decided to rip out the old subfloor and sister the joists and add cross bracing to stiffen up the area. Also, we laid new subfloor and 1/2" hardiebacker cement board on top. I am very glad we took this step, because if not it could have been a very expensive thing to fix down the road, as the entire room would have to be ripped up.

If I think of more things in the future, I'll just add to this post.

Master Bath Reveal

2008-11-16T22:54:00.006-05:00

I've been pretty mum lately about the bathroom renovation. This doesn't mean work hasn't been accomplished, rather I figured I'd hold off on showing pictures until it was done. As of 10:30 tonight, it's pretty well done.

Not too long ago, the bathroom looked like this.

The bathroom stayed like this for months and months while other things got worked on. A lot has been accomplished. Just not in the bathroom. :-) Around Mid-October we decided we could use a bit of help on the bathroom, seeing as it is the only full bath in the house, and brought in a contractor to help things along. After all these months we kept things in the spirit of our design board, though there have been a few changes along the way.

Design Board

Now it looks a wee bit better. Walking in from the hallway.

Peeking at the double vanity to the left.

Here is a look at the double vanity with the subway tile, restoration hardware lights, floating vanity and vessel sinks.

Turning around 180 degrees, is the separate room with the toilet and tub. We ran slate tile up the front of the tub, and used slate inside the niches. We used a different shower curtain from the one in the design board as the pattern just didn't work in the space.

Even the toilet looks good, and so far I'm pretty impressed with it's performance. :-)

This weekend was full of 12 hour days caulking (thanks Momnipotent!), painting (the color is Behr Breaker), installing vanity lights, sealing grout, mounting fixtures and tons of other miscellaneous stuff. But it's all worth it. We stand in the bathroom now and are still surprised that this is our house. But it is, even if we have to pinch ourselves every so often to remind us we aren't dreaming.

Questionable Foundations

2008-11-13T17:37:00.003-05:00

You know it's not good when the contractor calls from your house to tell you that you have a 1/2" of water in the basement. The call didn't improve after he found a spot in the foundation where the water was entering. With the final bill coming due soon on the bathroom renovation, this is not a good time for this.

Does anybody local know of a good basement/foundation person? Any help would be appreciated, the sooner the better.

Dog Shower?

2008-11-05T21:41:00.003-05:00

Wally is ready for the tub to be done too.

And the Queen is entirely too excited in this picture.

Upstairs Bathroom Layout

2008-11-05T11:40:00.015-05:00

Looking back, I don't think I ever fully walked through the design process involved with the upstairs bathroom. It is a large space, roughly 6' by 14', but was awkwardly laid out. In the update I've tried to use the space better, seeing as this is the only full bathroom in the house. I'll walk through this process a bit to help lay out the changes.

Creating Two Rooms. In today's mode of thinking people are opening spaces up to create the illusion of space. In this bathroom, I felt it was too big and awkwardly put together and making two smaller spaces would suit the room better. Also, since the home has only one full bathroom I thought it would be better to separate the shower/toilet area from the vanity area for privacy, and allow one person get ready in the room without steaming up the mirrors.

Another reason for creating the two rooms, and moving the door, was to create better flow through the area. Personally, I just think the space flows better now.

Creating two rooms does have me concerned about a couple of things; lighting, and making sure the spaces don't feel cramped. The shower area has a skylights as does the outside hall, but getting adequate light (especially natural) into the vanity area will be difficult. The bathroom is in the middle of the home, so choking off the natural light to the vanity area isn't ideal, but in the future I'd like to replace the door between the vanity/shower area with a frosted glass door to allow more light in the vanity area. Also, I am thinking of adding two small recessed lights in the vanity area to supplement the lights mounted over the vanity. To alleviate the issue of being cramped I am using floating furniture. The vanity and the make-up station will both be floating. Hopefully this will work to help the space feel more open and airy.

Adding a pocket door. While it wasn't my first choice to use a pocket door for the bathroom, there wasn't a good place for the door to swing. The pocket door addresses this issue, and there is still a full door into the bathroom to allow a more secure entrance to this area.

Adding a double vanity. With the Queen moving in we knew we wanted more space for us to both get ready, and there is plenty of space for the double vanity. It was pretty much a no-brainer decision to add it. Also, by sticking to the original plumbing locations (tub/toilet/vanity) the only new plumbing modifications needed in the room were for the new tub and for the second sink. No major changes in shifting drain lines around, which was a relief.

Adding a make-up station. Not sure if this is the correct name for it, but it's what I call the area. I thought it would be good to have an area for the Queen to get ready, and by using the second sink and this make-up area she has her own area of the bathroom, while also staying out of the traffic lane into the shower area. This make-up area will be a floating drawer with a thin glass top, and an outlet has been added at an appropriate height for a hair dryer or make up light.

Adding a linen closet. The odd shape in the corner where the linen closet is was previously unusable space, so we figured we may as well make use of it. An 18" helped us not to intrude on the other door's swing, and also kept the closet from being to obtrusive in the spaece. The closet will be a great place to store towels and bathroom clutter, while not taking up usable space.

Adding shower niches. The two shower niches will be a nice place to store all the products in the shower. The Queen has a plethora of stuff in the tub area, so the niches will be a great way to avoid clutter on the edge of the tub.

Overall I'm pleased with the design. I think splitting the space into two rooms will functionally maximize the space, making it the best use of space for our single full bath house. I'll be glad to have the bathroom done in a couple of weeks.

P.S. Based upon comments from the last post I decided to go with the dual flush Toto Aquia. Hopefully it lives up to expecations. :-)

Oh Crap

2008-11-03T21:03:00.006-05:00

Why does every home improvement project result in bouts of excessive research? Must be a side effect of being an engineer. Today's dilemma is the toilet, and after reading many reviews all over the internet I am a bit overwhelmed.

Some background... For the downstairs toilet I wanted a toilet that was a bright white, had an elongated bowl, and had a minimum of depth from the wall since the space was small. Simple enough. Now that it's in, I'm not all too thrilled with it's performance. You see, it has a tendency to clog. Not pleasant. I guess the Queen just puts too much down it's lil ol' gullet. :-)

For the upstairs bathroom I am being a bit more picky. I want bright white, modern looking, elongated, preferably a taller height, would be nice to have a dual flush, hopefully stays clean long, and I want performance, performance and more performance. This thing should be rush excrement down the drain at the speed of a bullet train. And I want it cheap. I must be asking too much, because the ones with the specs I'm looking for are running $400-500 including shipping. For a toilet. After skimming through reviews there is universal praise for Toto toilets, so I'm leaning toward this brand.

Meet the Toto Ultramax (MS854114SG).

Pros:

Looks good and modern

Stays clean longer due to the sanagloss glazing

Excellent performance for flushing

Comes with a soft-close seat ($40 value)

One piece. Not sure why this matters, but it seems as if people like this?

Cons:

Isn't dual flush

Over $500 after shipping. Yowza!

Meet the Toto Drake (CST744SG).

Pros:

Looks good

Stays clean longer due to the sanagloss glazing

Industry leading flush performance!

About $300 after shipping.

Cons:

Isn't dual flush

Not as modern looking as ultramax

Needs a soft-close seat ($40 value)

Meet the Toto Aquia (CST414M).

Pros:

Looks great - nice and modern, without a skirt

Is dual flush. I also like the dual flush buttons on top of the tank - they just look swanky.

About $320 after shipping.

Cons:

Ok performance, but smaller trap and doesn't have G-max system

No sanagloss glazing, so more cleaning. :-(

Needs a soft-close seat ($40 value)

Now how was this post for exciting? On a scale from 1-10 I'd say it's an 11. Anybody have any recommendations or thoughts? What are the most important issues on a toilet for you? Maybe I'll look at other brands other than Toto, seeing as this seems like a lot of cash for a crapper.

Butterflies in my Stomach

2008-10-21T15:42:00.009-04:00

Tomorrow the contractor begins work on the bathroom, and I've got a feeling like the first day before school. You know, that gitty expectant feeling full of hope and without a thought about the challenges ahead. That kind of feeling. We'll see how I feel about this whole experience at the end of the job, but it will be good to have a finished bathroom in a couple of weeks.

I'll be working with the contractor tomorrow to jack up the roof where one of the main joists was cut through, sistering this joist, getting all of the building materials, and maybe we'll even get to the framing and laying subfloor. Speaking of the subfloor, I was hoping to just lay another layer of subfloor over the existing 5/8" floor, but there is a lot of movement in this floor. I'm thinking about removing the current subfloor and sistering the joists before laying new subfloor. I don't want to put slate down only to have the tile crack as this would be entirely uncool.

And now time for a dirty little secret... We made a big deal about which tile we were going to use in the upstairs bathroom shower floor, and the Queen even emailed Apartment Therapy and we got a shoutout on their site. After all of the waffling we decided to go with a tub. Yeah, we're that anti-climactic. There is only one full bathroom in the house, and while we like a standing shower, we thought about resale and the extra costs associated with the fully tiled shower. It sucks being practical and maybe one day we'll regret it, but the Kohler Archer tub is on order so there's no looking back now. I do think it's looks like a pretty snazzy tub though, and with a 20% off Home Depot coupon it was a good deal.

I bought the tub without a apron to it it, as I plan to use the gray subway tile on the front edge of the tub. I think the tub will still look good, and not doing the shower allowed us to add a linen closet, separate the bathroom into two rooms, and add a couple of niches in the tub area all for the original installation price.

And It All Came Crashing Down

2008-10-21T11:29:00.000-04:00

Remember that pretty mirror hanging over the newly painted fireplace?

Getting woken up at 1 am to a crashing sound is a bit startling. Next time I'll use a heavy duty fastener. :-)

Most productive weekend evar!

2008-10-20T10:27:00.008-04:00

How did we go from this?

To this, in a weekend?

A lot of hard work by the Queen and her bro is what got it done.

The Queen and I had a three day weekend so we worked hard to get the drywall issues fixed. The drywall is laid over plaster. It was not attached to the plaster or the joists well and the mudding job was extremely poor. This took a lot of fixing to make things look ok. Sunday the Queen's bro came over to help us paint the place. It was a long day that ended at 10 pm, with the closets fully installed and the painting done.

Next up in the bedroom is some drywall fixing, laying subfloor and the teak. Things like doors and trim are luxuries we may not have time for in the near future, seeing as the contractor starts work on the bathroom this week. For part of the bathroom work I'll be working with the contractor, so we haven't completely let go of our DIY roots, but with a single full bathroom we need to work quickly to get a shower back online quickly.

Hello AT

2008-10-10T09:06:00.003-04:00

Howdy folks from Apartment Therapy. If you are looking for some of the better blog entries I recommend checking out the kitchen and the hungarian bookshelves.

For the regular blog readers head over to AT and take the survey posted over at AT about the tile choices.

Wally the Handyman

2008-10-08T10:20:00.003-04:00

Wally has been hard at work renovating the house.

He's grown a wee bit since we got him in August. He was a cute and cuddly 32 pounds and is now topping 50. We figure he's got at least another 50 to go. He's a goofy dog that is super smart, loves all dogs, people, kids and most of all loves us.

He's done a great job at taking a hodgepodge of doors and irregular surfaces on the bedroom wall, covering in the door to the closet from the hallway, and adding a doorway from the bedroom to the closet. He may not have an opposable thumb, but he's pretty good at drywalling.

Since this was taken he mounted a closet system and clothes are hanging in the space. The Queen is pleased, but now wants her closet complete ASAP.

Bathroom Floor Tile Decision

2008-10-08T09:07:00.004-04:00

After meeting with umpteen contractors for the bathroom we think we're about ready to select one. We have most of the materials so we asked them to bid the job as labor only. Once we give the ok, the contractor would start in two weeks. So two weeks until start, and while we told him we have all the materials, we weren't exactly correct...

The original plan was to just refinish the tub. After looking at the condition of the tub and thinking about what we wanted weare going with a 60"x30" tiled shower instead. I had purchased the vermont slate for the bathroom floor, but since we were going to re-use the tub I didn't purchase enough for the shower floor. Oops. We'd heard that slate isn't great in showers anyway, so now we are on the hunt for tile that will look good on the shower floor that will go with our other tile.

12" x 12" Vermont Slate purchased the floors

3" x 6" Daltile Ice Grey tiles purchased for the shower walls and vanity backsplash

We are at a loss of which of the below will look best on the shower floor, so we'd love to hear your opinions on what you think would look best.

1. Marble Hex - After drooling at Anna's bathroom on Door Sixteen marble hex tile caught my eye. While I like it on it's own, I'm not sure how well it will go with the slate. Also, it is a bit of an odd transition the size of the hex to the slate, and the colors going from so dark to so light.

2. Pebble Stones - I think the pebbles could mix in well with the slate, but I am worried that it could look a little bit cheesy. Also, it will feel a bit odd on your feet. What do you think?

3. Black tile - I am thinking some 2"x2" porcelain or 2"x1" black marble tile to match in well with the slate, and continue the sleek black floor look through the shower. While I really like the black, the Queen isn't sold. So am I crazy in thinking this will match, or is the Queen right? Also, I think a couple of black tiled niches in the shower could look good.

2"x2" Black Marble

1"x2" Black Marble

What do you think will work best? Any ideas on things that would look better?

Top 10 Signs that Renovations Aren't Complete

2008-10-06T12:02:00.001-04:00

10. Your lunch sack is a plastic bag from Home Depot
9. You worry about falling through the kitchen ceiling every morning when going into the tub
8. Contractors come to your house more often than your friends
7. You go to the dog park and someone points out that the dog has paint on him
6. Plastic drop cloths are considered a home decor
5. Sundays are spent mudding & taping instead of watching football.
4. The upstairs foyer table is actually a piece of OSB. With a mitre saw on it.
3. Fixing the main roof truss that is 100% cut through is on the same 'to do list' along with purchasing 1/2" screws for the closet.
2. You get certified letters for the weeds & junk in your back yard.
1. Two words - drywall boogers

The Perfect Desk

2008-10-02T11:38:00.009-04:00

We have been on the look out for the perfect desk. Of course we've been checking craigslist and ebay for mid century modern desks, but for some reason they aren't wowing us. I was perusing Design*Sponge and came across an article on learning from college students' dorm rooms. After clicking a link for loft bed (don't ask why I clicked this) I came across this.

The desk idea is perfect. Now we are on the hunt to see if we can make something like this work. We're having a tough time finding file cabinets that are both (a) cute and (b) the correct dimensions to be used as a desk. You can find the right height or depth, but finding both is proving to be treacherous.

Continuing the Closet Saga

2008-09-29T11:18:00.007-04:00

Work continued this weekend on the closets. All of the drywall is up and the first coat of mud is complete on the new closet. While the new closet is very small at only 33" wide by 61" long, it is filled with seams so the Queen kept quite busy. It will make an awkward closet by the time we are done, but small spaces call for creative solutions. For now the plan is to install the Antonius closet system on the 33" wall (back of the closet) with clothes bars,

and float one or two Billy Bookshelf units on the 61" wall. It will be very tight, but we'll work with the space we have. In the end this will be my closet, and the Queen will get the second much larger closet.

This weekend I focused my attention on completing the wiring in the closets and running electrical for the bathroom. The plumbing rough in is done, and once electrical rough on the wall is done on we can mount the vanity.

Also, we are starting to get bids on having someone finishing the bathroom upstairs. I'm not pleased about having someone else do the job, but work has been crazy lately, leaving us with little time for renovations. We've been plugging away at things but at this pace the house will be done in 2015. Hopefully the bids come in low, as we have done a fair amount of the work already and are willing to help out more as work continues. I'd really like to find someone who is willing to work with us on this in order to contain costs. With the housing market the way it is it just isn't wise to go overboard with home spending.

Happy Birthday to Me

2008-09-24T22:58:00.004-04:00

With my birthday coming up next week momz called to let me know a package was waiting for me at the Fed Ex distribution center. She said it required a signature. That's when you know something is good - when it requires a signature. Just like earlier this week when I got a notice that I had certified mail, and I went to the post office to sign it and get handed a $110 fine for the city for junk in my backyard. Well, I guess not all things that require a signature are good.

I went to Fed Ex and there waiting for me was a fancy new speaker system. The Sony HT CT-1000. I have been ogling speaker systems for the past week in search of teh uber system.

Living in a rowhouse with an exposed brick wall 6" behind the couch means surround sound speakers don't work too well. Also, I didn't feel like running wires for a bunch of speakers so a single speaker and sub is really nice. I'd looked at soundbars before so was pretty damn pleased to have the 'rents and g-ma get me one for my b-day. I have it hooked up now and it sounds good, but I need to run the wired through the wall all nice and fancy. I'm a sucker for seamless designs, so I don't want to see any cables. Funny how cables bother me, but the house is still a hovel. Go figure!

Building a Carrie Bradshaw worthy Closet

2008-09-17T11:01:00.002-04:00

Since the Queen has moved in she has been constantly sick with wheredoiputmystuffinthisgodforsakentornaparthouse-itis. The whole upstairs is in disarray, so finding room for her stuff has been a wee bit of an issue. In trying to cure her ailment we've destroyed more stuff, namely one of my closets, and are in the process of expanding it so we have two walk-in closets in the master bedroom.

In this picture I am looking to the almighty for help. We need all the help we can get.

iRenovate

2008-08-29T20:56:00.004-04:00

Life has been busy the last few weeks. The queen moving in, the new dog, a week vacation at my parents cottage on Lake Huron, and this weekend we are in Chicago for my cousins wedding. It is on Sunday afternoon on a rooftop deck overlooking Wrigley Field. During a Cubs game! It's great to be here in the summer and I look forward to being at the wedding and spending some time with the family. Renovations will resume at the normally slow pace after we return.

P.S. This post is from my new iPhone. It rules.

Meet Wally

2008-08-10T22:14:00.002-04:00

After seeing Wall-E we knew that's what his name had to be. He's a five month old rottweiler (with maybe a splash of some other breed too) that we picked up from the SPCA. He is the most chill dog ever and follows the Queen around everywhere. We've already grown quite fond of him.

Ding Dong the Toilet's Gone

2008-08-04T08:42:00.004-04:00

The Queen is all moved in. Renovations are nowhere near done. Boxes fill the second bedroom and furniture overflows the house. With things piling up I tackled the project of removing the throne in the basement. A toilet sat in the middle of the room with no walls around it. The plumbing wasn't built into the floor causing the toilet to hover over the rest of the space like a holy throne. While it was a lovely sight to behold, it took up valuable storage space. After 3-4 trips to the hardware store to get the correct plumbing supplies the toilet is gone and the plumbing is all capped off. I'll build some benches in the back and this will be an extra area for storage.

It is so difficult to live in a rowhouse while renovating it. The small space, coupled with an open floorplan mean keeping the place clean and tidy is near impossible. When more than two people are working, it's almost mandatory for people to be in at least two rooms. This means tools, building supplies, and messes are scattered through the house. Also, nobody tells you that when you are doing a DIY project the amount of stuff you have to buy. Not just tools. The house is filled with 3 different kids of drywall, 5 different plywoods/OSB, and a plethora of drywall, painting and miscellaneous building knick knacks. All necessary and all taking up precious space.

Tonight I am picking up even more building supplies - 15'ish sheets of plywood. Joy!

In all honesty, this post was just made to move the last post down the page and out of sight.

Goodbye Loki

2008-08-02T19:43:00.011-04:00

Dear Loki,

Thank you for the short time you were with us. We loved the way you spooned with us when we slept, the way you chased the ball in the park, coming home to you after a long day of work, and waking up to your (sometimes annoying) wagging in the morning.

Making the decision to put you down was one of the most difficult decisions we've ever had to make. We tried so hard to work through your issues and wanted to keep you so bad. 99.5% of the time you were the perfect fit for us. We were worried when we saw your aggression towards kids, knowing they must have done something to you before we got you, but we took you to a behaviorist and worked through it. We were worried when you bit my parents puppy, but thought we could work through this too. After you nipped the dog walker, your increasing aggression toward the dog walker, and toward your dog-buddies you walked with we came home dreading the dog walker's note because we didn't want it to say anything bad. We understood you may have to be a sheltered pup, but we accepted that. I wish you hadn't lunged at me the other night. While you didn't break the skin of my neck you scared me. It scared me, but I still really wanted to keep you. The vet and the behaviorist disagreed. I could deal with your issues, but we were afraid that eventually you'd hurt somebody else.

We're so sorry, and we miss you so much. Wish you were here.

-Corey & The Queen

*This post may be deleted later.

A Thank You Letter

2008-07-30T10:59:00.004-04:00

Dear Momnipotent & Dadolescent,

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help in renovating the house. From installing crown molding, building a foyer, fixing doors and steps, the never ending task of attemping to make my house plumb and level, painting, caulking, drywalling and even allowing the use, and in some cases purchasing, a multitude of tools are all very much appreciated. The house has come a long way (though not as far as we had thought) since you originally saw it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sincerely,

-Me

Drywalling Machine

2008-07-26T23:48:00.008-04:00

Since drywalling is a pain in the butt, I figured the Queen should do it. Doesn't she look happy?

And for a random pic, here is my impression of an angler fish.

Pretty good, no?

Etsy Lust

2008-07-24T16:50:00.015-04:00

If I could, I think I'd fill the house with all things etsy. It's a great place for good cheap art, pottery, or whatever assorted knick knacks that your inner consumerist desires. While I don't have a need for their stuff, I do have a want for it. So that leaves me filled with etsy lust.

(click the pics for links to the etsy sites)

I'm sure my male friends would think me a wee bit effeminate for liking this stuff. I'm ok with this. Is it so wrong that I prefer things like etsy, Project Runway and HGTV to fantasy football, baseball and action movies? My old football and rugby teammates would laugh if they could see me now...

+ + +
My DVD set of Mad Men showed up. I watched the first couple of episodes last season, before losing track of it. This show is one of my all time fave shows up there with HBO's The Wire.

I can't wait to see the new season starting this Sunday.

New HVAC system?

2008-07-23T12:21:00.014-04:00

A few reasons have me considering an upgrade to my HVAC system.

fix

Baltimore Rowhouse Consumption Table*

Energy prices are also motivation to seal up the cracks in the ceiling and to actually insulate the attic. Yes, I have no insulation up there as I've been waiting to redo the upstairs bathroom before blowing it in. I'm a bad person with a carbon footprint the size China.

My buddy Dru works for a big HVAC company, so he's running some numbers for me. My prelim estimates have me thinking I'll need about need about 2 tons of chilling capacity. Pricing out some mail order split systems (both interior and exterior parts) gives me a range of about $1500-2500, plus installation. The $1500 system is SEER 13, while SEER 16 would run about $2500. I'm not sure the extra $1000 up front is worth saving me around $120 a year. I'd like to be green, but I also don't like to throw a bunch of money away. Also throw on maybe $1000 for install (I have no clue) and this is looking to be a pricey endeavor.

After the sizing is run I'll take another look at what the prices are and decide if I really want to do this. While it wasn't in the plan to upgrade this, the costs are making more and more sense.

*Some notes on my calculations. The prices I used are prices for electricity with all taxes and fees added on, and the gas costs are the commodity prices plus the delivery charges. Comparing bills I've noticed some interesting things happening with prices.

a) Surprisingly, the cost/KWh of electricity has stayed roughly the same. I had thought there would be a massive increase due to high commodities (coal). I wonder why prices have held steady. Any ideas?

b) While I see the commodity cost of natural gas has gone up 40-50% percent, what I don't understand is why BGE is charging 40% more for the delivery charge. Not sure why this would correlate with commodity prices.

Chiasso Rules

2008-07-22T09:19:00.014-04:00

A while ago I ordered a modern looking mailbox from Chiasso.

It arrived, and promptly sat on a shelf in order for it to age properly. And by age, I mean that I procrastinated about putting it up, but let's not talk about that... This past week I went to mount it and realized that it you had to use the keys in order to open the front of box to drill the mounting holes. Much searching later, no keys were to be found. I emailed Chiasso:

I had purchased the arcs mailbox a while ago and just got around to installing it. When I went to install it I could not find the two keys that came with it. I don't ever recall seeing these at all... What could I do to get another set of keys for the mailbox?

I expected an email back saying that I was a moron for losing the keys and there is nothing they can do for me. I was pleasantly surprised to get this response:

Hello Corey-

Thank you for your email.

We apologize that your mailbox is missing the keys. Unfortunately, the keys are specific to each mailbox, so we are unable to send just the keys.

I have submitted a new order for a new mailbox be shipped to you, no additional charge. This is scheduled to ship in 1-2 days and arrive to you in 3-5 business days via DHL.

In regards to the other mailbox, if you feel someone could use it,please donate it on our behalf. You do not need to return it to us.

We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter. Please contact us if we may further assist you.

Sincerely,
Chiasso Customer Care
1-877-244-2776
www.chiasso.com

While I wasn't even sure I had lost the keys, they sent a new one. Now that is customer service.

The new mailbox came with two keys taped to the mailbox. I removed the keys from the mailbox which left a tape residue on the box. I looked at the box they sent originally, and no tape residue was to be found. I guess I didn't lose the keys after all, but either way I really appreciate Chiasso's response and will be ordering from them again.

Now I have an extra mailbox, sans keys. Anybody with some locksmithing skills want a free mailbox? Just cover the shipping costs or drop by and pick it up and it's yours. All I ask is that you take pictures of it after it's installed to prove that you actually mounted it. If you can't get new keys then please ship it on to a person that can use it.

For a chance win the mailbox write a haiku (5-7-5) describing how it would look on your house. I will select the best haiku, and the mailbox is yours. Multiple responses are allowed.

For inspiration here are a some samples,

Dear Recent Googler

2008-07-16T14:06:00.003-04:00

After googling "how to make a tile mosaic of a pug face" and arriving at my page, I hope you found everything to complete your auspicious endeavor. Please send pictures upon completion.

Sincerely,

Baltimore Rowhouse
:-)

Rowhouse or Row House?

2008-07-16T12:42:00.013-04:00

Here in good ol' Bawlmer we refer to our rowhouses as one word, as opposed to "row houses". This makes sense to me. Since my house adjoins others maybe the words should also be conjoined too. I've noticed some links on some of houseblogs to this site have it as two words. After Wikipedia'ing 'Rowhouse' it sent me to an explanation for Terraced house. I don't have a terrace, so not sure how I fit in this category, but reading down the page shows that row houses are indeed two words. That said, that's not how we roll in gramatically incorrect Baltimore so we will stick with the one word. Y'all fancy folks on the intarweb can use two words if you like.

And now, onto the real post. I've never posted a picture of the outside of the house. Now that the front door has been replaced and the window trim is being painted I thought I'd put some pics. Keeping true to form I will forego the before pictures and just show pics mid progress.

The new door is wood and we decided to paint it black. I'd like to paint the trim black too, but the last trim painter was a bit sloppy and got a lot of white paint on the brick. Also, the new front window is vinyl so not sure how that would look. Do y'all think it would look better with black or white trim?

The door isn't anything too fancy as we wanted it to fit the style of the neighborhood, and I didn't feel like spending a ton of money on this project. Also, I wanted to keep all of the trimwork around the door and front window original so that meant no steel or fiberglass doors. Either of these options wouldn't have been able to be planed to fit in existing framing and I was NOT going to rip out all the trim to have some ugly pre-hung completely square door put in place.

As you can see, prehung doors and windows have been forced into many houses in the area. Many rowhomes have stained glass transoms above the door with the house numbers in the glass. While I love this bit of character I have only a single pane piece of glass with house number stickers on it. Last night I put new modern satin nickel house numbers up and can soon scrape the ugly stickers off.

Also notice that the whole block is rowhomes with all with the original marble steps. There is a large marble quarry north of Baltimore, so most of the steps came from there. In fact, most of the marlbe on the Washington Monument is from just north of Baltimore. I wish there were some painted screens, but sadly there are none on my block.

I'll be on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi for the next couple of days, so no work on the house. I'm looking forward to seeing how far things have come along since Katrina, and eating at some of my favorite places like The Shed (as seen on Food Network), and maybe even Trapani's over in Bay St. Louis. I'm craving Trapani's trout smothered in crab, shrimp and hollandaise. Yum.

Mantle Birds

2008-07-15T08:25:00.010-04:00

I'm very pleased with how the refinished mantle came out. I used furniture refinisher and some wipe on poly. Notice the cigarette burns on the mantle - pure character.

The birds have been found at local shops, antique stores near Shenandoah National Park, and gifts scrounged from ebay. We're always on the look out for our new collectibles.

Uber TV invades the house

2008-07-14T18:54:00.004-04:00

Reading houseblogs and other design sources, the TV is something to be hidden in a deep dark corner of the house out of view. Yet when you watch TV it's supposed to be convenient. Hmph. The 13' width of the rowhouse limited our TV space to one of the side walls. Add the fact that bookshelves fit so perfectly into the niches to the side of the (non-functioning) fireplace, above the fireplace was the only good place for the TV. While we admire our new 50" TV nightly, we get a crick in our neck while laying on the couch.

We also decided to refinish the mantle instead of painting it white. After stripping the brown paint off the top, we were happy to see it was oak instead of the pine that I expected. There are multiple cigarette burns around the edge. To me, this just adds to the charm. After 5 coats of poly, the mantle looks HAWT when coupled with our $1 a sq/ft subway tile. We also decided to collect little birdies with the mantle serving as a great perch.

The Queen Takes Her Throne

2008-07-10T13:41:00.005-04:00

Or at least sells her cottage...

While Baltimore Rowhouse goes through a painfully sllooooooow renovation the Queen's condo has been on the market. 130 days after putting it on the market, it now has a contract on it. Woohoo!

Maybe I should finish the upstairs bathroom for the Queen's imminent arrival. :-)

*edit - I should spell check more often

Baltimore Crime

2008-06-25T09:27:00.028-04:00

Lately local crime has been on my mind. Here are a few instances:

While walking the dog last week the Queen and I witnessed some adolescent boys fighting in the park not 50 yards from us. Their friends looked on as the boys puffed up, threw punches and tackled each other. At the same time on a park bench behind us I overheard a kid tell his friends he was going to follow some girl, but to watch out because she had a razor hidden in her mouth. The younger kids scare me more than any other demographic in this area as they are fearless and have something to prove. Now that school is out for the summer I wish it wasn't.

Last week about 6 blocks North the police answered a call to help a young man who was being assaulted. Upon arriving at the scene a scuffle broke out with the man they came to protect, as he was allegedly carrying a gun. The young man was killed by the police in the altercation.

On the same street as the previous crime, Zach Sowers was beaten in a random act of violence while walking home from the bars in June of last year. He was in a coma until March of this year before he passed away. Since then, the kids convicted of his attempted murder cannot be charged with murder as they were convicted of attempted murder because Zach was alive at the time. Zach's death was belittled (and then redacted), which follows a pattern here in Baltimore of the victims being looked down upon while the criminals get plea bargains and pity because they have lived a hard life, or something.

The other night the Queen was stuck at a busy intersection due to an assault happening in the intersection. In the middle of the street, in day light she witnessed one guy in the middle of the street being repeatedly struck in the head with baseball bats and golf clubs by three guys. She called 911, was placed on hold for 5 minutes before getting through to the Baltimore City police. By the time the police picked up the assailants had run off.

It took two days for this incident to show up in the Baltimore Sun's police blotter, there was no mention on the news of it nor have I seen any other print on it.

"Police were seeking two men armed with baseball bats who assaulted five other men during a street fight in the 3700 block of Falls Road about 10:30 p.m. Monday. The victims suffered head injuries and were treated at four area hospitals."

The police didn't quite get this one right... It was 9:00 pm, the number of assailants was incorrect, and the above makes the incident sound pretty benign. I guess if the person didn't die, it wasn't that bad.

I should be excited about Baltimore dropping from the second most violent city in 2006 to third in 2007, or the murder rates being down 30% this year. My immediate neighborhood (meaning within a few blocks of me) is considered to be pretty safe, but after seeing more crime in the area I'm wondering if something has changed or if I'm just noticing it more. Either way, it definitely dulls the glimmer of city living, like the closeness of restaurants, bars and social activities. While I loved the HBO Show The Wire I appreciated it when it showed the Baltimore that I didn't see at all as opposed to the one a few blocks over.

I'm not really sure why I wrote this entry, but seeing as crime has been on my mind I just thought I'd blog about it.

+ + +
Unrelated, I've been getting a bunch of spam comments. I'm not deleting any normal comments, just the spammers.

Don't Mind the Hole in the Wall

2008-06-18T19:48:00.007-04:00

Or the reflection in the mirror.

We need some art to adorn our bare walls. Since the Queen calls Chicago home, I picked up a poster of the area that details the neighborhoods from ork posters.

We got it framed, matted and mounted it in the cove. We think it's purty.

Tag

2008-06-16T10:04:00.012-04:00

I was tagged by Wanderluster over at Ramblings of a Renovating Couple. The rules: Answer the following questions about yourself. At the end of the post you pass on the questions to 6 (or so) other bloggers and list their names. Then write them a comment telling them that they've been tagged and ask them to read your blog.

1. What did you do 10 years ago?

I was working at a landscaping company and was starting to develop the landscaping design and install business I had for the last couple years of undergrad. Landscaping was my summer job, and during the other seasons my time was taken up with my undergraduate degree in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I've always had a love of things related to architecture - it goes with being an INTP.

2. Five items on your to-do list today:

(a) Draw up detailed framing plans for the bathroom, utilizing a a bit of guidance.

(b) Determine subfloor solution to support slate tile in bathroom (includes reading some of Tile Your World

(d) Take picture of TV in main room, and new framed picture hanging in cove

(e) Order component cables for TV electronics

3. Snacks I enjoy:

Maybe some string cheese, or whole wheat pita and hummus.

4. What would you do if you were a billionaire?

Take over the world. But seriously, I'd travel, take classes on things I'm curious about and get odd jobs.

Places I'd like to go:

Wander around Eastern Europe for a while - I like places off the beaten path

Visit every national park in the US and Canada

Spend more time in Southeast Asia

Wander around Western Europe (though Eastern Europe is higher on my priority list)

Classes I'd like to take:

Building classes toward becoming a GC

Go to culinary school

Canyoneering certification classes

white water kayaking classes

Odd Jobs I'd like to do:

Be a lumberjack for a season

Alaskan crab fisherman for a season

Random apprenticeship type jobs in home construction

If you watch the discovery channel you may sense a theme to some of my desired odd jobs.

5. Places I would live:

Seattle, or anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, and a summer cabin in Montana. I'll live almost anywhere for a couple of years to experience the area.

6. Bloggers I am passing the challenge onto are:

How about DC Rowhouse, re:habitat, Four Beds Two Baths, The Brick House and One Project Closer.

+++Do you have any questions for me? The more random, the better.