What we are doing:

In what spare time we have, we decided to spend it (and our savings) on remodeling our rowhouse in South Philly. When we purchased our casa it was a 3 story, 5 bedroom, 1 bath that hadn't been touched in 50+ years. It's currently a 4 bed, 2 bath construction site with so much more to do it's hard to believe.

We use this blog to mark progress, say hi to friends and family, rant about the process of remodeling, and try to have some fun along the way.

- Bryan and Christina

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Hello....is this thing on?

Greeting fellow DIY folks, parents, friends and wealthy admirers. It's been some time since I've done a proper blog post and since I actually get people asking what we've been up to (I know...I'm shocked too) I decided to just put it all out there. Online. To strangers. Like Chatroulette.

Ever since Parker came into the fold here on 13th street, projects have slowed to say the least. What would have been 2 weekends of 8 hours days now takes 6+ months, as evidenced by our work on Parker's playroom/guest bedroom/bass gear storage. In my previous post I laid out what was going to happen, and since then work kept going at a snail's pace, but like the Ice Age...slow movement is still pretty big.

In the past 2 months I completed the electrical (with an eye popping SEVEN outlets in there) as well as the rest of the framing and general to-dos. Our drywall guy and his crew squeezed us in between some actually profitable jobs just about 10 days ago, and they wrapped up the painting last week. I've included some progress pics of the the drywalling as well as the final closet I built along with the look of the bays since we decided to cover up (NOT REMOVE) the old wood trim at the bottom for a cleaner look. IF we don't like it I can remove the three pieces of drywall and all is well.

Note the "H" design of the closet with the left and right "flairs": the top is for a TV and whatnot with power and cable, and the bottom is a traditional closet space. The left side is square in the closet but hide the radiator pipes, while the right side is open in the closet for shelves and additional storage. We LOVE symmetry around here.

The pic to the left here shows how this front room connects to the rest of the house via the main hallway on the second floor, but also to Parker's current nursery, thus creating a 200 sq ft suite for a 15 month old. ....Yeah. This is about 48 hours old now, and the door on the right is gone and undergoing some TLC and I have created and installed the jambs for both this doorway and the lower closet.

View of the bay with the filthy screens.

What I'm doing right now is wrapping up the rest of the trim which I hope will b done net weekend if I can get a hold of Tague Lumber and get a delivery of some door casing. We'll see about that. In any case, I'm sanding/priming/painting the door between this room and Parker's room and Christina is taking care of the old bay window trim. I'm running baseboards tomorrow in between racks of ribs and beers.

Parker Approved!