Adventures in Renovation

My Dad came up Saturday and we finally got some work done! Much more productive than the previous weekend. Saturday we took out the wall next to the stairs, the wall next to the small bathroom, and built the half wall next to the stairs. And it's awesome. We also got to play with some new tools like the reciprocating saw and the miter saw. I probably should have had a reciprocating saw a long time ago. That would have sped up a lot of the demolition. Instead I spent a lot of energy just smashing wood with a crowbar.

It looks really similar to the sketch I did Friday. Bryan came over and we talked about how I'm going to insulate. Once again he told me to tear it all down. But I think we've finally come up with a good plan. I'm still going to build the wall down 6 inches in the back where there's no space between the ceiling joists and roof rafters and insulate the dropped ceiling (not to be confused with a drop ceiling... this one will be made of 2x4's and drywall). The in rest of the ceiling I'm going to blow in cellulose and lay fiberglass batts against the skylight. In places that are hard to get to, like around the skylight, I'm going to open up small hole for me to squeeze through and blow insulation.

Speaking of insulation, I've been reading this really good publication that Terra Logos put together about how to make Baltimore Rowhouses more environmentally friendly. There's great stuff about insulating a row house in it. Also info on green materials and plenty of resources for further research. Read the PDF: Green Building Template: A Guide to Sustainable Design Renovating for Baltimore Rowhouses

One interesting point in it is that insulating your rowhome doesn't save you as much money as insulating a freestanding home. This makes sense because all these rowhouses sharing walls gives you less wall, window and roof area exposed to the outdoors. But this also makes me really glad I don't have a house with a breezeway. For those who don't know, a breezeway design in a rowhouse is made where on one side of the house, half of the wall isn't connected to the house next door. There is a gap and the house gets narrower at this point. This allow you to put windows along more wall space but also allows a lot more heat to escape. Every place I've ever lived with a breeze way has been very cold to live in in the winter.

Posted by at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week I finally made decisions about how the walls with look. First, screw conventional resale value ideas... The wall for that small bedroom is going. That room is just way to small to be of use to anyone and it messes up the whole flow. It was 7 x 12 when I took the closet out. And if anyone wants it later, they can always put a new wall up. Easy.

I made a sketch of what it's probably going to look like upstairs with that wall gone and a half wall by the stairs. The bathroom is going to look like a little box.

After I had made that decision it occurred to me that if I could move the bathroom wall one foot farther, then the door to the bathroom wouldn't be blocked by the bathtub and could swing inward. A seemingly simple thing that would just make a lot more sense. But the problem with that is the waste pipe for everything runs right behind the toilet, down to the basement and up to the roof to vent. So if I can't move the toilet back and it would be a huge pain to move the waste/vent pipe. And because of the window it's hard to move everything around in there.

Now if I had a lot of money and time on my hand, the right way to remodel the upstairs is to move the bathroom to the middle of the house upstairs. Then you make a big room in the back and the front and a hallway running along side the bath. Here's a sketch.

So it looks like I'll probably leave the bathroom as small as it is. Honestly the size of the bathroom doesn't bother me. I've rented plenty of houses in Baltimore with tiny, skinny bathrooms and they work just fine.

This will make a lot more sense if you look at my current floor plan. This is a before and after.

Also, I finally came up with a plan for the bedroom wall. I came up with a couple ideas for putting a window in but they all just looked kinda boring. So I decided what I needed was something more dramatic. Now the window is going to run the whole length of the wall. And I think I've found a way to run the electrical through the wall too. I did an elevation in Illustrator to plan out the stud layout. Now we'll have to see if it works.

Posted by at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here are some photos of my plumbing in the bathroom. At first I thought I might as well replace the old galvanized steel pipes with copper since I was tearing the whole bathroom apart anyway. But when Camillo pulled up the floor we found the waste pipes had to go to. They were made out of lead and the joints were made with big ol' gobs of epoxy, it looks like. It was really soft, sloppy stuff and it pulled right out by hand. Check out this photo and here are some notes I made.

Posted by at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a big development trend in Baltimore where they once renovated warehouses into loft-style apartments, now they are building brand NEW buildings with 'loft-style' apartments that look like old warehouses (like this). Even in my own neighborhood, the same company that built the inner harbor in baltimore, is re-building the burnt down Clipper Mill that will have new 'loft-style' apartments for $500,000 each.

Then it goes one absurd step further... Into the suburbs. Leave it to Americans to have so little taste:

New York Times article

Metropolis Magazine article

Posted by at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the bag of nails I collected that were pulled from my floor upstairs. It weighs 6 pounds 15 ounces. I haven't counted them but here they are in comparison to my head. And my head is still bigger.

Maybe I should have a jelly bean jar type raffle where you have to guess how many nails are in this bag. The person with closest number will surely win something spectacular. Like a bag of used nails!

Leave you guesses in the comments section below...

Posted by at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Zero progress last week on the house. I was hard at work on other things. And now the holidays are coming. Everyone is getting nails for Christmas. This weekend my Dad came up to help but there wasn't a whole lot done. There are a few key decisions that are holding everything up. One is the insulation question. Currently my "attic" (if you can call it that since the roof is only a couple feet at the most taller than the ceiling) doesn't have any ventilation. That coupled with the narrow attic space make insulation very tricky. in fact, the roof is so low at the back of the house, I don't think you could install any kind of vents at all. So I'm not sure how effective vents at only one part of the house would be.

Posted by at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)