Guess what's here?!?! We are installing european white oak in the house and the wood arrived this week.
Wood floors need to sit for a few weeks in a house to "acclimate" before they can be installed, so we have piles of wood lying around at the moment. Check back in a few weeks to see what they look like once they are in.
We have posted a lot of incredible progress in our house. The top three floors look awesome and we are so excited. The basement, however, is another story.
We haven't really talked about the basement on the blog before. When we bought the house, it had a small old kitchen in the back and a studio/junior one bedroom front room. The space was really quite nice, with windows in the front and back and high ceilings, but, like the rest of the house, in need of an update.
The plan is to update everything in the basement and add a laundry room. Unfortunately, when we pulled up the flooring we noticed that there were some wet spots in the floor and our plumber suspected that there was a crushed pipe under the cement.
Here is what the basement looked like before the reno:
And here is what the basement kitchen looks like now:
Yep. It's not pretty.
The plumber confirmed that the pipe was crushed and dug up the floor to replace it. What we also found when he did that was that there is only a few inches of concrete between us and dirt - foundations weren't quite the same in the 1800s, I guess. Suffice it to say, the basement is going to need a bit more work than we anticipated. We'll give it a few weeks and then check back in . . .
You guys, we need to talk about our fireplace. It is original to the house so it has survived here for 143 years BUT it isn't our favorite color. It is a slate fireplace that has been painted a speckled brown. We find the color to be terribly ugly but it is interesting that it was placed front and center in the house while the home's marble fireplaces were relegated to the upper floors, which indicates it was valued as a statement piece over the marble.
We want to keep the character of the house but update it to feel more modern (read: lots of white) and this speckled brown just doesn't fit with the aesthetic. That said, can we use aesthetic to justify getting rid of it? Considering the issue, we think we have four options and we would love your input.
The options are:
1. Identify a Victorian white marble fireplace from the same period to buy and replace the fireplace.
2. Keep the fireplace in place but paint it a white or faux marble.
3. Exchange the fireplace with the white marble fireplace on the second floor.
4. Refinish it but otherwise keep it as it is - it’s survived this long, why change it now?
Let us know what you think!
- J
It has been over a month since we last checked in on the blog, but that doesn't mean work has stopped at the house. On the contrary, things have been very busy! For most of April and May, the house was in various forms of disarray - there was a lot happening, but not all of it was super visible. In the last few weeks, however, things have really started to change - let's review!
1. We passed our HVAC, plumbing, and electric inspections for the top three floors!
April and May were the months to work on the guts of the house - HVAC, plumbing, electric, AV - all the internal pieces that ultimately get covered up by drywall but that are incredibly important to get right. Mastercraft Solutions, our contractor, had a great team and we were able to pass inspection on the first three floors of the house (don't ask us about the basement for now, please).
2. The skylights are in!
One of the most exciting developments of the last two weeks is that our new skylights are in!! It's just in time too because it has been raining non-stop in DC for the last week and a half.
One of our favorite details in the house is the skylight at the top of the central staircase. The old skylight was covered by dirt, which prevented the light from filtering through the house (check out the before photos above). That is no longer the case! The above picture is from a grey day, but the light coming through helped brighten the upper two floors of the house. We couldn't be happier.
3. We have recessed lighting!
Passing the electric inspection means that we have recessed lighting!! There is still more work to do on the lighting front, but it is so exciting to be able to turn on the lights in the kitchen.
4. We have dry wall!
Finally, one of the most visible changes of the past few days is drywall. Having passed inspection, we could hide all the wires behind smooth walls. We never realized how quickly drywall went up - the team hung drywall for almost the entire house in a two-day period. We'll put up more before/after pics later this week so you can see all the changes.
It's been a few weeks since our last post and we have been quiet on the blog because we have been working through our first real issue of the renovation (😱).
Part of the renovation includes taking out the back wall on the first floor to create a wall of windows and an exit out to the garden from our kitchen. To do that, masons had to put up steel beams to hold the weight of the house and knock out the bricks underneath. The beam went in and the next day, the plaster (read:wall) on the second and third floors had shifted (read: slumped). When we pulled the plaster off, it became clear the bricks were held together by pretty much nothing. Over the past 130+ years, the mortar holding the bricks together had basically turned into sand, leaving the bricks completely loose in the wall.
We immediately called in our structural engineer who assured us that we did not need to entirely replace the wall, we just needed to re-point it with new mortar. Our contractor got that process underway immediately and voila, we have newly mortared walls! We are still looking into whether we need to do the front wall to (please, no), but we are hopeful this is the first and last costly issue of the renovation. 🙏
In other news, we officially have a hole in our kitchen where the windows will eventually be! For now, here is a picture of the hole covered over - isn't it beautiful? It gives the back of our house a wonderful cave-like quality.
The third floor is coming along nicely. As you can see in the pic above, the construction team has widened the master bedroom and the third-floor bathroom has been moved to the back right corner (not pictured) to make way for our closet (yay!!!). The floor is currently unrecognizable but we are already dreaming of the finished product.
Update photos are below!
Time for an update on the master suite. As a refresher, we landed on a design that re-figured the top floor to make it more of a suite. While it keeps a second small bedroom, the third floor will be built around the master bedroom, including expanding the master bed and building out a closet and bathroom. So where there used to be a bathroom and hallway, there will now be a large walk-through closet, with a study or nursery and master bath in the rear of the house. See below:
The plan calls for walling off the currently open stairwell/hallway so that you come up the stairs and through a doorway into the suite. We are super excited about the design, but in thinking more about it we didn't like the idea of losing the sightline into the stairwell and losing the light that filters from the central skylight.
While preparing our interior elevations, Hill & Hurtt proposed an awesome solution to this dilemma - a glass wall. The bottom half would be an actual wall to keep the third floor visually separate from people coming up the stairs (it will be our closet, we need to have some privacy) but the top half of the wall will be glass.
I really like the idea because, while we are closing the space off, it will stay true to the original design of the house by creating a feeling of openness to the central stairwell without the danger factor (the railings are not to code by about 8 inches and it is a long way down).
What do you guys think? Do you love it or hate it? We are still exploring what the ultimate wall will look like (and if we can afford it - fingers crossed!!!) but I've included some images we have found from Pinterest below. Enjoy!
It was love at first sight. Walking through the house - even though it was a bit run down - it was clear the moment we saw it that there was so much potential. After our first walk through we were already imagining what we could do with the space. One of the major changes we talked about was opening up the wall to the living room. It was totally walled off with a small doorway, cutting off sound and sight to the rest of the first floor.
Over a year later, the wall has finally come down. While we have been in demo mode for a month, and other floors are totally unrecognizable, the living room wall coming down made the renovation feel real. It's a big milestone and we are excited about everything else to come.
We've included a few before and after pics below so you can see how far it's come (and how far we have to go):
Inspiration via @kohlerco and @rohlfaucets
We are choosing kitchen faucets and would love your input - should we do a bridge faucet (on the right, above) or should we do a single-handle faucet for our kitchen sink (which will be in the island)?
So far we are leaning toward bridge faucets but . . .
1. Does a single handle look better when the sink is in the kitchen island?
2. Is one handle better than two?
Let us know your vote!
IMAGE CREDIT: @BECKIOWENS
Here is a throw-back design trend from our Instagram feed - brass and gold accents. Kitchens and bathrooms all over Instagram have gorgeous brass pulls and slender gold faucets. I kind of love it - all white kitchens look warmer with some color. At the same time, I can't help but think that if I put it in our kitchen I will come to regret it the way we all regret the gold in our bathrooms from the 90s (you know what I'm talking about - remember this?).
What do you guys think? Embrace the brass (so pretty!) or learn from past mistakes?
IMAGE CREDITS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: TOP ROW: (1) @SMPLIVING (2) @BECKIOWENS / BOTTOM LINE: (3) @LONNYMAG (4) @HOMEPOLISH
Our house is seriously old (b. 1875!). Going into this renovation we had a year to prepare ourselves for the horrors that lay behind the walls, below the floors, in the ceilings, and who knows what else. One of the things we heard from other intrepid renovators was that bathrooms in old homes are notorious for having problems and that, guaranteed, we would find the home's joists were ripped up to make way for plumbing.
Sure enough, we found some messed up things under our floors. Here is a close up of what our joists look like:
Our contractor told us that our joists are actually not as beaten up as other homes he has seen and that the easy fix for joists is a process called "sistering." (Sorry, everyone, this post is not actually about the film "Sister Act," though I did listen to the soundtrack while drafting this).
In order to re-enforce a weakened joist, the approach builders often take is to attach a new joist alongside the old one (a sister joist!) in order to improve the joist's structural integrity. Needless to say, our bathrooms needs some sistering. We'll report back when it's done!
Inspiration from top to bottom/left to right: popham design; David Pompa studio; ann sacks; cle tile; @kibak_tile; cle tile
Guys, I hate to break it to you, but it's time to talk tile. A lot of tile orders take 6-8 weeks to ship so we need to make decisions and put orders in ASAP if we want to stay on schedule. I'm not going to lie, the process of choosing tile is stressful (#firstworldproblems, I know). We have three bathrooms, a kitchen backsplash, and an entry-way vestibule we need to pick tile for. Finding a tile we both agree on, that is in our budget (or, you know, near our budget), and that we know we will like for the foreseeable future is daunting.
Our color palette is going to be very white-focused and we don't anticipate painting our walls any bright colors. As a result, we have been thinking of ways we can add patterns or color to the bathrooms.
from top to bottom/left to right: popham design; popham design; cle tile; @masseriaDC and villa lagoon tile; popham design; msi stone
Kyle and I have spent the last month's worth of Saturdays in tile shops and hours upon hours on Pinterest - all the tiles above have been in contention at one point or another, though some have been shot down by our architects (and here we thought our taste was unassailable!).
From our research, patterns can be limited to the floor, limited to the wall, or run from the floor up the wall (some examples are below). What do you guys think? Any tile here that you love or hate? Let us know before we make a mistake that we can't take back!
- J & K
You guys, the renovation has officially begun! We are two weeks into demo work and some things have changed - in particular, we no longer have bathrooms and the third floor is already transforming into what will be our master suite. Take a look at the before and after demo photos below:
So we have actual reno news this week, but I haven't had time to blog about it yet. Instead, you get a "house tour" of our second floor bathroom and if all goes to plan you will get to see a current photo of the bathroom this week!
I spent a lot of time taking pictures of the kitchen and our living room, which - despite the worn floors and holes in the walls - photograph well and are at their core beautifully structured spaces. The second floor bathroom, on the other hand, has almost no redeeming qualities. (I limited my photos here - no one really needs to see this).
So, get ready to be a little bit horrified - this is the bathroom we have been living with for the last year:
Not much needs to be said (or seen) on this "tour". The room is poorly organized, it has no storage, it is not conducive to sharing, it is tight on space, never looks clean (those tiles are designed to look dirty - I swear they're clean!) and, above all, it is terribly ugly. To make it worse, our door may or may not have ripped off the wall about 9 months ago (who can say, really?) and during our last week in the house, as if the house sensed the impending reno, the toilet started leaking.
There is only one thing that I like about the bathroom - it has a window to the interior hallway that is original to the home. There is some plastic sheeting on the window so you can't see directly into it but, evidently, there was no frosting back in the day. Both the second and third floor bathrooms have windows and the best guess we have is that the windows were used to help circulate air throughout the house. We are planning to keep the window in the updated house (with frosted glass of course), but otherwise we have big plans to improve this space.
Welcome to my office! While we have a basement and third floor, Kyle and I have been living primarily on the first and second floors of the house for the past year. This room, functions as both my office and my closet.
We don't have crazy plans for the room and it will remain an office after the reno - we plan to clean up the plaster, replace the windows and add moulding. (Our architects and contractor don't know this but we have also been considering adding built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace and tiling in the space between the mantle since we will not be adding a fireplace in there. What do you think?)
Not much to tour on this side of the room - welcome to my closet! (I know, lots of black.) I look forward to having a real closet in the master suite after the reno (and a mirror that doesn't cut off my head).
IMAGE CREDITS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: TOP ROW: (1) @CONSORTDESIGN (2) @CB2 / BOTTOM ROW: (3) @CENTERED_BY_DESIGN (4) @HOMEPOLISH
Velvet is back in a big way this year, both in clothing and home furnishings. If Instagram is any indication, this throwback phenomenon began with dark blue velvet sofas. When paired with a room with hard surfaces and minimalist design, a blue velvet sofa can lend the room a rich, comfortable quality, which I love. More recently, it has also popped up in more lush interiors as well.
While dark navy couches have been used in design for the past year or so, increasingly over the past few months I have seen more diversity in the blues. Green has started popping up too with sofas that have jeweled emerald tones (how awesome is that green couch in the photo above? 😍).
If a full velvet couch is too much, you can add in a velvet chair or two to achieve the same look. I think the trend is best when set in an otherwise fairly monotone space - it adds color and texture without overwhelming the room. Alas, Kyle is way wayyy out on velvet (his words), so I don’t expect to come home to the sweet embrace of a soft velvet couch in our home after the reno is complete 😭😭😭 .
IMAGE CREDITS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: TOP ROW: (1) @MILESREDD (2) @MYINTERIOR / BOTTOM ROW: (3) @HOMEPOLISH (4) @ARCHDIGEST
IMAGE CREDITS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: TOP ROW: (1) @ANDREABSTANFORD (2) @MYSCANDINAVIANHOME / BOTTOM ROW: (3) @HOMEPOLISH (4) @HOMEPOLISH
Happy New Year, Happy New Year! It has been a few months (read: 6 months!) since we were last posted to let you know about our summer suffering without AC. A lot has happened since then, but not much that is visible in the house yet. Knock on wood, but the renovation should begin in honest at the end of the month. In the meantime, let's catch you up.
1. We finalized our design.
We worked with Hill & Hurtt to finalize the design for our house. Since we first walked through it we have had a general sense of the design, so the drawings came together pretty quickly. The only two areas that took time to think through were the third floor design (which you helped with!) and the back wall of windows that we wanted to add in the kitchen.
If you recall, our kitchen has two awesome long windows with a wall in between and no door out to the back garden. I have been dreaming of making that a full wall of windows for some time and we worked through a lot of iterations trying to conceptualize the right design. While it was tempting to add some french-inspired steel doors, we ultimately settled on a design that maintains a look in line with the style and history of the house.
Here is where we ended up:
We are going to create a small bay with a door out the center. While not pictured, there will be steps out the back and into the garden. The windows will be widened from what they are now but will maintain the same double-hung style that is in the house right now.
2. We went out for bids with contractors.
The process of finding a contractor for the project took longer than we had anticipated going into the reno. For those who haven't been through it, it took about 2-3 months. Hill & Hurtt helped us identify three contractors, we met with everyone, walked through the house, in some cases did second walk throughs, provided the contractors with the drawings, and then received bids.
There was a 100k difference between the lowest bid and the highest bid (yikes) so needless to say we quickly whittled it down to two contractors. We then spent time seeing projects both contractors had completed and then chose someone (MasterCraft Solutions)!
3. We got our permits (!!!!)
We have heard horror stories about the permitting process and our home is in a historic district, so we were nervous about the permit process. At the end of November, Kyle, Eric Hurtt, and I went down to the DCRA in the hopes of being able to go through the Homeowners Center for a permit and avoid the dreaded Project Docs online process. (Project Docs is notorious for delaying the permitting process for many months).
We were not successful in going through the Homeowners Center because they considered the 10-inch bay window we were adding to be an extension of the home and they can't approve extensions. After about 10 minutes of anxiety at the thought of our project being potentially delayed 3-6 months, we were told we could try and "walk through" the permit.
For anyone who doesn't know what "walking through" a permit means, DCRA has a DMV-style process where you take a ticket and then walk your drawings through all the different permits for review - Zoning, Structural, Mechanical, Plumbing, etc. You get a number to meet with a Zoning representative who reviews your project and either approves it or raises items that need to be fixed. Once you have been approved by Zoning you get in line to meet with a Structural expert and so on.
As with the DMV, it is tedious, takes hours, and you are subject to the whims of the person you meet with. Needless to say, we did not get out of Zoning on day one, but it only took one trip back to DCRA to get what we needed.
4. We got financing (or will have financing soon).
While we haven't quite signed the loan documents, we are finalizing a construction loan with Sandy Spring Bank, which has a 1 year construction loan into mortgage program. If everything goes smoothly (fingers crossed!) we will be closing on financing next week.
5. We found an apartment.
Lastly, we can't live in the house while we are renovating, so we needed to find an apartment. We did some house hunting and have a one-bedroom apartment lined up in the building directly behind our house. We couldn't pass up the convenience of living close by and checking in on the home, plus we would miss our neighborhood and neighbors too much!
Okay, so you're all caught up (mostly). If everything goes smoothly we will be moving out in the next two weeks and starting the reno at the end of month (eeek!).
Documenting the trials and tribulations of a home renovation in Washington, DC.
Thanks for visiting our site! We recently purchased an Italianate Victorian rowhouse in Washington, DC that needs some significant work. We intend to document the trials and tribulations of a home renovation (and home ownership) here for your entertainment.
We hope you enjoy the blog and please feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions in the comments - we need all the help we can get!
Instagram: @rowhouse_revival
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