Crawling Out from Under the Covers

Its been a while, but I am crawling out from under the covers and getting back to it… Whenever there is a gap in time between posts, I am unsure of where to pick up again… Should I ignore the time gap and just act as if nothing has happened?… Or should I explain myself and the cause for my lapse in posting? While the former would be easier than the latter, I am choosing to explain some of what the hell has been going on these past few months and then I will just move on to the point of this blog… Transforming Our Philly Row from basically habitable into an amazing home.

OK, to explain my absence, there have been several factors behind it. As I wrote in July, my efforts to work on the house have been hampered by some physical limitations, most of which have cleared up, but I am still dealing with heel pain. I also wrote of my occasional bouts of moderate depression which to be honest have been exacerbated by the current political winds. Try as I do to not let the daily shit-show happening in Washington DC affect me, it does. And sometimes it just feels unbearable as I scratch my head in disbelief of how facts and truth are outright ignored and lies and false evidence is so willingly embraced by so many people. I know this is not a political blog, but the impact has been potent and I will end my rant here.

 

Another reason for not posting much includes my spending a good number of hours completely redesigning my personal personal website devyncaldwell.com. I created the site to feature my artistic and creative self about a year and a half ago, but until now, nobody knew about it.

 

And then there was this little two week vacation to Europe where Y and I had an amazing time spent with friends in Paris for a few days, followed by a few days in Lisbon, and then a week in Porto where we fell completely in love with this amazing city. I managed to take over 4,000 photos on our trip, but rather than bore everyone with vacation pictures, I posted galleries on devyncaldwell.com of the various street art we encountered on our walks in Paris, Lisbon, and Porto.

 

And finally, the biggest reason I haven’t done any posts since my Sexy Workbench reveal at the end of August is the fact that not much has really happened here since then. OK, well… A few things have happened, but either not enough progress has been made to write a post about it, or they just aren’t very sexy after writing my last post.

So just what has happened with the house? Well…. After months and months of talking about replacing the floor in the half bath on the main floor, I started doing demolition about two weeks ago (and then stopped in preparation for family visiting for the holiday). The project is about replacing the floor because the floor under the toilet is currently so rotten that only the cast iron waste pipe is holding it up. It has been unsafe to sit on since we bought the house, relegating it to the singular function of being a men’s urinal, but soon that will change. And the first steps towards making that change involved tearing out the ceiling in the half bath.

 

You may be asking yourself, WTF does the ceiling have to do with the floor? And I would answer, a lot!… At least indirectly… And there is an entire blog post about it in the works (and coming soon). In a nut shell, the half bath plays a central role in our adding a master bath directly above it, and plumbing for a future bath above that in my third floor studio. We will also be using the space above the ceiling in the half bath for future ductless air conditioner mechanicals as well as plumbing.

 

The half bath ceiling is the original plaster ceiling installed in 1852 (confirmed by the use of square nails used to attach the lathe to the ceiling joists). The space was originally a small hallway to a rear exit door and was enclosed in the 1980s (based on materials used). By taking the plaster ceiling down first, all of the mess was contained within the current half bath, minimizing plaster dust elsewhere.

 

The other achievement was temporarily setting up our parlor (living room) as a functioning room. Up until this point we have basically lived with a sofa and two chairs, makeshift side tables, and randomly placed art on the walls. The parlor layout has been a nightmare due to it being long and narrow, compounded by fireplace, door, and window locations. After countless iterations of how to lay it out in my head, and several attempts with where the hell to put the sofa, I have arrived at what I think will work, even if it is a bit tight.

 

In preparation for visiting family, I spent a couple of days making the parlor an actual functioning space, by moving an unused dresser out of the way (I am putting it on eBay), putting down the beautiful rug we purchased last spring for the room (which until now has been pretty much a secret), rearranging the furniture to function as an actual room, and re-hanging our art with more consideration for placement.

 

The parlor is far from finished. We have yet to paint it, install the ceiling medallion I wrote about last spring (which still needs restoration), install track lighting, and finally restoring and installing our vintage 1910-ish crystal chandelier which was also acquired last spring. Given the priority of getting the master bathroom built, the parlor will need to wait for now. I hope to get to it before the end of 2019. In the meantime, we have an unfinished if not still elegant room to retreat to. This despite the fact that the previous owner painted the walls in this vile shade of peach.

In the meantime enjoy a few more pictures of our unfinished parlor (with the vile peach paint), and I will be posting about the half bath plans soon.