Window seat room sketch

Just got around to scanning this and thought it would help in visualizing the transformation underway in the middle bedroom: Look at that top drawing! You could barely wedge a twin bed in there if you didn't need to use the closet and didn't have a door to the hallway (which the room, in fact, didn't have when I bought it). The red line shows the ridiculous bottle neck closing off the window.

Bottom picture is the rearrangement, with a smaller closet in the lower right corner, window seat in the nook, and I've sketched in a perfectly pleasant arrangement of furniture -- just like a real room! yay!!

Happy news on closing day: Under the rugs!

Most older South Philly houses can be assumed to have started their lives with wood floors, but their current states, when the house is carpeted, are unknowable. There could be rough historic floors, or more refined floors, or completely ruined or removed floors. Thus, you have to be prepared for either refinishing a floor or laying a new one, if your goal is the polished hardwoods that seem to be universally desired.

So, holding my breath, on the afternoon of closing (as various servicefolks wandered here and there), my contractor and I pulled up a corner of the carpet to see what we had. And the news is good!!

The floors are in great shape (a little paint splatter will sand off in the first second), nice oak, and even have a decorative inlay. I've seen this kind of floor before, but it's so much more than I was hoping for here!

Even the back bedroom, which seems to be a later addition to the house (it's a shed over the kitchen, with siding), has a matching floor, although you can see a worn/damaged spot that will justify the refinishing plan (there's a similar spot that was under the bed in the master bedroom, presumably from a pet accident), and the hallway and stairs are all on board. So a savings and a win as well!

I will admit that I wish I'd seen all this a bit sooner. I tend toward the modern in picking my finish, and somehow that inlaid wood seems to ask for something else. Am considering putting an oiled bronze fixture in the dining room, just to bridge the stair railing and this somewhat historic floor style to the nickel I use everywhere else, but haven't yet decided. You gotta stay flexible in your vision when there are always so many unknowns in a house!

Last chunk of Before?

4: Basement

This house has a finished basement, a relative rarity in Philadelphia. However, it was finished sometime in the mid-60s or 70s, and has remained locked in its vintage swinger glory. Already, looking down the steps you can see the dated paneling and dropped ceiling, all of which is continuous throughout the basement, and all of which has to go.

The basement is made up of two rooms, the first of which was being used for storage, and which includes a full bath (with stall shower) and laundry area, as well as a closet with the furnace et al. Large space, but continuous paneling + grim vinyl flooring mean this place needs an overhaul. The washer and dryer still worked just fine, but as you can see in the second photo, they're a little dated and beat up and need replacing to bring this zone up to date.

We're going to run rubber-backed carpet all through this part of the house, starting with the stairs, which will warm it up and civilize it quite a bit. The bathroom down here is lined with a kind of plastic wallboard, probably practical but pretty limiting in terms of look, and that will come out and be replaced with drywall. The washer-dryer area will stay cement, but just getting some of those crazy pipes out of the working space and into the walls will make it all look (and be!) a little less jury-rigged. I don't know what buyers might use the remaining open space for, but it could easily be an office or a playroom, so I might stage it in one of those ways, although obviously it's a great zone for storing stuff too.

The other room down here was used as Party Central, complete with a bar with bottle rack on the wall and specialized sink, a bunch of high-top tables, saloon doors at the entrance, and a special vent for all the cigar smoke, I guess. I hope to find a nice hipster home for the vintage bar set, but otherwise this room is going to become a nice family room, with lots of space for a sectional and entertainment center (which will be helped by updating all the wiring and getting rid of all the illegal splices in the ceiling! yow). I love cozy spaces like this, and also hope that the basement will be a selling point for husbands in the way that kitchens and baths often are for wives -- will be inclining the decor a bit masculine to favor that interpretation. The soffit lighting has already been replaced with recessed cans, and all that lacy trim has moved along as well.

The bathroom will get an almost complete gut. Was going to just replace the toilet seat, but the color will hold me back and it's a little wobbly, so out it goes. Tiny vanity will go, and since this is really a secondary bathroom (and also has a large storage closet), I'm going to try a pedestal down here for a striking look -- somehow I have a dramatic vision for this little space, which has really gotten me enthusiastic as the parts have come together. I don't expect the stall shower to get much use so am going to leave it (as well as the pleasant white floor tile), with just a new showerhead to replace the rusty old one, but everything else will be modern and new. The images that captured my vision were these:

and they led to the selection of finishes shown below. I'm disproportionately in love with the mirror shown here, which has a kind of mesh-metal look that seems to pull the rest of the room together. Picking the final color for the walls will be a bit nerve-wracking, as I'm much more inclined toward sunny neutrals on the whole, but I think the effect is going to be great (that black bathroom on the inspiration board blows me away!), so I'll just have to steel my nerve and plunge ahead.

And yes, in case you're wondering, I do put together idea boards like this for other rooms -- in fact, I have them for bathrooms and kitchens I started imagining for houses I never got under contract; they turn out to be useful as sources of ideas going forward, as well as in off-loading the brain buzz when I'm in high gear. Should be ordering most of these finishes this weekend, so we're off to the races!

Quick "before" snack

3: Upstairs bathroom

Thought I'd work in a quick post for the bathroom, since I've got the itch to get to demo. As you can see, this is a bit of Victorian glory, from the floral lights (matched in an overhead fixture) to the Monet wallpaper that covers every surface. However, all that excess disguises the fact that the tile on the walls here is actually pretty decent -- a sort of variegated khaki, and matched by an inoffensive biscuit-colored tub. So I decided to try to get back some of the additional kitchen cost by saving a few pennies here, and we'll keep this tile and just update the look with other elements. This means keeping the built-in towel bar and toilet paper accesories too; however, those cup and toothbrush holders just scream 1970 (Edit: 1950?) to me, so they have to go, and we'll put a nice glass mosaic tile backsplash there above the new vanity to bring some color and pull us into the current century. (Also unlikely to see in the "after" photos anything like that brass outlet plate or any of the other rather baroque switch plates that fill this place!)

Ok, here's the current vanity, which is just beat up and old. Will replace it with something that maintains a bunch of storage while adding a modern widespread faucet set and a stone or composite top -- am rather smitten with an inexpensive option from Lowes (after looking at a million pricier ones) that actually works with all the biscuit, a color that is not part of my usual mental repertoire. The new medicine cabinet/mirror will also add more storage, which seems important when you have a three-bedroom house sharing one upstairs bathroom that can't fit anything larger than a 24-inch vanity. There's also a narrow closet in the bathroom, which will help with linens and other stuff, but I'm big on More Storage Is Always Better in tight city townhouse life!

Finally, here's the shower. Because there's a tub, we won't be doing any fancy glass enclosures or the like, but we can get a lot out of regrouting the tile and updating the hardware to something hyper-modern, probably something in the rain shower head family like the one at right. Probably a new curtain rod, or I'll just remove it for showing unless the staging folks think they have just the curtain for the job. The main thing I'm still pondering is the grab bars -- I'm all for having one, but two is a bit overkill, and they're (a) chrome, making me want to replace them, but also (b) screwed through the tile, which means it could be hard or impossible. I think I'll be bringing a few candidate replacements home to see how well they could cover the existing holes, before making the final decision. If I had to do a band of accent tile all the way around to make up for removing them, I think I'd have lost all the proposed savings for this part of the project...

I think that's it for the bathroom. The toilet is fine, and will be kept. The floor tile is hokey and will be replaced, but after going in and out with a dozen tile samples, I have yet to settle on the right one -- I just can't get my head around the color of the wall tile, and I need to harmonize with it without being too close in color, so many promising candidates have fallen by the wayside. I may have to switch my notion from tan to grey, but still have another round of trials before I pull the trigger -- have decided not to let this hold me up from ordering all the other parts for the project, though, as some things will need to get moving soon...

More before pictures and planning

1: Kitchen

Ok, here's the original kitchen. It's a bit dated (hello, emerald green!), but in pretty good shape, so I went through a phase of hoping that I could just put new doors on the cabinets and keep them (as well as replacing the countertop and appliances, of course). However, there were just too many things to work around -- we'd have to replace at least one cabinet on the window wall to put in a dishwasher, which the kitchen didn't have, while trying to match the end piece to anything else that showed, and then I was planning to put in some additional kitchen elements (see below), which would probably have to be a different but coordinating color, and then there's all that soffit above, just crying out for additional storage space, and the cabinets came in some unusual sizes, which meant custom replacement doors... and eventually I decided I'd be better off just pulling everything out and starting from scratch. Which of course meant a little money angst, but I've gotten over that and gotten excited about the planning phase. On the up side, all the cabinets came out cleanly and went to Habitat for sale at their Restore supply store, so I feel good that the decent cabinets will have an ongoing life.

Ok, on the up side, there's already good task lighting in this room, so I won't have to put in a lot of (read: any) cans. I will be taking out that ceiling fan, as it's broken down as well as a little old-fashioned for my taste, and putting in a new overhead fixture (which I'm kind of in love with). Also, while we're looking up, see all that soffit? It's going to fit 42-inch cabinets and probably leave enough space for somebody's ceramic chicken collection too! Anyway, will be keeping with the white cabinet theme, as my imagination had already run pretty far down that road (including getting attached to a particular granite) by the time I made the decision about the cabinets.

The third wall of the kitchen is currently occupied by nothing. That is, the previous residents had a table and chairs crowded in here, but there's a dining room space right outside the kitchen, so I think that's not the best use of space. However, doing anything built in is basically constrained by that floorboard radiator; luckily, I'll be taking that out as part of a project to convert to forced-air heat and central air-conditioning, so now I have the option to put some additional kitchen over there and jazz things up a bit. In fact, between those two bumpers on the wall there are some 7 feet of workable space, so I intend to get in some cabinets and a breakfast bar as well, with spiffy pendant lights. I have a lot of drawings, but I think I might leave that as a fun surprise for the "after" pics...

Also, can I just give a shout out to this white sink/faucet? Have never seen anything like them. They followed the cabinets to Habitat and will be replaced with a really luxurious deep single sink and modern faucet, which I think will be a big plus to the utility and wow value of the place. Bye bye, white-out!

2: Bedrooms

This is the master bedroom. See the lovely green dusk provided by all those awnings? (Begone!!) The room is a decent size and mostly needs a facelift. The second picture here shows where most of the work will happen (is happening! yay!): it has only a shallow closet (a foot, too little for a hanger bar, so it's mostly just a couple of hooks for your, um, scarves), a not uncommon problem in the older houses in this area. Next to the closet is the framing for a chimney running up from below. (This room has a closet outside the door in the hallway that must be where they kept all their actual clothes.) We're going to deepen that little wisp into a real closet, and match it with a built-in bookcase in front of the chimney, which I think will class the place up, while still leaving plenty of room for a dresser, TV, whatever over on the left. And get rid of the rug -- did I mention that? We're hoping that there are decent wood floors under all this carpeting, but I didn't know in advance what I would find for sure, so some possibility of new flooring everywhere...

This is the middle bedroom, whose plight is the source of the house's nickname. At some point somebody built a big closet on one wall, presumably because the elderly resident wanted storage more than additional bedrooms. In addition to reducing the room to an unusable footprint, this closet and some prior expansion of the bathroom next door resulted in the little tunnel that appears on the right there. At the narrowest it's about 18 inches, and it opens into a 3x5-foot "hallway" to the room's window!! Also the radiator. Anyway, this room could barely fit a desk, and you're obviously not using that space down that tunnel (which is probably why they also overlooked some water damage around the window for some time). This is not a room that the average new homebuyer would consider real space, and honestly, it's just kind of embarrassing. But I immediately reimagined it with that closet torn out and a cozy window seat built under the window to turn a vestigial bit of space into a usable kid's room with some real appeal. Can't wait to see its transformation! (There's a drop ceiling in here that's headed out too.)

The third bedroom is pretty ok. Also good-sized, needs a facelift, but its main problem is a complete lack of closet. That's pretty easily remedied, and my contractor suggested an arrangement that might actually add a little charm too, so yay on that front.

Well, I think I'll stop here, and get to the main bathroom and the extensive basement plans next time. Demo already mostly done, so I've got all kinds of chaos pictures to share too. All of these bedrooms will be getting their overhead lights replaced with modern fixtures, as will the hallway -- despite the brass railing, I'm going with brushed nickel for everything from bathroom faucets to hallway door handles, so there will be a *lot* of hardware in my future! woot!

Window seat house -- before pics

Ok, belatedly, some more pics of this first house! First, a longer view of the outside -- it's a 2-story townhouse in the midst of others on a decent block (which I've modified a bit here for privacy). Those awnings above will have to go, to get some light inside as well as to remove the dated style, as will this substantial but overly grandmotherly storm door (left) and oddly ornamented front door (right - note the green awning shadows!).

I haven't decided yet what color to paint the remaining railings, but I favor either black or some kind of metallic finish, as the most understated options -- rustoleum appears to come in a bewildering array of colors these days, so some poking around is required.

Here are the stairs (left), showing more of the red livingroom carpet visible in my last post. I quite like the mix of cast iron and brass here, so will just be repairing and keeping this. I also love the pair of overhead lights in this space (right), which are an unusual semi-flush style with chandelier crystals. Not a fit with my modern vision for this house, but I think I'll hang onto them for a future project.

I have many more pictures and plans to discuss, but am a bit crushed by some chilled pipe issues at home tonight, so happy just to get this started. More on the kitchen, the window seat room (and other bedrooms), as well as the huge basement, next time. Then demo!

Edit: Just found this pic I'd saved from the listing that gives a long shot of the living room and dining room, chimney framed at left, glorious red carpet and wallpaper. I won't likely have the space to take a long shot like this for a while, what with all the equipment and debris, so worth sticking in now. There's also a vestibule at the entry that I'm going to keep, because this room is in pretty good shape and because having that extra interior door for insulation makes me feel better about taking off the exterior storm door for a more modern look.

Real #1: Window Seat House

Ok, this is the one I'm really going to rehab. (Explanation on the name will have to wait.) I close on this house next week and don't foresee any problems between now and then (other than that I offered a bit more than I wanted to because they were already in a negotiation, of course).

Already have contractor bids underway and am starting to accumulate light fixtures and idea boards for what I want to do, as well as a huge (rather anal) spreadsheet listing all the desired repairs and as many of the finishes as I have already figured out. Have appliances ordered and on hold until we're ready to take them, etc. Off and running!!

Anyway, will post a formal set of "before" pictures after closing, but here are a few from the listing, just to give a flavor. Lots of unfortunate vintage touches (that is, 1970s, not 1800s), but it will clean up well. Good space and a finished basement. More details once I get my camera in there, as well as thoughts and plans.