Victorian House Renovation in Bloomingdale, DC
Turns out that there was good reason for us to work hard to get our little patch of dirt yard cleaned and sunny. the roses are in full bloom and we aren’t even at the end of May yet!
On a side note – there are tons of little bugs on roses – they don’t seem to be impeding the blooming, but look kind of icky up close. not sure what those are, and whether i will get around to getting rid of these.… Read the rest
an update, and likely (fingers crossed) the last post on this issue for another 6 months or so. when we noticed the paint bubbling in our wall, we had immediate panic.
6+1 (six called by us -a general contractor, 3 masons, one mold remediation specialist and a roofer- and one by our neighbor – an hvac contractor) contractor visits later, it turned out the water damage on our wall was coming from a condensation that build up because the furnace at the house next door had no outlet, unbeknownst to the owner.… Read the rest
Before we purchased the house, I was pretty excited about renovation as a process. Disclaimer – Sergey was much more cautious about the whole thing. For one, he grew up with parents who are renovators. And two, he understands much better than i do, the value of relaxing.
This is my long winded introduction to Capitol Hill House and Garden Tour we took last weekend.
We were planning on some serious inspiration, after all renovations on the hill have been ongoing for at least six decades (the tour started in the 1950s), so there is a lot of examples there!… Read the rest
To our April chalkboard? since it was pretty much a joke (though we did cross off the dryer vent), I erased it. A few of my bridesmaids came to visit, and we needed a surface to keep track of our wine tasting for the wedding.
by far the best use of chalkboard so far:
And now we are in May. given the wedding crunch, and unexpected surprises, i figured I would keep it simple for now:
When we called the roofer, I was really not convinced that that much water managed to get through tiny cracks. and on top of that, we have seen very hard rains, while no active leaks were produced. but we were really hoping that a roofer would help us out with where the water was coming from.
So, I consulted PoP, and found Adam’s Roofing (no website). Adam, is, awesome. He checked out our roof, gave us maintenance advice (including on small cracks) and said that no water is coming from the roof– which *good news!*… Read the rest
Repointing, retucking, otherwise known as…its gonna cost you.
masonry is expensive. replacing historic mortar is even more expensive.the quick and dirty on historic mortar vs regular cement as I understand it: old bricks and mortar were manufactured differently than today. Old brick and mortar – breathe, expand and contract with the weather. New brick and mortar – don’t breathe, and don’t expand or contract. problems occur when old mixes with new.… Read the rest
One of the most interesting bits to hear would be about all the different workers and contractors that have come through the house. we have moved onto to getting mason quotes, because several weeks ago we discovered this:
On our side wall by the stairs. it didn’t look like that initially. first we saw squiggly lines. then the paint started bubbling, and it came off quite easily to reveal this. so we opened up our reference guides, and started making calls.… Read the rest
The VIB – probably feeling neglected – has been given us trouble lately, we have busted glass and crumbling mortar. But this post isn’t about that. its about success! ha, take that house gods. even though its not technically house. regardless, our roses are blooming!
after what looked like a fairly successful winter for them, we cleaned up and trained the bushes and they have really taken off. However, no sooner did the buds appear, myriad of squirrels did too!… Read the rest
This Old House chose “Northeast” (a.k.a Eckington) as the Best Old House Neighborhood of 2011.
While we aren’t in Northeast, it is across the street. And Bloomingdale is part of Eckington, as far as tax subdivisions are concerned.
Read about it here.… Read the rest
It turned out that my efforts to save some money on reglazing process for the bathtub were mostly futile. Once the bathtub master arrived, he took one look at our scrapped up tub and very definitively said: Nope, not gonna work. Uff. But he did agree to accept a ‘side job’ of finishing scraping the tub and threw a sink reglazing in there as well – for $40. So that’s a savings of $25– not worth the time and health, but lesson learned (again) sometimes it’s just not worth it to DIY.… Read the rest
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