The Historic District

I bought this first cover for a song at an antique mall... Oh these are lovely! Jealous... Not jealous. Although we are still many months away from moving into our old house, I have been eyeing open grilled summer screens for a while. Our original 1850s Italianate marble fireplace was replaced in t...

Devyn, I'll bet you will find your root cause at the foundation level. Just looking at your layout that corner looks to be a drainage trap, over time, the water has undermined your footings, or at least severely degraded them. You might get away with a jacking of that corner and a tuck pointing reb...

Devyn, about that structural issue, being a town house I would suggest it might be an issue with your neighbours as well. How have they handled it. I believe your wall would be structurally separated on either side by the firewall, but being that, the whole row would have been built at the same tim...

It's not silicone, it's siloxane. And these products work. You don't know they are present, they don't form a layer; paints are bad as they do not breathe. Siloxane is quite volatile, you will need a respirator during application. By all means, do some research, perhaps contact some historical 'fou...

Thanks for the feedback. I was a bit leery when I read the proposal. I am going to wait on the front facade. In the meantime, I am dealing with some serious structural issues our home inspector completely missed which, if known, could have given us more bargaining power.

When the structural engineer was at the house last week doing his assessment of the structural issues we are discovering (the rear wall is pulling away from the house), he did a full top to bottom inspection. When they got to the front of the house, he pointed out that the front wall has been repoin...

Welcome! Congrats on taking the plunge on such a lovely home! I always love a Dutch Gambrel. I am also fairly new around here (I've only been here a month), but there are lots nice fine folks on here so you are sure to find community. I completely understand about biting off more than one can chew.....

I am looking forward to your experience with this. Our 1852 brick rowhouse has little in the way of decent options for conventional AC even though we have forced air heat (the ducts are all on the floor and in the fireboxes). I am thinking about setting up a three zone system using a combination of ...

We finished scraping every square inch of the east section of porch railing! Used a combination of heat gun, ABR citrus stripper and carbide scrapers/elbow grease. What a tedious task but so rewarding - the wood is beautiful! IMG_2652.JPG Too bad these 31 balusters only equal 25% of the total on th...

Gothichome wrote:We do not have any stained glass in the normal sense, all our fancy glass is etched flash glass.
This is the transom to the back door...

Wow, your back door transom is amazing!