Gothichome wrote:Devyn, welcome back. You really never left, your blog link is still functioning. From what I see you are doing a great job. The facade looks fantastic, do your neighbours do something similar with planters and such. To me that sort of thing reminds me of a simpler time period. I expect the carriage to pull up at any time.
How is the rear corner rebuild standing up, and did any of your neighbours have the same issue?
Thanks for the welcome...
My planters are quite modern, made from cor-ten steel (Image below). Many of our neighbors have planters out front as well (second image, view of the listing photo of our house in 2016 with neighbors plants. The quirky thing here is that technically, our property line is the front wall of our house and the sidewalk is public property. This means our stoop (and everyone else's in our nabe) is sitting on public property. It is however, normal to have personal things on the sidewalk. There are lots of container gardens, benches, chairs, etc. It's a Philly thing to use the public space directly in front your house for private purposes.
New planters in early July.
Listing photo of our house (2016). Our neighbor HATES the stucco and small roof added about 25 years ago, but he is more nervous about how trashed the brick would be if he were to remove the stucco.
Regarding the rear corner rebuild. Things are holding up just fine. We discovered the source of the vertical crack from the ground floor to the top floor is due to the fact that our neighbors house was completed shortly before ours, and when they built our rear wall, they did not tie it into the already existing side wall. The rear wall was slowly pulling away (gravity) while the nearby rotten beams were causing the wall to shift away from our neighbors. Needless to say, it is now connected for the first time with concrete blocks and epoxy. We still plan to avoid putting a shower in that corner though.
