Follow along as I renovate my 100+ year old Rowhome! I am a Philadelphia based digital artist and designer. Drexel University class of 2021 Bachelors of Architecture.
I like that you have the archway separating the kitchen from the eating area. These homes, being long and without natural light coming in on the side walls make it hard to design. It would be fun to play with the layout program to see what it would look like moving the stairs across the house making a squared off front room and more of a door way to get into the kitchen or at the back end the house move the stairs and make more of a vestibule mudroom. I think it may get rid of the small feeling if you can square off the space more, right now the stairs cut into the narrow space as it and makes the room feel too small.
Hey. I’ve been watching this school house renovation for the past few years and they redid some exposed brick. They went through a lot of trial and error and the final treatment looks great. Check them out for ideas “Schoolhouse Homestead”. Love this so far! 👍💜🐲
you are someone who is willing to think outside the box. So use this ability to redo your layout. cover the alley like your neighbor does. If you really, really want a bathroom with natural light - move it to a place where it doesn't restrict the outline of your floorplans. make the outline as simple as possible. it makes for clearer, calmer rooms inside and they are much more cost efficient to build. be free to change in the inside whatever is there. the bathroom does not have to be where it is now. the kitchen has not to be either. Maybe put the bedroom in the darkest room. Maybe put the bathroom under the roof with a skylight, maybe use some frosted glass floor inlays to shovel down the light. Maybe a kitchen on the middle floor with a nice terrace in front of it. Open the back front with a whole glass wall if you need the light. i'm pretty sure you can come up with a pretty cool concept. keep going - it will be worth it.
Funny to hear you talk about how unusual the house is. It's pretty typical for Europe. Did you not study foreign architecture? Those 'sketchy' half winding stairs are bog standard here 😂 perhaps you can watch some european housing shows to gettips on what you can do with yours...
WOW! Just stumbled on your channel. I immediately Subscribed. This should be fun. Uh...for me. For you it will be a lot of work. But I can tell immediately you'll be able to handle it. Go forth and conquer.
Lathe is usually garbage or we use it for shims. You will need it for shims. If you wanted to laminate it, it would make a cool desktop. You could do a harder epoxy pour over the top to keep it stable since they are soft wood. Otherwise, just use them for firewood to get rid of them for free.
Just a suggestion. When you take those doors down they need to be numbered so that you will know where they belong when you go to rehab them. Excited for your journey.😊
Great series! About to embark on a similar journey myself, but with much smaller scope. Just bought a row home in South Philly and am hoping to customize it to my liking kinda like you are. I'm expecting far less red tape though as I'm planning to avoid any structural changes if possible. I'm excited to see how it all turns out and possibly gain some inspiration for my own project.
Your proposal is WAY better than your neighbours! It would be great if they could agree to the same as you. Loving the vids, defo better to take your time and make things the way you want.
My house was built in 1865 immediately after the civil war. I can feel your pain, tons of shady work was done with mine. The newspapers you keep finding was actually used as insulation back in the day.
Without knowing anything else I would assume the wood you were talking about removing is 100% structural. The diagonal brace is required for rack strength, we did that before sheathing was common. Otherwise, great story and video and I look forward to following.
Thanks for following the project! That wall is originally structural, but with the new plan and new engineering drawings that wall will not be needed. Most of the wood section is going to need to be rebuilt unfortunately
RU-vid recommended me the first video in this series, and I’m glad it did, I just binged the whole thing. Super entertaining, I don’t mind at all the slow pace of the renovation. I like the storytelling of the videos, seeing the process and all the little side quests! One question I have though: did you test for lead paint before you started tearing into all the walls and everything? Because as much as I’d hate be the person who adds yet another complication to this project by raising a potential issue that maybe you hadn’t even considered, I’d be remiss if I didn’t make you aware of the possibility of lead paint; on the off chance that you hadn’t already thought of it. Becuse frankly I would be amazed if a house that old *didn’t* have lead paint, and seeing you tearing into everything and creating all that dust just makes me concerned for your safety. Anyways, sorry if I just made things way more complicated for you by bringing up the potential of lead paint if you hadn’t already considered it. I subscribed and I’m looking forward to seeing the progress! (Hoping that there’s no lead paint 😬🤞🏼)