as seen on tv

Today is the day! Tune in to HGTV tonight at 9:30PM EDT to see what we've done!

hgtv - air date

Per Meg, we have an air date. September 11!

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Hey Craig,
As of right now we are planning on airing your show on 9/11. I will be sending out an email in the beginning of that week to remind everyone and the following week you will receive your DVD. I will update you if there are any changes.
Thank you

-Meg
***********

We also have a bunch of updates on the house - stairs, more drywall, floors... pictures are forthcoming.

filming - HGTV

It’s official. Filming is complete. I imagine somewhere out there, somebody is busy editing and cutting out the numerous “um’s” and frequent direct eye contact with the camera.

First - we don’t have an air date yet. As soon as we get some more information, we’ll let you know! (I wonder how many of you will still ask in the comments, despite my clear, informative writing.)

The process was fun and everyone involved was great! It’s tough to walk around and talk about your house with cameras in your face, but the producer assured us we were doing great.

The designer was Taniya Nayak, who we’ve recognized from other HGTV programming. She was nice and had great things to say about the house.

Here are a few of the crew working in the house:

Makeup – of course:

As far as who had their best Bang for their Buck – we don’t know yet. I guess we’ll find out when they air!

congratulations are in order...

...for Craig! On Saturday he submitted his final assignment for his final class to earn his Masters of Business Administration!

Can you believe he's been working on an advanced degree during the renovation?!

I'm so proud of him!

dining room; clear chairs; corn vase

We often hear kind words about the fact that we're a productive pair. Although, as of late work has slowed dramatically. There are a number of small, unfinished projects preventing the joyous occasion of a to-do list strikethrough.

It's funny how a professional designer and real-estate agent, with camera crew in tow, can motivate you. Things are getting done - in fact, we removed the to-do list altogether.



The picture is old - many of the jobs are now complete. Can you believe we had a question mark behind 'Backsplash'?

So about this dining room... before:



Mmm. Wallpaper.

And I must point out the fireplace massacre. Some brilliant person covered the entire front with an inch of mastic to secure rocks.



Today - In progress:











I'm digging the clear chairs.

The corn vase - SO FAR - is only liked by two people. Me and Jessica. It came from Red Tree.

hgtv

Bad blogger? Maybe.

Bad renovators? No – says HGTV.

That’s right, we’ve been selected to be on a show called Bang For Your Buck! We’re thrilled about the development and can’t wait to show Project Rowhouse in a different forum. Applying for the show was not too difficult. The production company posted an ad; Baltimore Grows blogged about it; We responded, with a link to the blog (of course). After a few weeks of some back-and-forth we were notified that we made it!

To make things more interesting our pals over at Baltimore Rowhouse will be on the same episode.

Filming is the second week in July and as we learn more information regarding air time, we'll be sure to let everyone know! Check back soon, we're finishing up a few projects and some blogging will follow.

petrie

…has finally arrived.  Could legs be any sexier? 

Now I want a new coffee table.  We like the one we made, and we’ll use it elsewhere.  It’s just not a good fit for this couch.  I guess Noguchi is too big..? 

Oh, the blue room is the dining room – more on that later.    

basement: unveiled

Let me remind you of how things were:

Can you believe we bought that crap? 

Here we are now:

And some extra storage next to the stairs

paint colors

I've received a few requests for the paint colors we've been using:

Kitchen: Hot Cross Buns (American Tradition)

Living Room: Short Grass Prairie (Valspar)

blog love

It's always great receiving comments here on the blog.  Recently, some nice things have come from additional sources, so we figured we'd give a shout'back - mostly because we appreciate them, but a little because narcissism is a completely natural way to feel.  For me. 

Yesterday the people at Modwalls' design blog featured Project Rowhouse and said some really nice things.  You can check it out here.  

Also, a few weeks ago Urban Discoveries Living interviewed us about the renovation for a House Tour feature on their site.  UDL is a sweet little blog about Baltimore city livin';

Charles & Hudson liked our trim work;

and our friends at Rehab or Die always have nice things to say - and they do some good work!

Thanks!

backsplash - kitchen and wet bar

The backsplash is finally installed. It looks fantastic. If these walls could talk, I'm sure they'd say, "Mama just got some new bling and she's ready to tear up this town - outta my way."

This was an easy job, I didn't need need too many special tools and was finished over the course of a few days.

We want to give some big credit to Modwalls. In addition to being a completely friendly and helpful vendor, they have a beautiful selection of high quality tiles in a variety of colors. If you like the mosaic look and they don't have a color mix that works, you can mix up your own batch for a custom blend. As I mentioned before, we chose the Marrakesh blend for the kitchen - AND - we went ahead and got the Windy City mix for the wet bar in the basement.

There are some official installation guides here, but our process is described below.

1 - Adhering the tile to the walls - we did not use a concrete backerboard, but adhered the tile directly to the drywall. I used a V-Notched trowel with 3/8" grooves along with premixed, unsanded Mastic. When you are spreading the mastic on the wall, be sure that you're applying a thorough, yet thin and even coat. If it's too thick, when you press the tile flat against the wall it will seep up through the individual tiles. This went unnoticed in a few areas during my installation. It can be cleaned up after the mastic is dry, although this means more work. This picture from the wet bar shows some seeping mastic.

We were fortunate in that we did not have to cut any of the individual tiles to make them fit around outlets, etc. Because each tile is small, we merely cut sections out of the pattern and left the rest of the sheet intact - this worked well.

When you buy this tile, it comes in sheets that are about 12"x12". You may have sheets that have a netting on the back that sits right in the mastic - or they may have paper holding them together from the front of the tile. We had both types - see below:

If you have paper fronted tile, you need to remove the paper after you fix it to the wall, but before everything is set firmly in place. I waited about 20-30 minutes and then started wetting the paper (sorry no picture). I found that a spray bottle worked best. When it's soaked through, the paper will easily peel away. At this point the tile fronts are exposed along with errors and crookedness. Because nothing is completely firm, you can straighten the lines. Now the mastic needs to firm up for at least 24 hours.

We had a few different edge types. I used blue painters tape which made for nice even grout lines.

2 - Grouting - after everything is dry I suggest a good cleaning. The sooner you clean up, the easier the clean-up. Remember the seeping mastic? This needs to be completely fixed prior to grouting so the lines are all even and smooth.

With glass tile you'll want to get a non-sanded grout. There are many colors to choose from. I'm not a big fan of grout lines that pull attention from the tile itself, so we went with similar colors to the tile.

When the grout is mixed and ready to apply, I suggest having a few putty knives around and a good float. Slather the grout on the tile and start spreading it forcefully and evenly with the float in a diagonal direction to the tile.

After everything was grouted, I waited about a half hour before wiping down with a damp [often-rinsed] sponge. As the remaining residue dries a haze will develop over the surface.

I had to come back a few times with the sponge a day later to polish everything up - but it came out beautifully!

And the basement (ignore the unfinished electrical outlet):

trim and moulding

You can expose brick, mud drywall, refinish floors, scrape wallpaper and paint walls - none of this matters until you add moulding and trim. We love crisp, clean, bright white trim in just about every room. Slowly, we've been adding the base trim as we get certain phases of the work complete. Now that we're moving on to doors and windows, y'all can have a peak.

I don't consider my moulding capabilities a talent - but we're really good at the finishing part of the job where you can hide errors. After you've installed whatever you're working on, you should fill in all the gaps and nail marks with a paintable caulk (or something comparable) before painting the final product. We still have to do this step, but it's coming along.

The square rosettes with fluted casings are seen in a few other places of the house where the trim appears to be original. We like the traditional, yet geometric look.

Before:


After:






Dealing with a 1.5" floor height change is a pain. We built this trim piece out of two threshold step-up pieces stacked and secured.

coffee table

This is an Ikea Lack Shelving Unit we modified into a coffee table.  Pieces of 1x6 MDF were added to each end using Liquid Nails and wood screws.  Adding the boards gave the casters a more solid base than the actual furniture.  Thanks, Lynsey for the idea.  

 

basement; wet bar

The basement is coming together. We have the cabinets painted - Craig did an amazing job on this - and the wet bar is in place with functioning plumbing. We're pretty excited and proud to say that the basement budget has stayed quite small due to some recylcing, some freebies and of course our own labor.

porcelain tile floor

Back to the kitchen - the floor is tiled, finally! It was a mess of plywood for way too long. We went with a neutral porcelain 12"x12" in a running bond pattern. I'll admit, I was a bit disappointed when I first realized that the floor I wanted was going to cost way more than necessary; I suppose the tile we ended up with is "safer" as far as general appeal. Now that it's in, I'm really happy with the decision. The lighter color helped the room feel even bigger and the fact that the pattern pulls your eye from side to side of the house, rather than front to back makes the kitchen feel fat and happy. An added bonus is that the end result seems to lend itself well to a house in Little Italy with a Tuscan'y feel.

A few items of note:
-When you're working with grout [and not wearing gloves] strange things will happen to the skin on your hands. It dried me out in a fantastic way. I was nothing short of reptilian for at least a week.
-People will tell you to invest in knee pads, but you won't because they're pricey and you think you can handle it. You can't.
-We rented a wet saw from the HD. I'm not sure of the other options out there, but this thing worked great.
-Cutting tile becomes annoying. Because we installed the cabinets first, we had to make more cuts than necessary. Most of the information I've read suggests installing the flooring material in a kitchen first. It's probably a good idea, but there are pluses to installing it last as well (e.g. less tile material). Our schedule dictated this decision.

A few in progress pictures before the final - to prove to Dan that Project Rowhouse is not some covert operation involving loads of contractors and designers.









No, I don't ask Jaxxon to be in every picture. This boy loves the camera - can you blame him?