and we're back

We've been slightly more productive than it seems here on the blog. Sorry about the lack of posting; I was surprised to find out how many of you are checking back frequently. Thanks. We do have a good excuse - unfortunately, I don't think I can muster up the enthusiasm to talk about it here. Instead, I'll post this picture we got today.

Project Rowhouse has the porch light on.

Back to the renovation -

The brick-exposing is a multiple step job. We are now scrubbing the bits of plaster that were left clinging to the brick. This is the messy, labor intensive part. The original plan was to use variously sized wire brushes - imagine much stronger versions of the brush you use to clean your grill after making kabobs. The pros to using this brush is control and precision, the cons are that it sucks in many different ways. Speeding this up was imperative. I knew I could find a more productive tool.

This drill attachment did the job amazingly well. I was initially nervous that it would tear through the mortar. While I managed to gouge a few areas slightly, it's very easy to control once you get the hang of it.
A tip: as you switch arms, hands, kneeling positions - always keep in mind the direction the drill is spinning. Switch it up so that it's shooting the brick shrapnel away from you.
We're thrilled with the results - the portion on the left is before the scrubbing.

To keep the dust down as much as possible, I hung walls of dropcloth from ceiling to floor creating impressively thick dust clouds. I highly suggest this - along with well-fitting goggles and dust mask. Anyone familiar with this process knows I am not exaggerating here.

We also:
hung a new porch light (and allowed that hanging plant to barely hold onto life):


painted the doors (a darker blue than the back door... I like this one better); and removed the cover that used to be above the salleyway door:



Ta-Dah.