duck tour; brick work (cont.); leo

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day! We enjoyed the long weekend with friends and Project Rowhouse took a break.

Have you guys heard of the Duck Tours? It's your typical city tour - cheesy tour guide, families, amphibious vehicle, superfluous photography, wait... what's that you say? Amphibious vehicle? That's right people. The 'bus' turns into a boat and rolls right into the harbor. We took the tour last weekend and I'd recommend it. We learned some interesting things about the city and you can get some great views of our 'hood from the harbor. I must warn you - just after they force you to pose for a picture in front of the bus'boat, they hand out kazoo'ish duck quackers to each passenger. Everyone uses them, often. Loudly. You'll do it too.

This is the end of our street from the water;


and some construction going on nearby (as seen in the previous post).


As far as the house goes - we feel good about the pace right now and have been surprisingly productive during the work week. We've moved onto the next step in the brick exposing process and I love it. Muriatic Acid:

The box is so dramatic. Lots of things are poison.

This stuff is pretty amazing for giving the brick a finishing 'scrub'. It is acid and safety precautions must be taken. Wear the proper gear, have ventilation, keep baking soda around for neutralization (for spillage and overspray), etc. I'm going to give credit to Baltimore Rowhouse (a fellow renovation blog) for describing the muriatic acid process in detail. More info here. Check out the results:

We love the way it's looking. Even though the process is taking a while, each step is quite rewarding.

Any thoughts on that wood board going up the wall? There is quite a bit of damage behind it. There will also be a column nearby where the contractor will be removing the wall. Our thoughts are that we will finish them both in similar style.

Closeup - so fresh and so clean:


We also have a new addition to the home. Meet Leonardo D'Shrimpleton, aka Leo:


Part miniature dachsund, part miniature poodle; his eyes are bright blue and he's relatively tiny... sort of an impulse, but we really like him!

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.

wallpaper removal

There are many ways to remove wallpaper. I initially tried a mixture of fabric softner and water on wallpaper that had been scored - I've heard of this working, but it didn't fair too well. It would have taken months to finish the job we have - and I imagine it would take ten bottles of fabric softner. So we rented a steamer for $34.


...still a slow process, but it helped immensely. It's easy to use and no chemicals. First, you fill the tank with hot water - it took about 30 minutes before the steam started, so the hotter you start with the sooner you'll be working. It's a relatively small tank, but it lasted a good amount of time. While you're waiting for steam, score the paper so that the steam can permeate the glue. Slowly run the steamer plate over the paper and it should start loosening from the wall.

The stuff in the bedroom was horrible and took much longer. It came off in two layers, first the decorative easter egg layer, then the backing paper.

The walls will need repair and primer before painting, but it's nice to take a step in the right direction.

The ivy paper was thicker and held together, so removing it was much easier. You can also see that we ended up exposing the brick all the way up the stairs. The darker diagnol line is where the roof over the basement stairs used to be.

Some tips:
-Keep a spray bottle nearby. If the walls are very wet, it comes down easier;
-Using the scraper is sometimes inevitable, but I tried to keep it's use to a minimum. If everything is wet, you can use your fingers to pull it down with less damage to the wall;
-Pull slowly and try to get as big a piece as possible.

exposing the brick...

...is hard work.

Typically, the rowhouses in Baltimore are brick boxes. There are a few wood framed rowhouses still around the city - and we looked at one that was beautiful - but for the most part they're all brick. There was even a law at some point in the 1800's requiring the houses and buildings be constructed with brick because fires were much angrier then and entire cities would be destroyed in hours.

I like the fact that our 200 year old box is made of brick.

In most houses, the brick would be covered with plaster. In our case - and many others - drywall would be hung over the plaster. The drywall is typically the easy part. The plaster should have been outlawed along with the wooden houses. I've read some articles about how the plaster would fall off in large pieces. Our plaster holds on to the brick for dear life.

A few tips:
-Wear gloves, dust mask and safety glasses;
-Your brick might not be pretty - test an area to make sure it looks good;
-We used hammers, prybars, mallets and a good dose of elbow grease;
-A labradoodle could do this - DIY 100%.

We haven't committed to doing huge areas just yet. Here's what we have so far.
This is in what will be the living room:



In this area, rather than hanging the drywall on furring strips, it was glued to the plaster for added fun!


Eventually, the television will hang on the wall above the fireplace - oh my, I hate that wallpaper. Play Cornhole.


John McCain makes one angry.


Speaking of fires... do you think there may have been one in the basement at some point?

The next step is cleaning the brick, which creates an incredible amount of dust and sore biceps. More on that later.

Oh, and we have to do something about the dining room:


Meet Kanga and Jaxxon - renovations are exhausting, but plaster tastes delicious