Madison Square
Two married architects living in an 1870's brick rowhouse on a garden block in Center City Philadelphia. We work, we work on our house, we take pictures with our iphones and try to write a little something that makes sense. What you see is what we did… it’s just how we roll.
Spray Painting
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- Published on Sunday, 18 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
Finally ready to paint…
We started with a cheap paint sprayer we had used your the bathroom wall paneling, and it just didn’t cut it! The thick latex primer would continually make the piston seize up.
So finally I broke down and got a new professional type airless high pressure pumped sprayer. It is a Ryobi, so at...
Countdown To Thanksgiving… Window Edition
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- Published on Sunday, 18 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
We’re hosting our first Madison Square Thanksgiving for our families in just 5 days, and believe it or not there’s a lot on our to-do list besides grocery shopping. For instance, finish up the living room window details. New stained oak trim, but existing painted white window. The radiator cover below the window...
Ready to Paint Yet?
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- Published on Thursday, 15 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
We are hoping to paint part of the basement tomorrow night and have been doing all kinds of odds & ends in preparation.
We pulled some additional wire to add speakers to the kitchen & dining room for our house wide stereo & intercom.
Luckily we had left the back of the head end for the intercom open in our living...
Just a Temporary Light Fixture
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- Published on Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
Since we aren’t finishing the Dining Room anytime soon, we decided to change out our temporary ceiling light for another temporary light.
However this temporary light is a little bit nicer…
This old thing is the fixture we bought on eBay as an option for the Living Room. We rewired and refinished this antique...
Stucco Time
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- Published on Monday, 12 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
It’s time to make our two new openings presentable on the outside.
To start we tacked expanded wire mesh in the areas to get stucco, for the stucco to stick to and for added strength.
We are still mixing our own stucco from portland cement, lime, and sand. That way we can tailor the mix to our old house and we can use the...
Making Holes in Our House
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- Published on Sunday, 11 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
Time to make a hole in the exterior wall for our kitchen exhaust!
To get started we drilled holes through the two wythes of brick.
This helped to take the bricks out with minimal disturbance to the adjacent wall and to mark out the hole all the way through to the outside.
The first couple bricks are always the hardest to get out...
Cleaning Prepping the Basement
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- Published on Friday, 09 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
When we cleaned out our former wood shop that was in the Dining Room (for the final L&I inspection), everything got shoved into the basement and it still a mess to this day.
There is so much ‘stuff’ that we don’t know where to put it, but you know ‘we could use that someday. : )
However to renovate...
Antique Brass
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- Published on Tuesday, 06 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
You may remember our Ebay Victorian light fixture finds… We hung the one of the fixtures in our Living Room and are now thinking of hanging this lovely fixture, at least temporarily, in our Dining Room
We had already cleaned, primed, and rewired the fixture…
So now it is time to give it a color.
We went with antique...
Reopening the Past
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- Published on Monday, 05 November 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
Like so many of the windows in our house when we bought it, the alley side basement windows were both covered over. So this weekend we tackled the shop side window.
Of course from the basement it is clear there was once a window here.
But on the outside the stucco runs continuous right over the old window.
So to get started we...
Sandy Prep
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- Published on Monday, 29 October 2012
Authors: madisonsquare
Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the East Coast, so we decided to err on the side of caution and make some preparations around our house yesterday. First up was bringing in and securing items on our deck, then trimming back some branches in the garden:
We did a final clean of the stained glass window and finallllly took the...
