House173 ALB

  Why is House 173 Like That Thirteen Windows and One Very Old Question Why did 1920s homes have enclosed porches? Thirteen windows at House 173 send us down another old-house rabbit hole.

  Ramblings After Nearly Three Decades at House 173, You'd Think I'd Know Better by Now After nearly three decades at House 173, a 99-year-old house has taught me a few things about repairs, tools, gardens, preservation, memory and what it really means to care for an old home. House 173 turned 99 this year. We've been responsible for almost thirty of those years, which seems like it ought to be long enough to know what we're doing. It isn't.

  Porches Eight Years Later, We Finally Finished What We Started Started : Sort of 2016 Finished : Finally, 2024 Project : Back Porch Exterior Rehab If you've spent any amount of time here at House 173, you already know there are projects...and then there are projects . There are those wonderful little Saturday-morning jobs where I wander into the workshop, cut up three pieces of scrap wood, use approximately nine more tools than necessary, and emerge two hours later with something useful. And then there are projects like this one. Technically, the Back Porch Rehab of 2024 took a good portion of one summer. Technically. In reality, it took about eight years .

  Windows 99 Years in the Same Window Restoring One of House 173's Original Double-Hung Windows I've Never Done One of These Before  After nearly three decades of working on House 173, you'd think I'd be running out of firsts. Nope.

Porches One Last Project for the Front Porch A tired storage chest gets a rich red finish, a little antiquing glaze, and one more chance to belong on the newly remodeled porch. Well... we thought we were done. After what seemed like an endless parade of paint samples, sanding, patching, painting, waiting, repainting , and then waiting some more for the porch floor to cure, we finally started moving everything back where it belonged. It had been weeks in the making, and it was satisfying to watch the porch slowly come back to life.

Front Porch The Porch That Waited  A Century of Welcomes, One More Chapter After weeks of sanding, painting, repairing, and second-guessing, the porch finally became home again. There comes a point in every project when you realize you're no longer restoring something.  You're simply living with it again. For the better part of a month, our front porch had become a workshop. Paint samples all over the walls. Drop cloths covered nearly everything. Brushes constantly being cleaned. Every time I turned around a ladder was on the move or another paint tray to step over.

Ramblings More than a Quarter Century A whimsical gift became the latest chapter in the story of one of House 173's oldest residents. The apple we planted as a sapling back in '99, has quietly become one of those "anchor" features here at House 173, much like the lilacs or the front porch. The recent addition of a whimsical Christmas gift is just the latest evolution of this special corner of your yard.