It finally happened. After looking at probably 40 houses and having an offer rejected on another, as of July 30th I am the proud owner of an 1875 rowhouse in Locust Point. The house is approximately 13′ 6″ wide and currently has formstone on the front facade. It is setup as a 3 Bedroom, 1 Bath with an interesting and extremely deep garage at the rear (more on the garage later). It seems to be much of the house has remained unchanged over the years aside from some filthy carpeting and multiple layers of wall paper of various colors. Currently many of the walls have a textured wall paper, really gives it a nice 70′s feel. The house has a full basement, however the distance between the concrete slab and the underside of the ceiling joists is barely 6’0″.
I will mainly be working on the house with my Dad, with occasional help from my Mom and some friends and roommates here and there. I took about 50 pictures Saturday before we started the demo that I will have to get up. In the mean time, I’ll put up some in progress pictures from the weekend. We began exposing the brick on the stair wall and demo’d some of the wall coverings, ceilings and other interior partitions on the first floor.
Here is a picture looking back toward the kitchen area. The kitchen as of now consists of an ancient stove and a sink, as well as some temporary shelving units. The framed opening you can see had a multi-colored glass window pretty much nailed in place.
We found something really interesting written on the 2×4 at the base of where the window previously was…8/1 1923…and a name. Pretty erie that we began work on the house on 8/1 and uncovered this date just a day later. My Dad and I think that the back portion of the house, where the kitchen is was likely added along with the garage in 1923 with the rest of the house having been built earlier in 1875. As I pulled the wall apart more we found the actual builders name and address and another date written on the back of the drywall. Here’s a picture:
Here is a picture looking toward the front of the house from the kitchen:
We also ran into an interesting situation on the wall opposite the stairs. It appears as though my house and the house next door might have been connected at one point. As my Dad and friend scraped the wall paper off the plaster wall we found that there is actually a section of concrete in what looked like was a door way at some time. Good thing we didn’t try and do exposed brick on this wall. Haha. Unless of course exposed concrete is the next big thing…
We got most of the plaster off the stair wall over the weekend. I am still trying to decide how far to keep going with the exposed brick. I am thinking I will run it all the way up onto the 2nd floor. I might also pick a wall in the master bedroom to expose as I work my way up to the 2nd floor.
The ceilings are made of of some type of armstrong tile, underneath which are furring strips. The strips are a huge pain because whoever put them up aimlessly put screws in them where ever they felt like it. These ceiling tiles are all over the place too and are like 8″ x 8″ so they make alot of trash real fast. I’m not looking forward to take ALL of them down, but the good news is there is some relatively in tact plaster left behind after the furring strips come down. Should save me from having to re-drywall the ceilings.
The floors look like they are 3 1/2″ wide planked pine. They’re currently hidden by carpet and a layer of paint, but I have high hopes they will all be salvageable. The floors are a long way off but atleast I have a good feeling I won’t to replace all of them.
I think that’s all for now. Having the central air looked at tomorrow. Will try and get some before pictures up soon.
As we worked our way upstairs we took out the wall of the middle bedroom, the future site of the bathroom or bathroom(s) (TBD). 
