Fells Point

Since we spent most of the weekend in New York, we don't have many new developments with the house... or pictures.  So, I thought today would be an appropriate time to begin introducing you to our neighborhood.  

I'm not sure where to begin so here is wikipedia's summary:

Fells Point is a neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, home to a variety of shops, restaurants, coffee bars, music stores, and over 120 pubs. Located on the harbor and famous for its maritime past, it now boasts the greatest concentration of pubs/bars in the city. This waterfront community is a much-visited location in Baltimore, accessible by water taxi, freeway, and several bus lines. The neighborhood has also been the home of large Polish, Irish, and Mexican-American populations throughout its history. In recent years a steadily increasing numbers of middle to upper middle income residents have moved into the area, driving up property values. Fell's Point is one of several areas in and around Baltimore that are listed on the National Register of Historic Districts, and the first one from Maryland.

Thames Street

Broadway

You might not have noticed the cobblestone street in the first picture.  This is one of the charming features of Fells... and one that makes walking in heels a challenge. 

The Beginning: Shipping

Fells Point was founded by William Fell in 1730 and was mainly a shipbuilding center.  One of the first vessels built here was the Navy's U.S.S. Constellation in 1797. She was the first ever U.S. Navy vessel to be put to sea and the first to engage, defeat and capture an enemy ship.  However, Fells became best known for producing topsail schooners.

During the War of 1812, Fell's Point built and supported dozens of privateers who preyed on British shipping. Thus, Baltimore became a principal target of the British during the war, which eventually led to the bombardment of Fort McHenry.  

Fell's Point remained a shipbuilding center until the Civil War, when it could no longer accommodate larger ship designs.

The Now: Waterfront Running, Shopping, Food, Beer and Fun!

You won't see me swimming in the Patapsco but living a few blocks from it is amazing.  The Waterfront Promenade extends from our house all the way to Federal Hill.  It takes you through some of the best parts of town: the heart of Fells Point, Harbor East, Little Italy and the Inner Harbor.  Best running path ever!

Waterfront Promenade near Harbor East

Patterson Park is only 2 blocks away from our new house.  We play in social kickball and softball leagues there and have met a lot of friends that way.  It's always possible to find a quiet spot to read or toss a ball around... Important when you have a concrete front yard. 

So I mentioned our friends and Wikipedia mentioned the 120 pubs. No brainer. There is plenty to do and everything we love to do (movies, restaurants, art, music) is a walk or a short drive away.

There are a lot of reasons we are happy to settle in Baltimore... these are only a few. I will try to focus on different areas of Baltimore as our renovation continues!

I will leave you with a few things Fells Point is known for:

*The Horse You Came In On Saloon: last place Edgar Allen Poe was seen

*Homicide, Life on the Streets: 1990's TV series

*The Ritz Cabaret: Those who watched HBO's The Wire know this club as "Orlando's"

*Michael Phelps: Swimmer

Interested in Learning More or Viewing More Photos? Check out this Website: http://www.fellspoint.us/ 

This Just In! Floors!

Last blog I left all of you with pictures of the house right after all of the old floors were taken out.  This week, the guys have been working very hard and have finished building all of the new floors.  In addition, all of the exterior walls have been framed.  As usual, some pictures...

first beam

working hard on the 2nd floor

1st floor, all finished

 space left for a staircase

2nd floor, back bedroom

3rd floor

We are at a pretty exciting stage because tomorrow we can start framing the internal walls.  Once those are finished, we will really get a feel for the layout and be able to visualize the rooms.

Regarding the room planning, our weekend trip to Lowes and Ikea was helpful, but very overwhelming. Although any time I leave a store with a cone of vanilla soft serve, I consider that trip successful.  I really think it was good for Sam and I to start looking and talking about what we like and dislike about different styles and materials.  We are very fortunate that we have similar ideas of what we want our finished rooms to look like... I couldn't imagine doing this otherwise!  I wonder how many home rehabs end in divorce?! Now that would be an interesting fun fact.  (Meanwhile, Tiger is hoping that his rehab prevents divorce http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hios4-HK4QDWC4NTBQnxtP6ES6PQ )

So, after looking at many, many choices for countertops, floors and cabinets, Sam and I are interested in a few different options.  We have been doing our research and are interested in your thoughts.  I posted a survey on the right hand side of the blog... take a second to place your vote! When the polls are closed, I am hoping to blog the results and then reveal and discuss OUR vote.

Week End

Today we are heading out to Lowes and Ikea so that we can start brain-storming.  Henry says that one of the biggest construction hold-ups are indecisive homeowners.  We need to be ready to make a lot of decisions, very quickly.  Anyone who's been grocery shopping with me knows that I could easily spend 15 minutes picking out mustard... so we figure the sooner we start, the better. Today, we'll focus on possible kitchen layouts/designs and check out flooring. I will let you know how it goes but, for now, I leave you with a picture re-cap of the week...

After we tackled the kitchen floor at the beginning of the week (previous post), it was time to address the living area.  The plan was to sister the existing joists until we realized that they were water damaged and had signs of extensive termite damage.  All of it had to come out, leaving this beauty of a hole.

The reason that it looks so deep is because there is a "basement" in this section of the house.  A new floor was built the same way that the kitchen/dining room was and now it looks just as good.

You can all guess where this story is going... ALL of the floors had to come out.  At the point we have come to, this information was neither shocking nor surprising. However, the view from the first floor is!

The only other decision we made this week was to put an opening in the ceiling near the side entrance.  This will create a balcony on the second floor looking down onto the first floor. Here it is framed out:

Henry and Sam came up with the idea while trying to solve a problem involving ceiling height. We thought this would make a nice, unique feature.  Nice work, guys.

Kitchen Floor

As the previous post mentioned, we have had quite a mess in our kitchen area.  We wanted to lower the kitchen floor for 2 reasons: First, to eliminate having to step up from the dining room to the kitchen and, secondly, to make more room for cabinets and/or countertops.  With the floor as it was, the windows would be very close to the ground, making it impossible to place the countertops at the right height. 

Well, this is what happened...

Turns out, underneath our floor is... the ground. Also, plenty of clam shells and an unopened can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.  

A pipe was hit in the process causing a light, but steady, stream of water.  With daily calls to the city, it took about 2 weeks to get it shut off.

Eight cement footers were poured, new joists and beams placed...

And, once the water was finally turned off, they were able to finish the new floor...

SO MUCH BETTER!!! Our future Kitchen!

And, only because Harper loves my fun facts, here is a PBR advertisement from 1911.  Pabst was originally named "Best Select" then changed to "Pabst Select."  The current name comes from the Blue Ribbon that they used to tie around the bottle neck, as you can see in the ad:

 

We found nothing like the vintage bottle above, just a skunky old can of PBR. Is it possible PBR gets better with age!? Our health insurance isn't good enough to find out :)

Plans Revealed

You have all seen the bits n' pieces but I think it is time that we reveal the plans... 

As you remember from the previous post, the arrangement of the load-bearing walls we found after demo was not conducive to our original plans.  These are the revised plans and, as I've said before, I think they are going to work out even better than the first ones! 

FIRST FLOOR 

To orient everyone, the front of the house is the horizontal wall all the way to the right of the drawing. 

The front door will enter into the living room.  From the living room, there is a small step up to the dining room and kitchen.  There will be a half bath and storage off of the kitchen.

Why a step up, you ask? Look forward to finding out in a future post.  The past few days,  we've been referring to the kitchen floor simply as, "The Disaster." 

I cannot wait until it is fixed and "the disaster" can go back to just being Sam's Jersey Shore nickname. Jersey Shore Nickname Generator 

SECOND FLOOR

There will be three bedrooms, two baths and a small sitting area on the second floor. 

THIRD FLOOR

\

The third floor is going to be the master bedroom and bathroom.  

I have to give all the credit to Sam who spent hours coming up with the perfect floor plans and then working so hard on these drawings.  

Check out www.samgibbons.net to see the drawings and paintings that Sam is more well known for. 

Surprises!

Here are a few updated pictures of the house.  It  has been stripped down to the bare bones and, as you can imagine, we encountered a few surprises along the way...

Here I am sporting a dust mask on the second floor.  I can't take credit for any of this work, but I did provide energy in the form of donuts! Directly behind me is one of the load-bearing walls.  When we exposed this wall, and several others just like it, we soon realized that our original plans and drawings were not going to work. Surprise.

Luckily, Sam has since come up with another layout for the second floor that looks like it will be even better than the first.

On the first floor, though, we really wanted an open floorplan. So, we were slightly upset to unveil load-bearing walls that would divide the kitchen and dining room.  Rather than work around them, like we will upstairs, we will demolish them. It's going to take a lot of extra labor, an engineer, and, of course, more $$$$!  I think it will definately be worth it to open up the space. 

Here is a photo that shows one of those walls on the first floor but also, another surprise, a fireplace in the kitchen.

As much as I would love to have a fireplace or even a brick oven in my kitchen, even I can see how impractical and expensive that would be!

Here was a happy surprise...

After the ceilings came down, we found vaulted ceilings in three of the bedroom areas.  It will feel so much bigger in those rooms and the spaces will be way more interesting. If you look at the center of the photo above, through the hole in the wall... yep, that would be our neighbor's house. 

And finally, this is part of the third floor space that we plan on making our master bedroom.  The hole in the center is where the staircase now ascends.  Those are just electrical wires hanging from the ceiling now, but we found evidence of gas lighting in the house as well.  

Fun Fact: One of the first places gas lighting was sucessfully used in the United States was at Rembrant Peale's Museum In Baltimore, in 1816.  And, Baltimore was actually the first American city with gas streetlights.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting 

Berlin is currently the city with the largest existing gas lighting network of about 44,000 lamps. Here's Sam and I in Berlin.  If this wall can come down overnight, how difficult can ours be?

Sunday Funday

In just a few hours, Sam and I will be sporting our Browns' jerseys and heading to the bar for what will be the last Sunday Funday of the season. It seems as though it wasn't always Fun on Sundays at 2032 Bank Street. We searched a library database of archived newspapers hoping to learn a little about our house's history...

We found applications for liquor licenses dating back to October 1902 so, it is likely that our house originally hosted a first floor bar with residential apartments upstairs.  On October 1, 1903, Mr. Thomas J. Arthur applied for his liquor license and deemed 2032 Bank "The Port Arthur Saloon".  There are a few accounts of him getting caught serving drinks on Sundays:

Was there any excuse for this? Let's all be honest, organized football only existed in Ohio in 1903. Baltimore wouldn't see a football team for another 44 years and it would be almost a century before they would steal, ahem buy, one. (haha, so hard to resist!) On that note, let's all be thankful for the National Football League, for NFL Sunday Ticket and for Chad, at JD's, who can legally serve us beer on Sundays! 

FunFact: "Sunday Funday" is actually a Christian video game featuring a bible-carrying, skateboarding hero who fights bullies and businessmen on his way to Sunday school. Check it out Wikipedia: Sunday Funday

Chad

JD's Smokehouse Bar and Grill, Canton