718 I St- Exterior Paint and Drywall

On Friday, I went to Home Depot and picked out what appeared to be an excellent green paint for the exterior brick. On the sample, it looked modern, muted and appeared to blend in well with the neighboring properties. That's why I was so shocked when I pulled up at the house this morning and found this:

We were literally causing traffic in the street from people slowing down and staring in awe at the color. A few neighbors were offended and came over to complain. Behr should really change the name from "Scotland Isle" to "Kermit's Puke."

Every time I paint a project, I plan on buying a small quantity and testing it first, but somehow I never end up doing it. I always buy about $300 worth of paint, wait till the whole house has been painted, and then realize the color doesn't look right. The entire house then has to be repainted.

This afternoon, we went to Home Depot again, and bought several quarts of paint to test different colors. Here were the options we selected:

In the end, we took a vote, and everyone liked the green color second from last on the right. We also put some more of it below the window to see how it looked with the white trim. It will be painted on tomorrow and I will upload pics when it's done.

On the inside of the house, a crew hung all of the drywall in two days. That was over 300 sheets in 2 days! I've never seen anything like it. Another crew is coming in tomorrow to mud, tape and sand, and will be done in the next three days. When they finish, I'm going to send them right over to our project on Mellon St. to do the drywall there.

718 I St- Ready to Drywall

Our project at 718 I St is really moving along. We got all of our inspections done and the house is ready to be drywalled. Here are the pictures of the house the day before drywall:

The brickwork above the windows was in rough shape, so we had to fix a lot of the bricks before we could paint the exterior and install windows on the second floor. We spent a lot of time deciding what style of windows to buy, and we finally agreed on 9 over 9 (9 grids in the top part, 9 in the bottom) and it looks great. You can also see the new electric meters on the right side of the house.

This is the new plumbing in the upstairs hall bathroom. We're going to put in period wainscotting and tile starting next week.

Here's the upstairs floor. It's a mess. We ended up having to reframe a lot of the interior walls because the original framing was not wide enough to fit modern electrical boxes.

The brick is all cleaned and repointed. The original brick had a lot of color, so the new exposed brick wall really stands out. I think it's one of the best we've done.

Here is the insulation in the kitchen downstairs. You can also see the new plumbing.

This is a wider shot of the basement. It has a lot of windows, but it looks dark now because they are all covered up while construction is underway. We also put about 25 recessed lights, so it will be real bright once the lights are on.