PROCESS: BEGINNING
The initial condition of the house was dire: the roof leaked, the plaster had suffered water damage, the floors were severely cupped or covered with musty carpet, and none of the mechanicals were still fully functioning. Furthermore, the interior was thoroughly stuffed with piles of trash, waste, furniture, and old food that had been left behind by the couple who had lived in the building. Almost none of the original woodwork was free of layers of paint or old shellac.
The kitchen is located at the back of the house. The small room on the left of the kitchen was the old bathroom probably put there in the 1930′s, when the building was split into a two-family unit which was common during the depression. A new bathroom with a slightly modified footprint now occupies that spot.
It’s likely the house was built without water in the kitchen until roughly 1910, when a sink was added and mounted onto the tiles pictured in the old bathroom. Each of them had some manufacturing blemishes meaning they were probably ‘seconds’. Notice the doorway and wall that existed between the kitchen and dinning room. Instead of that wall, now the kitchen bridges them together.
