Central air in an old Baltimore rowhouse? You’ve got to be kidding.
It’s been a hot summer and it’s not unusual for a contractor to opt out of undertaking the task of installing central air conditioning in a classic Baltimore rowhouse.
Even when a contractor agrees, the terms might be having the owner move out, gutting the house and then facing a staggering bill.
Charles Village resident David Gray Wright and his wife, Lauren Willford, know the toll. They said yes, it was time for that major upgrade of dreams and time to attend to a repair list, restorations and system upgrades.
They are temporarily residing in a rental down the street as their 1907 porch-front, end-unit rowhome is now in upheaval and reconstruction. Some walls have been removed; there’s routine plaster dust storms and a couple of missing floors.
There’s a $2,000 bill to painstakingly recreate a second-floor exterior door leading to a back porch. All will be historically restored.
They are having the house professionally de-assembled, installing central air and a heat pump, replacing the Thomas Edison-vintage electrical system, upgrading two baths and kitchen and adding a three-season room.
They also love Baltimore and a home that blessedly retained charming woodwork and quirky features, including a knockout, built-in-the-wall wooden ice box. It’s a home built in the Teddy Roosevelt era, entered through a paneled vestibule floored with hexagonal ceramic tiles. The front hall has stained glass windows.
Wright engaged C&H Contractors, a firm whose members know how to take a complicated Baltimore property apart and put it back together. Within the past year C&H did a miraculous restoration of the Ship Caulkers House on Wolfe Street in Fells Point and restored the ballroom in the Clifton Mansion.
This 1907 Guilford Avenue home has plenty going for it. It’s on a corner, has a small side garden, a full rear yard, a garage and a quiet alley that dead ends at the CSX Belt Line railroad. It’s a quiet corner where Charles Village, Harwood and Old Goucher neighborhoods meet.
“I grew up in Homeland and wanted a place that had similar amenities and was as close to downtown as I could get,” said Wright. “I’ve got a garden and trees here, and a garage, and I’m close to The Brewer’s Art and Oriole Park.”
Wright bought the house on March 3, 2003 (3-3-03) for $97,000. He painted its interior and replaced some of the windows and happily resided here 21 years until he and his wife made the big commitment to restore, a decision years in the making.
The estimated cost for the project is four times the purchase price. The work will take another six months, maybe more.
“I’m going to wind up with a house that is more valuable to me than it would be if placed on the real estate market,” he said.
The home now offers a lesson in what building trades could do in 1907.
Topher Murray, one of the C&H restoration specialists, observed that although the original 1907 electric system seems primitive and possibly scary today, it was state of the art at the time.
The restoration of the home has revealed what is called a “knob and tube” electrical system common in building construction. Wires ran through porcelain knobs and tubes.
“Electricity was new then. And I’ve been thinking about the science and the availability of the products, and the system put in this house when it was new is an ingenious solution,” Murray said.
Several badly damaged ceilings had to be repaired for the new air conditioning ducts — the chambers where the air will flow.
In working on the ceilings, the workers found that the actual ceiling height (where the wooden joists are) is considerably higher. This permits the house to gain loft-like storage chambers, but not a full attic.
The renovation also demonstrates the sound construction standards of 1907. There’s a solid brick wall separating the pantry and first-floor bath from the kitchen. Also discovered was a botched construction job in the 1940s that caused a second-floor bath’s floor to sink nearly 2 inches.
So now that the place looks as if a bomb exploded, the owner is actually pleased.
“It’ll be rebuilt to honor the ingenuity and craftsmanship of the past while providing the needed safety,” Wright said. “This house is built like a tank.”