What We Did
Boarded windows and a failing exterior had made this Rankin row house look past saving. It was not.
The crew rebuilt the exterior envelope first, because nothing inside a house survives a leaking outside. New siding went up, new windows went in, and the front of the house came back to something the street could be glad to see. Row houses live close together, which cuts both ways: one boarded-up unit drags at every neighbor, and one restored unit steadies the whole run.
Inside, the original hardwood floors were sanded and refinished rather than replaced. Wood like that is one of the things worth saving in Pittsburgh’s older housing stock, and the progress photographs show the crew partway through that work, rooms repainted and plank flooring going down where the hardwood could not be saved. The bathroom was built new, with a fully tiled tub surround, new vanity, and new fixtures.
We publish the progress photographs here deliberately, because the middle of a renovation is the part nobody usually shows: rooms that are clean and primed but not yet finished, flooring stacked in boxes, tile set but fixtures not yet hung. That middle stage is where the budget discipline lives, and it is the difference between a renovation that holds up and one that just photographs well. Rankin finished the way it started on paper: on scope, move-in-ready, and priced at or near what it cost to bring back, for a working family to own.
