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Living amid construction
Dupont Circle renovators share their tales
(Published January 24, 2005)

By STEPHANIE BRINSON
Staff Writer

Teri Galvez and Michael Cleary were spending the first night in their new home when they discovered they had some unexpected roommates.

The two were awakened in the middle of the night by strange noises echoing throughout the dark house. After a quick inspection, they figured it was just the house settling. When the noises persisted the next morning, Cleary frustratingly threw a shoe against the wall, and a rat leapt out from behind a box. Apparently, a whole family of the critters had made a home under their bed.

Galvez and Cleary were far from thrilled when they were forced to move into their new home while it was still being renovated. The work on their 1889, four-story rowhouse in Dupont Circle was finished two years ago, but the couple remembers quite clearly the discomfort they endured during the refurbishing process.

"It is exciting to see your design and creation come to live, especially if you have thought through in advance the details that make all the difference, but it is arduous and ugly until the very last stages," Cleary said.

They bought the house in September, 1997, liking that it hadn't been renovated since the 1970s, because they could start from scratch without having to worry about re-doing somebody else's improvements.

Galvez, an event planner, and Cleary, a management consultant, rebuilt archways and replaced walls and flooring throughout the interior. They painted the plain, white walls of every room and laid marble floors where tile used to be in the foyer and three bathrooms, which were all gutted and completely restyled.

Originally, a tiny 6-by-6-foot kitchen served the entire 4,300-square-foot house. Galvez and Cleary transformed the former sitting area on the first floor into a 17-by-15-foot vibrant yellow kitchen with blue accents. They also added a small kitchen in the guest apartment on the first floor and one on the second floor, off a cranberry-colored dining room that is large enough to seat 24 people.

When new tenants signed the lease on their current house, Galvez and Cleary had to move into their new Dupont home after it had just been gutted for reconstruction.

"(The house) was in very raw condition," Galvez said, literally still "a construction site."

The only room that wasn't being redone at the time was the library on the third floor, where they slept on a sofabed for about a month until the guest bedroom was finished.

Galvez, who said she typically walks around barefoot in her home, made sure her feet never touched the floors, which were constantly covered with dirt and plaster. Furthermore, as they worked on the walls, the contractors released dust and chemicals trapped within the framework that polluted the air and caused Galvez's skin to break out.

"You never feel clean," she said, describing how she would dust furniture and a light powder would settle almost immediately afterwards.

One day the two received a call from the contractor telling them there was a sewage problem that prohibited them from flushing the toilet. It was the last straw. They spent a week in a suite at the Watergate Hotel before vacationing in Paris while the problem was fixed. The plumbing company uprooted the homeowners' entire backyard in search of the blockage, which ended up "mysteriously" fixing itself, Cleary said, and six months passed before the backyard was repaired.

The contracting company that worked on their home has since gone out of business. Galvez said they were pleased with the work the contractors did, but added it was still important to supervise the workers as they completed projects.

"You have to be present and you have to be vigilant," she said.

An "expert" they hired to lay the marble in their foyer and bathrooms, for example, ended up doing the job incorrectly. Cleary said he recalls getting down on his hands and knees, while dressed in his suit for work, to show the man how they wanted the floor to look.

Toward the end of the renovations, the contractors became unreliable, missing appointments or showing up unexpectedly. Galvez joked that contractors are like men courting women – they work hard until they've got their prospect, and then they slowly lose interest.

"The last 20 percent of the work makes 80 percent of the difference in how it looks, but that is ironically when the contractors start to lose interest and stop showing up," Cleary said. "This is such a common phenomenon that I would suggest to anyone that they have a separate back-up ‘finish' crew consisting of painters and carpenters, maybe also electricians, ready to pick up the last few details if the original contractor can't finish it timely."

After renovating several houses, Douglas Johnson is all too familiar with this problem and suggested holding out at least 25 percent of money owed until the job is completely finished.

Johnson and his partner, Brett Copeland, bought their home two years ago, a 1903 Victorian detached rowhouse in Dupont Circle that they completely refurbished, inside and out, while seeking to preserve the building's classic design.

The house is the third one the two have renovated in the past 10 years, but it was their first experience in "historic renovation," Johnson said. They were attracted to the fact that it had not been renovated since it was built over 100 years ago.

After they moved in, Johnson and Copeland spent the first year renovating the outside of the house. Restoring the building's old and fragile exterior required a meticulous process called re-pointing, in which the mortar surrounding every brick is replaced.

The two interviewed several companies to make sure they found the one that understood to their satisfaction the care that was needed in the process. Standard Restoration and Waterproofing Co. Inc. in Temple Hills, Md., was selected for the job.

Although many of the companies claimed to specialize in historic restoration, Johnson said he was surprised at how little many of them knew about the process.

"My advice there is just to be very leery," he said. "We had so many people come here that absolutely did not know what they were talking about."

In addition, Johnson and Copeland added two 20-by-7-foot balconies on the west side of the building and built a 20-by-40-foot rooftop deck that overlooks the city and is accessible via a spiral staircase from both balconies. They kept the house's original windows, getting them reblazed, scraped and restored, and added new storm windows. They also retained parts of the original stone wall enclosing the front patio and replaced the iron fence enclosing the front yard.

Inside, the two updated all of the house's systems, painted every room, completed plasterwork throughout, refinished the floors, and completely gutted and refurbished the kitchen and basement.

Throughout their renovations, Johnson and Copeland tried to maintain the house's many unique features that offer insight into its past. For example, two small holes under the television in the kitchen worked like an old-fashioned intercom to call servants and other house members. A century-old wood pantry still occupies the small hall leading into the kitchen, and the original silver vault off the dining room has been retained, with its old-fashioned, steel-framed door.

Copyright 2005 The Common Denominator