For some background on the historic home, check out my post from 2007 here.
*Update*
Below is a photo of the property prior to renovation, courtesy of reader David.
Monday, October 19, 2009
902-904 T Street Renovation Progress
Redevelopment of the once long-boarded building at Ninth and T Streets seems to nearing completion. Among other things, the property has received a new roof, new interior framing, new windows and doors, and new paint. I can't wait to check out the final product!
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I tried to find photos of this building when it was vacant with the colorful boards covering all of its windows but was unsuccessful. It would be neat to upload such a photo to this blog so that we can remember what this building looked like for so long. If you know of a photo on flickr of the same, please share the link!
Does anyone know what is going in here? Is it a single family house? Two single family houses (given the two addresses on T?) Condos? In any event, very exciting.
I have mixed feelings about this project as we have pushed for this rehab for about 5 years now as I'm directly across the street from this building.
Details: 3 units -- 1 moderate income -- the one on the side which apparently will be sold for $399,000. The other 2 units are in the main portion of the building and will range up to $750k.
Now they have done a lot of work on this building (gutted the entire inside down to a shell) and it does look better then it did. However, given that they were given the building by DC for $78k I'm very disappointed in the result. The exterior of building had the bare minimum done to put the lipstick on to sell it. For example instead of appropriately pointing the brick they had some laborer get on a ladder and patch the mortar quite sloppy for patches only. They then just primed the building and spray painted it that fire-engine red. I thought it was a regulation that in historic districts that you couldn't paint the brick if it had not been painted before -- maybe they thought graffiti on 10% of the bricks constituted a exemption? If you want to truly understand the problems they will have with the exterior look at the west facing wall and above the windows for the cracked and sagging brick. They will have to patch and repaint/re-point parts of this in 2-3 years just like their neighbor 908 T ST (which has happened 3x now in the past 5 years)
I haven't been on the inside of the units but according to neighbors the design is quite sub par for the asking price.
I'm happy that the building will finally be returned to a useful purpose but am sorely disappointed in the execution. I guess I shouldn't be surprised given that it's restoration was connected with DC Government.
Heaven help whoever the future owners will be as I expect they will have problems with the exterior and potential problems with water in the basement as I didn't see any attempt to correct any foundation problems from the outside which all the houses in this neighborhood have as they were built in the 1890's.
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