Keep or Toss? Astoria Renovation Blog Decides

The second installment of the Astoria Renovation Blog is up. This week it’s all about establishing the scope of work and paring back the unfortunate accretions of later years, such as faux stone veneer and crazy patterned carpets. “Although my parents now live outside Baltimore, I side with John Waters, who called formstone ‘the polyester of brick,’” he writes. “Other houses of our model in the area have charming half-timbered details on this gable, or we might try to continue the brick façade up so the gable doesn’t look quite so tacked on (but it is, Blanche, but it is).”