Last time on Old Town Home...

We had bad front stairs, but I wanted good front stairs, but I couldn't find anywhere to get the good stairs. I almost gave up, but then we were watching This Old House's (TOH) D.C. season where Fred Mashack was doing their stairs. Through the power of the Internet, I found Fred's contact info, he came to our house, gave us an estimate that almost made Wendy pass out, but then somehow we and our neighbors agreed to go for it.

And that brings us to the actual execution of the grand front staircase plan.

After we met with Fred Mashack one more time and confirmed our intent to move forward with the project, he went back to his shop in D.C. to start working on the construction of the stairs. As much as I hated that this wasn't a DIY job, I knew there was a big role for me playing the "General Contractor," so I jumped to work on the prep and approval process that we would need to accomplish before Fred could come back for the install.

Typically, when we mention to someone that we live in an historic district and are doing work on our "antique" house, one of the first things they typically ask is "Oooohhh, do you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get approval for all of the work?" To this I respond with something along the lines of, "To be honest, no, not really. You need to get the same permits for work that requires it, just like with any other non-historic construction. Beyond that, there are a few things that need to go in front of the Board of Architectural Review (BAR), but they are just there to ensure appropriate modifications to historic structures, and are probably less restrictive than your typical HOA. Primarily it's for full or partial demolition, anything that affects the facade of your building, or changes to something visible from the street." This is an almost word for word recount of what I say. I've been asked the question so many times that I basically have this memorized.

Even though I always give my "Eh, it's no big deal" response, this is was one of those semi-major items that was going to affect the facade of our house, so we had to go in front of the BAR for review and approval of the stairs -- something that worried me a bit. On one hand, I had no doubts the project would be approved. The stairs were historically accurate, made from salvaged materials, custom built just for our house, and we would look like the rest of the neighborhood. But on the other hand, we had no proof that the house ever had stairs like them, and we had heard so many stories about otherwise inoccuous requests being denied for "no reason," and felt like all that was needed to seriously derail our project was a single neighbor that wanted to be annoying and oppose the stairs. Perhaps I was being a bit paranoid, but we'd heard things...