When I was a kid, my parents went to an auction and bought a pallet of bricks. We lived in a brick house, and they wanted to put in their own patio, but trouble arose getting the bricks home.

My mother would retell the story of how the car stalled when the trailer they were hauling got two flat tires up a steep hill, on a blind curve on Falls Road. Consternation, yelling, and threats of divorce ensued.

I’m reminded of this story as I stand in the cold warehouse at Second Chance with my husband, contemplating a pallet of  hardwood flooring the size of a baby elephant that we intend to load onto my dad’s old trailer and haul back to Baltimore County for a kitchen remodel upon which we never intended to embark.

Last summer, we had a minor refrigerator-related flood that ended up causing a huge headache. Although the amount of water that got on the floor was relatively minimal, our ancient laminate floor was not properly installed, and the water was able to get underneath it.

The laminate buckled, insurance was contacted, a disaster company arrived and cut a huge swath of the floor away—down to the original 1850s subfloor—and installed industrial-grade drying fans that whirred away at such a clip we got an alert from the power company that we were using an exponentially larger amount of electricity than usual.

When everything was dry and the disaster guys packed up and gone, the long slog with the insurance company began. Six months later, they coughed up a check for the floor…and only the floor. This was not particularly helpful as the problem was no longer the floor—it was what was under it.

When the disaster company began cutting away the laminate it rapidly turned into an archeological exploration. The laminate sat on top of white vinyl, which was on top of a subfloor, which was on top of linoleum, and so on. By the time we got to the true subfloor, we’d gained about an inch of height in the room. All the trim around the walls would need to be redone and the cabinets reset.

Worse, the subfloor was in terrible shape—dry rotted in some places and cut away and shoddily repaired decades ago in others. The insurance check, when it arrived, was going to be a drop in the bucket. And we had no choice but to fix the issues in this old house.

Here’s the thing about old houses. If you watch enough home renovation television, you will be led to believe they are charming. Lies. Living in an old house is like taking care of a geriatric patient: There is always something wrong, or something about to go wrong, and that something wrong may or may not be related to a pre-existing condition, but you can’t be sure without an expensive exploratory procedure.

Example: Ever since we bought our house five years ago, the kitchen floor has had a bit of a spring in its step. This is because our house is built on a support of trees. Note I did not say “beams.” Beams imply trees that have been hewn into something with a structural appearance. No. Someone cut down some trees 200 years ago, put them in the ground, and built our house on top of them. They still have bark on them in places.

They are solid enough, with one big caveat: You can’t have a level floor on trees, so parts of the floor have always been a bit wobbly, unnervingly so, like an indoor trampoline.

To replace the floor properly would require some structural support and no small amount of expert leveling.  We had no money and no plan, and the situation was literally deteriorating. It was like every appliance and structure in the kitchen realized things were headed south and decided they, too, may as well throw in the towel.

One of the upper cabinets started to pull away from the wall. And our refrigerator, which had been limping along, blew a gasket and the drawer tracks cracked so they would no longer run smoothly in and out. To add insult to injury, we noticed one day that its doors weren’t staying closed. Reason? The front wheels had sunk through the dry rotted subfloor.

There was no love lost between me and our minuscule side-by-side fridge. It was so small you could store a head of lettuce, a gallon of milk, and a stick of butter in it and little else. It was not even remotely practical for a family. But our kitchen is small. People have walk-in closets bigger than our kitchen, which is deeply ironic, as my husband and I are both huge cooks.

I’ve been fantasizing about new fridges for years, but even the smallest on the market now is about a quarter inch too big to fit in the opening we currently have. A quarter inch doesn’t sound like much—if your hair is a quarter inch too long, you trim it off; if your dress is a quarter inch too tight, you pull on Spanx. There are no Spanx for appliances. If the fridge is a quarter inch too big, you need a sledgehammer and a contractor.

We were now pulling the thread on the proverbial sweater. Replace the floor, replace the cabinets, open a space for the fridge, replace the countertop. And so on. It became hard to remember the trickle of water that generated this geyser.

This project was getting less and less Joanna and Chip Gaines’ Magnolia Home and more Tom Hanks and Shelley Long’s The Money Pit with each passing moment.

Contractors were duly contacted. Most took one look at the house and said “no thank you” or offered an estimate that would have made it more plausible for us to buy a new house. Finally, we found an intrepid contractor with experience working on old homes.

Through prayer, credit cards, and crowdfunding with generous relatives, we cobbled together some funds, cabinets were ordered, a counter top was selected, and hardware was chosen from Etsy. I ordered the fridge of my dreams, and such was my joy at finally having a functional, normal refrigerator, I couldn’t get upset that it was installed in our living room, the only place it would fit while the kitchen was ripped apart.

Demo day was scheduled. I moved the entire contents of the kitchen onto our dining room table. The dining room looked like we were hosting a yard sale and there was now a coffee maker on our living room end table, but things were finally moving forward.

The first issue arose around, shocker, my nemesis, the fridge. As soon as we moved the old one out and disconnected the line to the freezer, water began leaking out of the gate valve at a rapid clip. Cue the plumber. This project was getting less and less Joanna and Chip Gaines’ Magnolia Home and more Tom Hanks and Shelley Long’s The Money Pit with each passing moment.

Demo day—or as liked to call it “the opening of Pandora’s box”—arrived. From my place in my home office, it sounded like they were dismembering the entire house, which, in a way, they were. Around lunchtime, when the sound of saws and crowbars silenced, I took a peek behind the plastic sheeting covering the doorways. The floor was completely gone, exposing the original 1850s beams and, below, our cellar. Then I noticed a little sliver of daylight visible through the floor.

“What’s that?” I asked. “That,” said the contractor, “I want to talk to you about.”

For years we’ve had trouble with the pipes in the kitchen freezing. (The year this happened on Christmas Eve when we had a house full of guests and were hosting 20-plus people for Christmas dinner is a memory that still stings.) Well, it’s little wonder the pipes were constantly frozen as we now know that part of the plumbing was outside the foundation wall. I could see it there, the under-the-sink plumbing, basking in the sunlight of a cold February day. Cue the plumber, part II.

Working in an old house, there are no perfect solutions, only creative work-arounds. One was found for the plumbing and now our pipes are cozy and warm indoors where they belong. We also discovered that one of the beams had come away from its footing, which was causing that trampoline effect on the floor. Stabilized, we would be able to walk across the kitchen without needing sea legs.

But oh, the kitchen floor. Another misleading proposition of home remodeling is reclaimed wood. Every design show loves reclaimed wood. The reality is not so glamorous. Wood is a living thing. It warps, expands, contracts, and molds itself to its surroundings so when you pull it out of one home and put it in another you will never have perfection.

Never ones to let the perfect get in the way of the good, we were thrilled to salvage our wood flooring from Second Chance—saving trees, space in the landfill, and a tremendous amount of money—but it did mean the crew laying down the floor had to meticulously clean and match each piece in a way that would be unnecessary with new flooring from a manufacturer. Once the floor was finished it looked beautiful, but I think the contracting crew left with a massive headache.

The cabinets arrived and more “interesting” issues arose. The corner of the room, for example, did not make a 90-degree angle, which required the installation of a system of shims and meant more headaches for the contractors, who were now attached to their levels as if they were some sort of third arm. Often, I would hear the contractor telling the crew that the goal was “flat not level,” as achieving perfect lines in this house was out of the question.

But finally, all was installed but the counter. That installer, who was also responsible for the sink, arrived and took meticulous laser measurements, and then began the long wait for fabrication. Meanwhile, washing dishes in the bathtub and making scrambled eggs on the grill outside was getting tiresome.

The day finally came for the counters to be installed and then everything happened all at once. The counter and sink went in, appliances were reinstalled, final paint and touch-ups took place, and then—blissful silence.

The saws, the hammers, the nail guns, the crew member who started every day singing “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan—just packed up and left, leaving a new kitchen in their wake.

While we never expected to embark on this expensive adventure, the final result is stunning. Having the opportunity to design every inch of a space from the ground up, I was able to get the kitchen of my dreams, and one that functions well despite its small size.

And we stared down our old house with all its quirks and survived to tell the tale. So maybe it’s time to update that master bathroom…

Baltimore is home to a plethora of top-notch thrift and consignment stores, as any bargain hunting fashion plate can attest. Whether you’re looking to declutter your closets or score something new-to-you to rock, we’ve got you covered for the best spots around town to both drop off and pick up.

Goodwill Fells Point
Out of several locations in the area, the Goodwill location on Broadway offers the best selection for contemporary brands like Anthropologie and Stuart Weitzman. Although the store size is smaller than others, they make up for it by carrying a diverse range of sizes. If you love the Goodwill hunt and are willing to pay a couple dollars more for quality designers and materials, then this location is worth a visit. 715 S Broadway, 410-327-2211

Value Village Thrift Store
Larger than your average thrift store, Value Village boasts two levels of organized men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing. Looking through their inventory is like taking a trip through the decades, with a selection including modern designer labels as well as vintage finds. In the heart of Highlandtown, this store is known for its tidiness and consistency. Reasonable prices mean most customers never leave empty handed. 3424 Eastern Ave., 410-327-5300

Uptown Cheapskate Timonium
For those who like to get an idea of what’s in store before stopping by, Uptown Cheapskate keeps its customers in the loop by regularly posting new finds on their Facebook and Instagram pages. The store maintains a rotating stock of designer brands like Tory Burch, Michael Kors, and Kate Spade, with a variety of new and vintage pieces. This is the spot for young adults looking for a large selection of secondhand designer apparel and accessories. 2143A York Rd., 410-560-5890

Redeux Consignment
Redeux Consignment is a mecca for those looking to buy quality or designer merchandise for a fraction of the retail cost. Everything you’ll find in this Roland Park consignment store is a top-tier brand and in suitable condition for resale. For up-to-date fashion, browse their large selection of sizes in products ranging from women’s clothing and shoes to bags and accessories. 5002 Lawndale Ave., 410-323-2140

The Wise Penny
Run by the Junior League of Baltimore, The Wise Penny on York Road is a thrift store with a mission. Proceeds from sales of the shop’s new and gently used merchandise go towards funding the Junior League’s charitable projects in the community. But that’s not the only thing to love about The Wise Penny—its already deeply discounted designer and household items go on even further sale multiple times throughout the year. 5902 York Rd., 410-435-3244

A Day N June
What began as a pop-up vintage shop is now a full-time thrift store on Pulaski Street. A Day N June has used and vintage clothing sourced from trade shows in L.A., New York, and other thrift stores across the country—all handpicked by owner Lindsey Brown. Brown’s favorite vintage clothes and accessories are far from ordinary, incorporating street style elements and vibrant colors. 208 S Pulaski St., 443-314-8995

Second Chance
If you find yourself mid-home décor project and looking for something unique to bring your space to life, Second Chance should be your go-to. Established as a nonprofit to preserve the Baltimore region’s architectural heritage, Second Chance focuses its efforts towards reclaiming materials for public use. In the massive warehouse near M&T Bank Stadium, you will find antiques, lighting fixtures, building supplies, indoor and outdoor furniture and more, as far as the eye can see. 1700 Ridgely St., 410-385-1700

Tried But True
Mothers and moms-to-be looking to avoid spending a fortune on maternity wear swear by the children’s and maternity selection at Tried But True in Cockeysville. In the business for more than 30 years, the resale boutique has a wide range of kid-focused wares including strollers, baby furniture, toys, and infant- to toddler-size clothing. Everything is in good condition and available for a reasonable price and can be consigned when kids inevitably outgrow their pieces. 10914 York Rd., 410-666-9265

Vogue Revisited
Vogue Revisited in Roland Park boasts an array of quality name-brand inventory for all sizes, with new apparel arriving daily. Their curated selection is super-organized, making it easy to find everything from high-end designer boots to top-of-the-line bags, all resold at a below-retail price. They also accept new or gently worn items like clothing, jewelry, or shoes that are on-trend and in good condition for consignment. 4002 Roland Ave., 410-235-4140

 

In 2012, Mark S. Foster president and CEO of Second Chance, got a phone call not unlike many he receives. Someone was tearing down a house and wanted to know if Foster’s nonprofit architectural salvage warehouse wanted to salvage it.

The home, in York, Pennsylvania, was under construction and projected to cost $20 million to complete, but less than halfway through the project, the owner was hit hard by the recession and forced to sell. The new owner wanted the house removed so he could subdivide the property.

“A part of the roof was on and all the doors and windows were in place, they just hadn’t finished the inside,” Foster recalls. “We salvaged that entire structure, brought it back to our warehouse and hoped to sell it to people, but the caliber of the product was so high—solid mahogany doors with really high-end hardware—it wasn’t what our customers at the time were looking for.”

Foster’s staff deconstructs buildings and homes, salvages usable materials, and sells those and other donated items at its 200,000-square-foot retail center. The organization began in 2001 and now oversees about 250 teardowns a year. In addition to its mission to reuse materials and keep them out of landfills, Second Chance is also a job center, training employees in marketable hard skills like deconstruction, warehousing, and sales, and soft skills like customer service that are key to professionalism.

Second Chance’s original mission was to save architecturally valuable items in the city from the wrecking ball, but, “As time progressed, donors would ask us to take the cabinets or the appliances, too,” Foster says.

Second Chance took it all, from furniture to floorboards. The result is a warehouse that is a treasure trove of salvaged items: radiators and rare antiques, insulation and Belgian block pavers, mantels and boxes of nails, piles of bathroom tile and framed art- work, chandeliers and doorknobs. It’s like stumbling on a buried treasure for home designers.

Yet, its abundance can be overwhelming and it can be hard to parse the true treasures from the merely practical. Foster looked at the high-end windows and doors from the ill-fated Pennsylvania mansion and an idea emerged to build a concept house that would showcase the best of the best from the Second Chance warehouse and become a platform to share the organization’s mission.

Foster purchased a two-story, 1,600-square-foot home in the Hampton neighborhood of Baltimore County, deconstructed it to the foundation (salvaging the chimney), then proceeded with his wife, Mary Blake, to design an 8,200-square-foot house around the door and window package from the Pennsylvania home. Everything short of the home’s framing and a few bits of bathroom hardware—bought at cost—is Second Chance salvage.

“Sometimes people need to see how things come together,” says Foster. “We wanted to use the concept house as a place to show what you can do, to be a living example, and to give people an opportunity to be introduced to our people and our program.”

“Now we have 10 different types of flooring in a home, not stacked up in a warehouse,” he says.

Foster says they purposely did not use an architect or a team of advisors.

“We want to show that anyone can do this,” he says. “We were not in a hurry to complete the project. What mattered was that it reflects our organization and the care we took in carefully curating each piece and its placement.”

The project took six years to complete. While it indeed shows what can be done with salvaged materials and a little imagination, it’s also a fine bit of marketing for Second Chance. But it’s more than the sum of its many parts—like any home with historic materials, it’s a place of stories.

“The cherry floors in one of the rooms upstairs came from [actress] Anne Ban- croft’s house in Queenstown,” says Foster. “There’s going to be a hundred stories like that in the house, and it’s fun to share that with people who are interested and motivated by a piece’s provenance.”

A massive 6-foot-by-15-foot island made of pine beams, for example, dominates the kitchen. It’s a focal point close to Foster’s heart, as the wood was reclaimed from the former Maryland Chemical Company building, which was across the street from Second Chance’s first retail location (now the site of the Horseshoe Casino).

There’s a bedroom with a bed nestled into a recessed lumber nook made of Cypress from a Monkton mushroom farm, and the back staircase dates from 1902 and came from a home in New Jersey.

Foster hopes the concept house shows not just the caliber of the salvaged materials, but the creative ways in which materials can be used. He points to a hallway in the home’s basement. Nearly 15 years ago, someone donated 180,000 linear square feet of moulding to Second Chance. Attached vertically to the hall’s walls, it looks almost like multi-finish wallpaper. The floating, backlit ceiling in the same hall is actually doors. (The same doors are used in their traditional form in the master bathroom and dressing room.)

As a wine enthusiast, Foster says the wine cellar is one of his favorite rooms. It has racks from three separate projects, including some donated by the Inner Harbor Marriott, and provides storage for 2,400 bottles. He also likes the master bathroom, complete with its luxurious reclaimed steam shower.

After purchasing the original home, Foster sold it back to Second Chance, which developed it. Eventually, when the time is right, the home will be sold and Foster wants to move on to new concept houses. He’s interested in tiny houses, or maybe a houseboat.

Although there were a few events held at the concept house, the pandemic put a halt to many of Foster’s plans. He hopes to conduct appointment-only open houses, and is considering other ways to get people through the home’s doors—which are, of course, also salvaged.

“We want to get people in so they can experience the quality of the workmanship in older materials,” says Foster. “It’s true that they don’t make it like they used to.”

With the maker movement in full swing and showrooms like Second Chance’s Made in Baltimore popping up around town, we thought it was time to sit down with some of the local talent and have them describe their work.

Jess Sturgis
Spilled Paint Design

Pictured: It’s a ’50s vintage children’s hoop chair that I have upholstered using an indigo African mud cloth textile. Her muse: While I’m working on pieces, I find a lot of inspiration in music and nature. Tell us more: We offer a wide range of redesigned vintage—and some original!—furniture and interior decor.

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Christian Donnelly
Philosophy With a Hammer

Pictured: A modern geometric steel side table with triangle top. His muse: Geometry as a system of structure that the furniture object relies on for both form and function. Tell us more: PWH merges furniture-making with modern sculpture.

Joshua David Crown
Joshua David Crown Studios

Pictured: The Woodard Stool. The legs are reclaimed maple wood and the top is made from oak barn siding. His muse: My inspiration comes from my relationship with both my customers and my materials. Tell us more: My work can be viewed on Instagram—I build much more than stools!

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Jorgelina Lopez
La Loupe

Pictured: The “Agata Table Lamp” is handcrafted with American walnut and mercerized cotton yarn. Her muse: I am inspired by the natural world—its basic yet complex structures, shapes, and palette of colors. Tell us more: La Loupe has its origins in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Now relocated and based in Baltimore, La Loupe is a collaboration with my partner, Marco Duenas.

On a recent afternoon, Nikki McGowan was picking up her son Michael from school when the principal on carpool duty peered into the red MINI Cooper, where Michael, 8, and his 6-foot-3 brother Alex, 13, shared the tiny space with overstuffed backpacks and Michael’s cello. The principal jokingly suggested, “Mommy needs to get a bigger car.”

Little did she know. The boys have not only a sister, they have four stepsiblings. And the traditional two-story house they all share in Oella on the outskirts of Ellicott City is easy to spot on the block—its driveway is crowded with the MINI, two SUVs, and the Madame BBQ food truck, one of McGowan’s assorted culinary business ventures.

McGowan and her three children share the household with Todd Marks—founder and chief executive officer of a software company—and his four daughters (ages 8 to 14) in a Brady Bunch-style arrangement that, surprisingly, seems to work, thanks to carefully calibrated schedules, lots of hooks and cubbies, and a live-in au pair, a 20-something German student named Laura.

McGowan and Marks, who plan to be married this summer, talk freely about the shared custody arrangements they have with their former spouses—meaning the house is only full half the time. “When the kids aren’t here, we get to, you know, have coffee in the morning,” McGowan cracks. Other mornings border on mayhem, as the seven kids attend five different schools (and next year it will be six).

The couple were introduced three years ago by a mutual friend, Vic Corbi, then-owner of Grilled Cheese & Co., who had catered corporate events for Marks and knew McGowan as a fellow culinary entrepreneur. “He thought we’d have a lot in common,” says Marks, and indeed, they did. The two immediately recognized each other from their years in the same grade throughout elementary and middle school in Howard County.

In addition to operating the food truck, McGowan had been working on a variety of other food-related businesses, from teaching kids’ cooking classes to running the lunch program at a local school. Marks is known in the tech community for starting Mindgrub, which designs custom mobile and web applications. In their spare time, the couple are designing a workplace restaurant that will serve “food that’s good for the brain,” says Marks, a clever spin on his corporate brand.

“I have about 55 millennial employees,” says Marks. “The idea is to do some testing on them and eventually establish a cafe concept to put in other corporate buildings.” Adds McGowan, “Mind grub, get it? How perfect.”

Marks built the house in 2004 on land he’d purchased a few years earlier. The property came with a small house, but it was more efficient to start fresh, he says. “The area is gentrifying—most of the neighbors renovated and added big additions.”

He had a 4,800-square-foot, five-bedroom house built on the site—two other rooms were converted to bedrooms later—complete with a home office and lounge off the kitchen, and shortly thereafter he renovated the basement to accommodate his fledgling company. “My first employee helped me install the toilet,” he says with a chuckle. Marks himself built the shower stall, framing stained-glass panels from the salvage emporium Second Chance in the tile walls to let in extra light.

Similar stained-glass panels are embedded above the opening between the living room and kitchen, flanked by built-in bookcases, also from Second Chance. Marks cut out the wall to install the matching shelves, which are topped with arched sunburst molding.

Marks isn’t the only DIYer in the blended family. McGowan points to the thick cotton duck draperies. “Drop cloths from Home Depot” that she put up after moving in, she says.

Impulse has played its part in the décor, too. One day last year, McGowan, weary of the prosaic, tiled kitchen island, took a crowbar to it. That demolition led to a comprehensive overhaul, which McGowan did almost entirely on her own. The island was expanded and finished with white beadboard siding and the top of an old pine table, slathered with a thick coating of protective lacquer. McGowan also replaced the kitchen cabinets with open shelves supported by curved pipe fittings, and installed a restaurant-style faucet with a detachable hose over the porcelain farmhouse sink. An old wooden ladder, painted glossy red, became an overhead rack for pots and a vintage grocer’s scale.

The kitchen also has large chalkboards, one of many strategies McGowan and Marks have devised for keeping home life reasonably orderly. The chalkboard over the breakfast nook lists “house rules,” like work together, use kind words, and “call a family meeting if there’s a problem.” There’s also a list of don’ts such as excessive pouting, slamming doors, throwing tantrums, and using social media after bedtime. Each child’s name is accompanied by a series of stars and smiley faces to designate their adherence to the edicts. “Originally, it was to keep the kids in line,” says Marks, who credits McGowan for the idea. Adds McGowan: “There’s a new sheriff in town.”

The other board—actually a chalkboard-painted wall framing the kitchen door—is used for grocery lists, schedules, and reminders. Other organizational strategies include cubbies for shoes and plenty of hooks in the entryway for coats and keys. While each kid participates in one or more activities—from sports and music to computer coding and Girl Scouts—“we try not to have more than three activities at the same time, so two adults can drive while another stays at home with the rest of the kids,” says Marks. (The third adult is the au pair.)

McGowan’s two sons have bedrooms on the main floor—the former home office and lounge—while three of the daughters live upstairs near the master bedroom. McGowan’s 11-year-old girl shares a room in the basement with Marks’s 10-year-old, its dividers and loft beds reminiscent of a college dorm room. McGowan built the platforms for the girls’ beds with surplus doors.

For relaxation—if you can imagine such a thing in this house—McGowan says she likes to paint. That’s rooms, not pictures. She holds up her hands to reveal spots of white. “Yesterday, I painted the bathroom.” The day before last Thanksgiving, when guests were due to arrive, McGowan took a roller of white to the crimson-red living-room walls. “It was driving me crazy.”

But that DIY task was lightweight compared to some they undertake. Last summer, McGowan and Marks worked together to build an in-ground, kidney-shaped swimming pool. Except for installation of the pool, they did everything themselves, including operating the backhoe to plow up the site and placing two-ton boulders for tiered landscaping, while the kids helped with the planting. “Todd and I just like to get things done,” McGowan says. “When we take on a project, we just dig in.”