Negative ghostrider.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petworth,_Washington,_D.C.

New Hampshire Avenue west of Georgia Avenue is in Columbia Heights.

Actually, that’s about accurate. Do a google maps. To the east edge of Adams Morgan (16th and Columbia) is 0.9 miles, 15 minutes easy at a brisk walk. To 11th and U is 1.3 miles, more like 20, but really not that far off.

I live 2 blocks west of there, and walk to both places all the time. It’s really not bad.

This deal is about as good as the one MLB made with the city for “our” baseball stadium.

I don’t think the price is outrageous, but probably a little high. It’s a good location, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find something a lot cheaper that’s renovated in the general area. Plus it has a finished basement, probably rentable if not legally.

That said, I looked at the pictures and it is definitely not a high-end renovation. On paper it sounds good but the pics look pretty Home Depot to me. I mean, a plastic shower stall? Yuck. The windows look cheap too. The kitchen is OK but its small and has a weird layout. Not a fan of the painted casing either. And what room is carpeted? Ecch.

Anyway, not my thing, but not outrageously priced either.

I have a plastic shower too and we hatesssss it. Reminds me of my time in a hospital.

Home Depot called and wants its kitchen and bath fixtures back. (Oh and front door also).

“why is Home Depot so disparaged on this blog?”

I dunno about on this blog. I hate HD because they sell substandard stuff in big cookie cutter stores. And, their stuff is made for suburban tract homes, not little row houses that are old enough to not be standard. Plus, the staff are often poorly trained.

youdontknowme: i’d wager that most of us are not rich snits, but folks trying to eke out a rehab of a crusty old rowhouse on a minuscule budget…and i for one have grown to hate HD after many, many trips (often late at night) and many hours spent wandering the disorder and chaos that are our local HDs…where staff actively avoid eye contact so they don’t have to answer questions, and where inventory is almost always sold-out, broken, or filthy (and god help you if you’re trying to find any green building materials)…and then standing in line for an eternity to buy products used by every flipper in the city. I’ll take Strohsniders and G&H, where at least there’s someone to explain to me the difference between a door jam and a door sweep – and with a smile.

Kay: It’s really a figure of speech. Home Depot sells some perfectly decent stuff, but calling a renovation a “home depot” job just means it looks like someone went and bought the cheapest stuff available. Everyone recognizes the Glacier Bay fixtures and the fake terra cotta tiles and all that.

I’ve certainly used that stuff in my own projects before and there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just a funny way to make a point about the overall appearance of a project.

That said, Home Depot (DC in particular) is a disaster of a business. Just try to find something in Electric. Anything. 10 bucks you can’t. And if YOU can’t you can bet your ass the lazy employee who is responsible for the disaster can’t. Finally it’s almost always understaffed at the checkout. It’s just no fun to deal with.

All this talk about HD reminds me of one old time DC store I hated to go into, for the same kinds of reasons as mentioned. Maybe you will remember Hechinger’s. Some of the most ghetto-assed sales “help” who absolutely hated the customers and if they did speak to us, we were ruining their breaks.

As for us not being rich snobs or snits, just trying to eke out a rehab, shoot. We’ve been here so long and have never gotten the $ nor the time, nor wanted to put up with the dislocating inconvenience of a rehab. So we stay in our beautiful old rowhouse, circa 1920s, with no central A/C, no dishwasher, original kitchen and back porches, semi finished basement, old electircal system and radiators, but we did have our floors sanded. The dust that created… It’s still the beautiful life.

I wish that I had the ability to go to a different store than HD, but unfortunately for my just-purchased foreclosure in LeDroit Park, I have to wait until the job is done to get my FHA 203k Rehab check… and, unfortunately, HD is the only place to offer 0% APR credit card for items in the store. And, I put all my monies into getting the house, so, well, this is my only reasonable financial option so that I can have a (literal) pot to piss in. Sad, but true. So, maybe in ten years, I can re-do the kitchen and master bath how I would have liked it done (rennovated a couple of years ago, functional, nice, but meh on design), and I can afford to go to better places… if they even exist at that point. Sigh.

Yay for homeownership! Quit yer bitchin’ folks!