How seasoned DIYers revived their downsized home in West Philly

Over the past three decades, Christopher Poehlmann and Kate Kramer have gutted and rehabbed four homes, all of which they lived in.

The first was in Fort Myers, Fla., then Milwaukee, and when they moved to Philly in 2011, they transformed a neglected garden twin in West Philadelphia into a beauty.

“We turned that one from the lowest priced home at the time into the highest priced sale in the history of that block, just prior to the market shifting about four years ago,” Poehlmann said.

Now, the couple live in another renovated home in West Philly.

Kramer is a senior fellow teaching rhetorical writing at the University of Pennsylvania since 2011, and Poehlmann is a designer and manufacturer of decorative light fixtures and furniture and has a studio in Southwest Philadelphia.

When the couple wanted to downsize, they scaled back by 1,000 square feet to a twin in Cedar Park. The home needed work after decades of neglect.

“We reworked and rehabbed this one from top to bottom, including new electric and plumbing,” Poehlmann said. They “gutted and reconfigured the kitchen, added a half-bath, and transformed the backyard from an unusable mess into a brick patio with storage and an outdoor dining and three-season living room.”

They’ve been living there full time since 2022.

Poehlmann did “all of the heavy lifting,” he said: constructed walls, cabinetry, and sheds; installed doors and windows; carried supplies and buckets of paint into the house; and then hauled used supplies and other debris in the back of his pickup to a city dump.

Kramer oversaw the logistical and operational aspects as the project manager.

“But she also worked demo, painted around 90% of the house, repaired plaster, tiled two bathrooms, as well as researched fixtures, windows, appliances, reclaimed doors, and more,” Poehlmann said.

Kramer’s favorite chore? “Banging plaster down to the brick,” said her proud husband.

Some of the more labor-intensive and specialty tasks were outsourced, such as the plumbing in the primary bathroom and masonry in the kitchen.

For flooring, the couple turned to a refinisher to revive the long-neglected oak floors and install more in the kitchen.

“The floors were pretty rough,” Poehlmann said. “We wondered whether they dated back to the initial construction in the 1920s.”

And the kitchen was a huge project.

“We completely gutted the kitchen wall to wall, ceiling and floor,” he said. “We went over possible designs for weeks before settling on the current configuration.”

They aimed to maximize counter and cabinet space, flipped the door to the basement from the kitchen to the dining room, reconfigured the windows on the back side of the house to fit with the new counter layout, and installed a new glass door for more light.

“The entire cost of the kitchen remodel was around $10K, about a fifth of the price contractors charged one of our neighbors for their beautiful kitchen,” Poehlmann said.

Moving from a 17-foot-wide living room in their previous home to this house, which is 14 feet wide, was quite a challenge, Poehlmann said, and forced them to consider every inch of the living room.

“We reconfigured the living room furnishings at least a half dozen times before settling upon the current setup,” he said.

The renovations continued outside.

A back brick patio and custom-made sheds are the most recent improvements. The owners brought in a favorite mason to install a brick patio in summer 2023; then, nearly a year later, Poehlmann designed and built two sheds — one to hold tools and the second to store household wares — “in record time, just three weekends.”

The 3-by-7-foot sheds were set up to face one another, and a unique entertainment space emerged. Poehlmann built a pergola between them and a roof made of corrugated, transparent plastic.

“That area became an outdoor living room that can either be open air in good weather or sealed for cold weather and rain,” he said.

Beyond their own yard is the neighborhood that got them hooked on Philly over a decade ago.

The summer before they moved to Philadelphia for Kramer’s job at Penn, Poehlmann flew into the city, rented a motorcycle, and explored the area.

“When I got to 48th [Street] and Baltimore [Avenue] one day, I called Kate to let her know that I found a neighborhood that just felt right,” he recalled. “West Philly works like a charm for us in many ways.”

They both enjoy short commutes, access to public transit, and community gardens, he said, as well as being surrounded by “engaged families in a wonderfully diverse community that is genuinely welcoming.”

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