About

Elaine Vitone, author of these dispatches from the DIY Mess, is a contributing writer for Old House Web. Her husband, Dylan Vitone, is a documentary photographer and an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

In Spring 2008, they began renovating a 1920s Victorian home in Pittsburgh, world’s most underrated city.

The DIY Mess has seen better days. According to one neighbor, just a few years ago it was “something straight out of Animal House. But it still has nice hardwood floors n’at−it’s just been prostituted for a long time.”