6 Months Since Our Renovation… Suddenly There’s More Work To Be Done!
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 50)
Hello, loyal followers! It’s been a while! How have you been? Awesome! Us? We’re doing great!
We’ve been truly enjoying our home, neighborhood, and friends since the home tour! I especially enjoyed decorating our home for Halloween this past fall! Our double lot made for the perfect spooky cemetery!
Hosting Humans
Things have been crazy since our 2018 UDCA Home Tour. We started hosting our home on Airbnb, and since October, we’ve had hundreds of guests from all over the world come and stay with us! We’ve been having a blast with guests from Russia, Ukraine, the UK, China, Colombia, Canada, and more, even hosting an awesome pair of professional bowlers who were in town for the PBA World Series of Bowling! Our Airbnb experience has been without a doubt a positive one, and we can’t recommend considering becoming an Airbnb host enough!
Hosting Companies
An unexpected component of our hosting has been the vast amount of businesses that use Airbnb to find locations for many different kinda of uses. We’ve had many photoshoots, videoshoots, and events now in our home for everything from engagement photos, to local cast iron skillet company Marquette Castings, to personal care products from Brio, to bourbon barrel furniture from Motor City Barrels, to men’s clothing company Ash & Erie, to local Burlesque Dancer headshots, and most recently to the hosting of private dinners with local celebrity chefs with Place Invaders. Chef MyThy Huynh cooked a spectacular meal in our home for 24 guests each night they were here!
Some have found us by word of mouth, or after reading about us on Curbed Detroit, but the majority have simply found us by searching on Airbnb for a decorated space that works for their needs! It’s been an interesting experience hosting so many different types of companies, getting to meet so many local entrepreneurs, and sharing the beauty of our space with others has been a joy! The free products have been a great perk as well!
Joining Airbnb Plus
We were recently invited to join Airbnb Plus, which is a specially selected group of extra awesome Airbnb hosts and their homes! We were sent a professional photographer to document our space for the Plus site, and so while we are just beginning, we’re very excited to see how Airbnb Plus may differ from normal Airbnb listings. Here are some of the images from our Airbnb Plus photoshoot.
Megan and Adrian Depart :(
A sad thing that happened for us this past week is the departure of our roommates and close friends, Megan and Adrian from Detroit and our home. Adrian was accepted to a graduate school back in their home town of Chicago, and so last week, they both packed up their things to return to the Windy City! We are beyond sad that they are gone. Megan, Adrian, and their wonderful fluff ball George were the best roommates we could ask for, and we wish them much luck on their new journey in Chicago closer to family!
Hosting Pro Golfers
Finally, the largest piece of news we received is that our home is officially booked to host a professional golfer and his family for the PGA Rocket Mortgage Classic coming this summer! We listed our home on Rent Like a Champion, which is sort of like Airbnb for professional sporting events and professional athletes. Within a few short weeks, we were notified that an agent had booked our home for their client for the entire Golf Classic! We are excited to have our home host a pro and his family, but now that means it’s time to really button up some loose ends around the house!
We have lots of projects throughout the home, most recently our now vacant and empty 3rd floor where Megan and Adrian were living, and so we are motivated to get as much done as possible before the arrival of our golfing guests!
Some projects that we still need to tackle around the house:
- Garage organization
- Water heater
- 3rd floor decorating and repainting for new guests!
- Sunroom decorating and layout
- Exterior Paint (Again!) & storm windows
- Garage side door replacement
- Electrical odds and ends
- Outdoor back patio space (shade and seating)
- Always more gardening work
- Master bedroom overhaul (Furniture, crown molding, etc)
Projects get done!
Water Heating
As far as work being done goes, we’ve had a lot of little projects going on here and there. First, our Airbnb motivated us to invest in a new Water Heating System for our home. The water heater we bought the home with was certainly past its expected lifespan and was undersized, so we knew it was only a matter of time before we’d be running into problems with it. We started doing our research and settled on investing in a Tankless Water Heating System. Given the sheer number of people who can sleep in our home simultaneously, (at least 11 people before you have to start using couches) a tankless system was the best way to ensure that we wouldn’t run out of hot water. Tankless systems are also more fuel efficient, as you’re not paying to heat a giant tank of water 24/7 to maintain temperature.
Brandon found a wonderful and knowledgeable installer, Ripplinger Industries. The owner was wonderful to work with, and did a FANTASTIC job installing our new Smart Tankless Rinnai Water Heater. He left our basement cleaner than he found it, and did an awesome job of getting our water heater to the most convenient space in our basement, which gave us valuable real estate back to our boiler room! We absolutely recommend Ripplinger Industries to anyone in Detroit looking to upgrade their system… so far ours has been well worth it!
Sink/Tub Refinishing
Our guest bathroom sink and tub are very near 100 years old, and it shows! With the wear and tear of all of the previous owners, our fixtures were in need of some work. Unfortunately re-glazing our cast iron bathtub would be incredibly difficult if not impossible without damaging our original lavender tile, and so we started looking for alternatives. We decided to hire a tub refinishing company to coat the tub and sink with a system called “liquid porcelain.” It comes with a 20 year warranty, and we’re hoping that this can at least get us some more life out of these fixtures before more extreme measures will need to be taken. The final result isn’t perfect, but it is such an improvement from before that we are happy with the result overall.
Some garage organization
Before winter completely hit, Brandon and I tackled creating more organized space in our garage. We installed new shelves along the back wall of our garage to have more storage room for our gardening equipment, bicycles, tools, and more. With the garage nice and organized, we even had room to bring something very special up to Detroit from Brandon’s hometown… his great-grandfathers 1954 Chevy! We’re excited to have her in Detroit so that we can joyride more frequently!
Decorating Starts
We’re beginning to talk about the decorating that we need to get done before the PGA. On a trip this past weekend for my great-grandmother’s memorial service in Iowa, I received a caned couch to put on our sunroom. Along with new hanging lights, we are working to make our sunroom a more enjoyable space than it was previously.
In our master bedroom, there are discussions happening around how to furnish the 3rd floor, I think we have decided to get new master bedroom furniture for ourselves that will set off our room better, and use our current furniture in one of the guest bedrooms instead, rather than buying cheap furniture for those rooms. We also received Brandon’s childhood bed to go in our nursery room on the third floor that is a twin with an additional trundle twin underneath, perfect for hosting visitors.
Moving our current bedroom furniture to another room is allowing my brain to run wild with the possibilities and I purchased a vintage mid-century modern desk at Knightsbridge Antique Mall for our bedroom along with the exact matching credenza to go with it from a woman in Chicago. For our bed I have become enamored with this one from Crate and Barrel. I think that it will be a good balance of modern and mid-century in the room. We’d also like to add dark grey crown molding to our bedroom like the rest of the trim to really set off the room.
Painting
Finally, our big project this summer before the PGA is that our lovely painter Jeff Mueller, who did such a wonderful job painting the inside of our home, has agreed to come and help us paint the outside of our home this May! We are thrilled to have someone that we know we can trust to do a great job! Jeff will start in a couple weeks on getting the outside windows and storms in good shape, and we will likely be working to repair and replace some of the storms that are most damaged while he is working and taking stock of them all.
Consider Yourself Updated
That’s all for now, folks? Are you as tired reading it as we are writing it? Keep and eye out for a few more updates from us in the weeks and months to come as we prepare for the PGA Rocket Mortgage Classic! You thought you were rid of us… didn’t you?
Our journey isn’t over
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