A 90-Year-Old Detroit Home on Display After 6 Years of Vacancy and 2 Years of Construction
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 46)
Preparing for THE Home Tour
We’re not talking just any home tour… we’re talking THE University District Community Association’s 2018 Home Tour! After much discussion with some of our fellow neighbors, and some hand wringing from ourselves, we are excited to be showcasing our home as one of six homes on this year’s tour!
Our 1927 Tudor Revival home and all 3 of its fully restored and renovated floors will be on display on Sunday, September 9th from 10am-5pm for all to see! We are really excited to finally be able to let people inside so that they can see our last 2 years of hard work in person!
We are so very proud of what has been accomplished so far. There is still a lot of work to be done before the Home Tour, and there will still be much work to do after the tour is complete, but we’ve decided that it’s best to share our story now, rather than wait 2 more years until the next UDCA Home Tour. We hope you all will be able to make it and use this tour as an opportunity to support our neighborhood and Detroit community as well.
Tickets can be purchased here.
Make sure you RSVP to the Facebook event here and share it with others who might be interested.
Alright, Back to Work!
So these past two weeks have been spent on several projects around the house, each one has felt fairly small, but the impact of all of them has been quite great!
Split Logs
We finally were able to take the time to finish up our log splitting endeavors. Brandon and I started stacking our split logs behind our garage and quickly ran out of room, so the next weekend, Brandon’s parents showed up to help us. We finished stacking all of the split wood in a second location of the yard, Brandon’s mother helped us with some gardening work by clearing out some herb garden beds around our solarium, and we got some more window scrubbing done!
Some Hand-Me-Downs
As an awesome gift to us, Brandon’s parents also gave us some much needed furniture from his grandparents. We received a nice bedroom set which used to be Brandon’s mothers, a chair to go with it, an antique glass-fronted lawyer’s bookcase, some vintage Paint-By-Numbers artwork that his Great-Grandfather painted, and an amazing Art Deco desk that was Brandon’s grandmother’s that I will use as my makeup vanity!
Building a Bookcase
After getting a few more furniture pieces, we knew our new chesterfield couch would be arriving soon. We started to think a little more about our layout and decided it was time to start thinking about bookcases for our living room. We want the room, which is already pretty dark and cozy, to be a nice, quiet place to sit and read a book by the fire, and so it made the most sense as the place where we could keep our books.
A quick trip to IKEA and we had what we needed to fill the space on either side of our fireplace. Once we started filling the shelves, it made a huge difference and transformation to the space.
It was also a great opportunity to go through some of the books we found in the attic of the home when we first bought it. all of our late 1800s and early 1900s books look great on the shelves and really make this room feel warm.
Blooms & More Yard Plans
With summer in full swing, we’ve got things blooming all over the place. We have so many roses, lilies, flowering trees, and peonies we don’t even know where to look next!
We finally have been able to track down a concrete contractor. Dennis Blackie of Blackie Concrete came with high recommendations from our amazing contractors, Cal and Christian Garfield and so after showing him our yard plan, we have him on the hook to pour us a new driveway and back patio in July!
Getting Ready for Visitors
Ok, guys. We’re almost done with this post. Thanks for sticking it out.
So finally, this week was a special week for us. We finally had the guts to invite our friend, my former professor, who sold us the house 2 years ago to see it again for the first time since he handed us the keys. We’d talked to him a couple times about the work we’d been doing, but had kept some work close to the chest, and we were waiting for the right moment, when the home looked it’s best, to show it to him.
After the arrival of our new couch, our built bookshelves, and some reorganization of furniture and hanging of artwork, we felt comfortable that we had made enough progress to invite him over. We decided to make it a little bit of a Cincinnati reunion as well, inviting all of our other fellow classmates who are now Detroiters and studied under my professor.
When he first walked in, it was clear that he was actively avoiding making eye contact with the house, putting his focus on all of us instead. But after a couple minutes of warming up and taking it all in, he started to get excited to see the rest. We gave him and our friends a full tour and at the end, he thankfully commented that he approved of our hard work, and he was thankful that we hadn’t changed the home “too much”. Overall, we are really happy about his reaction, it was something we’d worried about ever since we were given the keys… we really wanted to do the home justice and improve upon it without losing its unique characteristics, and I think for the most part we’ve accomplished that.
The Most Neighborly Neighbors
Finally, we spent some time this week with neighbors. We can’t say enough how much we absolutely love and adore the University District. Everyone is so incredibly warm, welcoming, diverse, and fun here and we just can’t believe we’re lucky enough to call this place home!
First was an incredible Absinthe Tasting Party at our neighbors Veronica and Mary’s home. We had an amazing time meeting even more neighbors, hanging out, and tasting good drinks!
Second, we spent some time with our neighbor across the street “The Legendary Ted Burlinghof” who is a fantastic folk musician. He was hosting a meeting at his home for his Folk Music Society, and so we came by and joined in on the fun! We had a blast singing and playing along with Ted and his musical friends in his home.
Alright, that’s it for this week’s post! Thanks for sticking it out and we hope to see you on the tour in September!
Our journey isn’t over
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