Filling Up Walls and Uncovering Dinosaurs

Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 20)

Our insulation subcontractors work fast!

“Detroit has an unmistakeable soul — nobody can duplicate the soul we bring to the game.” — Big Sean

Insulation is blown in!

This week felt like we kicked into high gear. Our insulation subcontractors arrived bright and early Monday and got to work insulating any and all of our exposed outer walls. It’s amazing how fast these teams can crank out this work! After passing our insulation inspection yesterday, the insulation will need to dry out slightly over the weekend and then we will be able to install drywall over top.

We now have blown in insulation in our kitchen, breakfast nook, guest bedroom, guest bath, and parts of our master bathroom. We also now have foam block insulation in our attic along the outer walls of our 3rd floor rooms and fresh blown in insulation in the floorboards above the 2nd floor and above the 3rd floor inside the attic space.

Insulation in our one demolished bedroom below the water leak

(Left) Breakfast nook and Kitchen insulation (Right) Master bath insulation

A Dining Table Experiment

After buying some cast iron legs from a drafting table a few months ago, I’ve been keeping my eyes out for the right table top. We’d debated everything from commissioning a woodworker to having glass cut to size but hadn’t come up with anything we were completely sold on yet. One thing I had thought of trying was re-purposing and up-cycling something interesting to use as our top.

Growing up visiting my extended family in Iowa, my Aunt and Uncle always had the coolest dining table. They enjoy entertaining and therefore needed a big table, so they commissioned someone to build them a 12 ft table out of an old bowling alley. I started to search around for myself for one and found a warehouse full of them nearby in Ferndale! The shop was kind enough to let me pick the lane, and cut the piece I wanted for me before delivering it by truck to the house. I paid a little extra to have the arrow markings as part of the cut for my table.

The lane I chose is from an bowling alley called Cloverlanes that used to reside on the West side of Detroit in Livonia and was torn down the same month we bought our home last year. It will need some sanding and refinishing before it’s ready for prime time, but we’re exited to create something really unique that you’ll see the moment you walk into the house.

Finding the lane we wanted to use and the shop begins their cuts

(Left) the cast iron table legs I bought a few months back from Home Emporium in Cincinnati

Un-earthing a dinosaur

With all of our fantastic weather the last few days, we’ve been taking advantage and working hard on our yard. Our neighbors next door have been surprised with the progress we’ve quickly made, even inviting us in for a wonderful Mother’s Day dinner to keep us well-fed while we worked. Huge swaths of weeds, invasive ivy, and overgrown bushes and saplings are removed between our property lines and now we can finally see each other and say hi!

Our yard shortly after purchasing the home. As you can see, there is very little you can see here of the previous garden

Before we purchased the home, we were told that the yard used to contain a wonderful garden and koi pond that was a neighborhood gem. Complete with a Japanese bridge, stories of weddings and prom pictures in our garden kept coming up from neighbors and it was honestly really hard to believe it all given the state it was in. Other than a couple nearly completely covered piles of slate, there were no remnants of the pond we could see. We had some photos from the previous owner we’d found, but in all the photos the pond was not there… we were skeptical.

After a little bit of work we started to see some small remnants of the stone, but had no idea just what we’d find

We dug the trench when we realized there was yet ANOTHER layer of stone below the soil surface.

While Brandon was at work on Saturday, I decided to tackle a large mound (about 15 feet around) of 3ft tall weeds, trees, tulips, and rose bushes. After pulling some weeds, removing saplings, and trimming back branches, I ended up seeing the edge of some stone in the middle of the ivy/grass/weed mound. I kept working throughout the day and then began using our edge trimmer as an excavator to peel back the layers of dirt, grass, weeds, and saplings growing on top of it. Clearing one rock, I’d see the edge of another being exposed and worked there. After about 8 hours of work, I realized I had found a long, winding stone path directly through the middle of the mound. Brandon arrived after work and was astonished, and proceeded to help me dig further. We found another 6ft more of path that was completely hidden by grass just outside of the weed mound.

A hose was helpful to show where the stones were among the grass (Right) 6ft more of stone path, completely invisible under the grass I’d been mowing for weeks

After a lot of hard work you can really start to envision where the pond might have been

The path runs from the back of our yard towards our 2nd lot. It steps and angles downward until it Ys into an arced shape of stones. About 12 feet farther there is another arc shape of stones facing back at you, and after doing some more clearing on Sunday we discovered it has another stone path of its own that goes up and towards the neighbor’s yard.

We decided to dig a hole and after about 2ft we found what appears to be a grey clay layer under about a foot of soil and another foot of sand. The stone went down much father than we realized into the soil. (Right) the basic layout of what we’ve found so far

Our yard is quickly becoming a wonderful, serene place

Before and After

Finding an eye-witness

We decided it was time to really get some answers. We didn’t know when the garden was here. Was it with the home originally, or added after the first owners? The previous owner to us told us that there was a Japanese man who lived here and built the garden, but we’d seen no evidence of them in the house. A week or two ago, Brandon discovered a woman who bared the same name as the woman we knew was the original owner of the house we’ve discussed in a previous post, Marion Dickinson Seeley. She lives in Minnesota and Brandon believed that she had to be one of the original owner’s grandchildren. I reached out to her via email and she responded, confirming that she was in-fact the granddaughter of Dr. Ward and Marion, and named after her grandmother.

She immediately sent us a couple pictures, “teasers” as she called them, since she had albums of photos she said, and even included a photo of our home. After digging a hole where we assumed the pond was and hitting clay, we asked her if she remembered a garden… she grew up visiting her grandparents at this home in the 1940s and 1950s before they moved into a smaller apartment.

“Yes, I think there was more than a pond. It was a like a little stream running through the yard. Her garden was a showpiece! She loved to work out in the garden.”

I asked about a “Japanese bridge” and she said that was true. We now have a time scheduled next week to speak with Marion Dickinson Seeley Jr. on the phone, and in the meantime, she has told us that she will look for photos of the garden.

Coming up this week…

We have plaster and drywall beginning! I am particularly interested in how our curved ceiling in the breakfast nook will come together!

Our Journey isn’t over! We’ve been working hard since we purchased the home in November 2016 and are writing updates on our progress roughly every week. Make sure to check out our latest updates on our homepageor follow us on Facebook!

And thanks for ♥-ing our updates to help share our story!

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