Juggling more projects on your plate than you have any business attempting.
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 30)
A little here, a little there
This past week was a hodge-podge of mini accomplishments. We started out with the final touches on the tile work in our master bathroom. Val installed our shower floor tile and grouted the whole thing. Brandon now calls our new shower his “favorite room in the house.” Our high contrast bathroom has really pleased us overall. Our concerns with the dark grout on white subway tile quickly went away as we began to pay attention to the restaurants and bathrooms in the world around us. Val did a fantastic job laying our tile neatly, straight, and consistently.
Radiators
Next up, Brandon and I began doing some last minute research on what to do with our radiators. About 1/2 or more were painted, but bright pinks, purples, and mustard yellows, we decided, wasn’t quite our speed. So while the radiators were detached from our boiler system, I began making calls to get estimates on painting. With great luck, Federal Industrial Services on 8 Mile, which was the same company who powdercoated our lion porch light, gave us a great quote on blasting and powdercoating our radiators. $160 per radiator maximum seemed like a great deal after some of our other quotes ran in the $400 per radiator range. I began calling moving companies and found Ultimate Movers, we were given a very fair quote to move 18 cast iron radiators from our home in the University District to FIS in Warren, about 6 miles away.
Ultimate movers arrived with two guys and a large truck. The largest thing they’d ever moved so far, they told me, was a 600lb refrigerator up a flight of stairs by themselves. Well, we blew that record out of the water. About 1/2 of the radiators live on the 2nd and 3rd floor, which is no small feat. Each radiator weighs roughly 300lbs, but that can very drastically from radiator to radiator. One monster in particular is our living room radiator. At about knee height and 6.5ft long, this radiator I knew weighed 600lbs easily. After watching these two men move this thing, it became clear that it is likely to weigh over 900 lbs. It took every ounce of their energy to pick it up enough to move it down our three front steps. Ultimate Movers were pros and I can’t thank them enough for biting off a little more than they probably expected to chew here. We dropped them all off at FIS and they used a fork lift to get the last one off the truck. FIS expects to have all 18 radiators blasted and powdercoated in about a week and a half!
Breakfast Nook
The next thing that we began was the restoration of plaster details in our breakfast nook curved ceiling. While we wait for our plaster worker to arrive, Calvin and Christian installed our new border detailing to the ceiling. Using a laser as a guide, Christian’s favorite tool, they plotted out our border moldings and tacked them to the curved ceiling. These details will be painted white with the ceiling later. We also picked out a ceiling medallion that will be installed to surround our chandelier we plan on hanging in the space. Our plaster worker will be mimicking the texture of the dining room ceiling in our breakfast nook within the border that Cal and Christian installed.
Trim
Christian also began installation of our window casings and trim this week. We had the profile of all of our trim copied so that the replacement trim is exactly what was originally in the home. Christian did a fantastic job re trimming some of our windows, doorways, and even pipes in our bathroom walls. This is where Christian’s attention to detail and perfectionism are really shining. Brandon and I took the opportunity to replace sash cords and sand the window while Christian had the casing apart to make for easy painting and operation later.
Electricity!
Electrimax arrived at our home again to start working on some of the final touches. Brian, our electrician, wired and hooked up our microwave after Calvin installed it. Next they began installing our outlets in place and came up with a strategy for the rest of the wiring in the kitchen for things like our oven, garbage disposals, and under-cabinet lighting. And lastly they installed our new pendant lights! Brandon and I immediately went and bought some cool filament bulbs to install in them and they look great with the rest of our champagne colors on our cabinets and hardware!
Finally, yesterday our countertop supplier, World Stone arrived to measure for our kitchen and master bathroom! We expect to have our countertops installed in about two weeks and it can’t come fast enough!!! Once countertops are installed, we will be able to install thin brick and tile onto our kitchen walls to really make this kitchen pop!
Kitchen Transition!
Here’s an image of where we stand on changes so far! We found a picture of our kitchen after the water damage that still had the 1970s remodel. When we bought the house, the kitchen was already gutted so we had no idea how it looked before but now you can really see a drastic change!
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