No More Maids

Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 6)

The maid’s staircase comes out! Now we have room for our fridge, cabinets and range!

“There is a resilience that rises from somewhere deep within [Detroit’s] streets. You can’t define it, but you can feel it” — Eminem (Letter to Detroit)

No More Maids

This week started with some quick progress on our maid’s staircase in the kitchen. There was a lot of structural re-supporting that had to happen before the staircase could come out. Tripling and even quadrupling some of the floor joists and adding metal hangers to be sure that once the stairs came out, the wall above would be properly supported. New cross beams were added in the opening of the stair on the second floor to create a floor. We will convert this staircase into a useful closet on our 2nd floor landing.

One discovery we made was another beautiful leaded glass window inside the maid’s staircase. I guess through the dozens of times we’ve been through the house the door had always been open and in the way of the window at the top of the stair. Now it will provide some nice natural light to the closet.

Our discovered little window! (Left) Now that the staircase is gone, it will give us ample space for some counters, stove, and our fridge! (Center & Right)

Final Framing

Even more energy was done in the nook to re-support and jack up some bowing joists. We’ve made decent headway on losing some of the sinking in the 2nd floor, but we knew we wouldn’t be able to fix it entirely. I’d say we’ve made decent improvements in this space.

Working on padding out the beam in the kitchen.

A huge amount of progress was made with the rest of our framing. With the new beam in the kitchen properly supporting, we then needed to pad out that wall slightly to allow room for the main drain stack and wiring/plumbing that will be coming in later this week. We were able to add our nook archway, which is much bigger than I expected it would be in person! Once the curved ceilings of the nook get built back in, I expect this to make for a wonderful grand entrance into the house. You’ll finally be able to see 2 beautiful curved ceilings when you enter the home instead of having them hidden behind walls and doors.

The view when you immediately walk into the house has completely changed! (Left) Compared to our plan for curved plaster ceilings and adding a curve to our new opening (Right)

What you see as you walk into the house

Some Shopping Begins!

This weekend during our Detroit SnowPocalypse, Brandon and I decided to do some tile shopping. We need tile for our guest bathroom to fill the upper 1/2 of the wall where we’re converting a bath into a shower and we also needed to look for tile for our kitchen back splash. We thought early on we’d be going for white subway tile if not for one place for both, but over the last few weeks I’ve just seen way too much of it. From home magazines to local renovations we’ve seen and even some coworker’s and friend’s remodels, I started to feel like it’s just become too expected.

Our pale pink tile bathroom we need to find tile to jive with (Look at that lovely metallic painted wallpaper!)

So while we might have some small amounts of subway tile, I think we’re going to be looking for something a little more unexpected. Our guest bathroom has original Detroit Pewabic Tile that is a very pale pink/purple that we will need to select something to work with it, we’ve also considered staining the grout in this bathroom a darker color to add some contrast to the tile and make the hexagonal floor tiles really stand out. In our kitchen we’ve been toying with the idea of an antiqued mirror back splash. We were only able to go to one tile store, which was a large chain… so we have a few more to check out in the next week or two before we truly decide on anything.

We also need to replace the black sink and toilet on our first floor bathroom, so we investigated some options at Home Depot today around that as well.

Some interesting options we saw at the tile store.

Our plan for the rest of the week:

Beyond starting AC, electric, and plumbing, Brandon and I decided to take a risk and tackle the wall between the dining room and breakfast nook. We want to open up the doorway slightly so the space doesn’t have so much of a bottleneck, but in order to do that we have to support the curved ceilings on one side without damaging them.

Our original plan images of the doorway between the nook and dining room we want to widen. All the other changes and archways are already done!

Stealing Good Ideas

I ran into a neighbor online this week who tackled just our problem with the curved ceilings and we’re taking some inspiration from their methods to do it. It’s risky, but we think the payoff of having a slightly larger opening will be worth it. Our neighbor took out the entire wall with this method, which we don’t plan on doing in this case.

Image from a neighbor’s house we’re taking inspiration from on strategy to support the curved ceiling. (You can see how similar some of these home layouts are) We’ll also be supporting the ceiling with a normal false wall in the nook.

Well, cross your fingers for us on opening up this doorway and we’ll be back sometime next week with updates!

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 homepage!

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