Our last Update before the Home Tour!
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 48)
The Home Tour is only a month away!
It’s been a long road, nearly two years of hard work, but we are finally down to the last 30 days before the September 9th, 2018 UDCA Home Tour. We’re so excited to welcome hundreds of people into our home to see how our hard work has payed off so far. There are many things that are still on our list of to-dos, things we know won’t be done before the tour, but owning a historic home is a process and a journey, not a task you complete.
Things that we still won’t have done before tour include:
- Yard work, yard work, and more yard work! We’re tackling the front yard right now at full steam, but there is still much to be done going forward with our double lot
- Creating a nice covered and decorated patio space for our new driveway/patio we just poured.
- Repainting the exterior. After our first exterior painting disaster, we want to make sure that the next round of work we do is done right!
- Gutter work. Lots of our gutters are needing some attention in the near future, hoping to tackle this one before Winter.
- Always more decorating work… however, I think we’ve done a commendable job getting the house to a place where it feels lived in and reasonably filled. Having our friends living on the 3rd floor makes a big difference for this.
What We’ve Been Working On
So it’s been a little while since the last update! So here is some of the things we’ve accomplished on our way to reach our September 9th deadline for the Home Tour! I don’t want to post too many pics though and spoil the surprises for those coming to the tour!
Curtains
Lots of curtains! We bought most of them from Wayfair and had a few runs to Bed Bath and Beyond, but after a bunch of ordering, measuring, and drilling, we’ve got curtains in all of our bedrooms, our bathrooms, and our main living room! Curtains made an especially big difference in our master bedroom bay window and our living room! We finally have some privacy and it really brought some height to the room!
Front Door
The Front door has been a HUGE hassle and a ton of work! But after hours and hours of sanding and painting, we’ve gotten it rehung. Brandon took the time to strip the paint off of our door handles and mail slot and with the emerald paint, the shiny brass hardware looks spectacular!
Painting for the Master Bedroom
I needed a painting to tie all of the colors in our master bedroom together and after many hours of searching, decided just to make one myself! I used Photoshop to create a painting plan and then got to it! It’s turned out pretty well, and now I’m planning on adding some gold leaf to it for a little extra punch before we hang it!
Picture Framing
Still have work to do on this front, but I’ve been slowly starting to put things in frames and try to find a home for them all. Excited for my mom to come visit this weekend to help me sort out where all it should go! One of my favorites is this Detroit coloring map from Detroit Public Schools that we found in the attic!
Garage, Driveway, & Patio!
We are especially excited about this one! We finally have a new driveway, garage floor, and exposed aggregate patio thanks to Blackie Concrete! They did a PHENOMENAL job and we are so happy that we took our contractor Cal of Maxwell Construction’s recommendation to hire them! We have so much more space to drive now and can even turn cars around in the back yard using the new patio space! We’ve already had a nice bonfire night out on our new patio with neighbors and so far we love it!
Some More Furniture!
We’ve been picking up the last of the furniture we need lately. Brandon’s parents brought us up the rest of their 1960s bedroom set for our guest bedroom and it looks awesome in the retro bedroom! I also picked up a cute dark grey love seat via craigslist that should work well in our piano room, and finally we ordered our dining room chairs and are nearly ready to assemble our bowling alley dining table.
My cast-iron drafting table legs are currently being modified by a metal worker, CJ Forge in Hazel Park, so that when assembled, the table will reach the appropriate dining height. Can’t wait to see all of this come together this weekend! We also got some shelves for our bar and I ordered some brackets from etsy that I think will really set the bar off nicely!
I’m also excited about a vintage 1959 Motorola record console my mom found in Columbus, Ohio for us at A Gal Named Cinda Lou. The record player was a deal, but the player itself didn’t work so I took a risk and bought it anyhow. After some research it seems that the only thing it needed was a new cartridge and needle! So excited about this piece, it looks spectacular in our living room with our TV, which we’ve now mounted to the wall. Finally got to listen to a record yesterday, Amythyst Kia from Soulstep Records, one of my favorites, and it sounds loud and clear!
What Still Needs to Happen
*Takes a deep breath* WHEW! If you can’t tell, we’ve been super busy. And there is still a long way to go before Sept 9th!
Here’s what we still are working to complete in time for the tour:
- Hanging more art
- Moving furniture around
- General cleaning
- Finding more odds and ends like guest bedroom bedding
- Garage Door painting and fixing — This is a big one. It’s a lot of work, but so far our efforts have been paying off.
- Yard work — This begins today! We’ve got some amazing help from B&D Garden Design in Detroit to take the front yard and completely overhaul it. We also have some work now back by our newly poured patio to make sure it looks decent for the show
We want to thank everyone so much for following us along the way! We’re not done posting, but at least until the Home Tour and a much needed vacation is over… this will likely be our last update for a month or two.
If you can’t handle the suspense and just can’t wait to see how our last moth of hard work pays off, PLEASE COME to the UDCA Home Tour on September 9th! The money raised from the tour is used to run our community programs, picnics, outreach events, pay for security, beautification, and more! During the tour we will be hanging out on our new backyard patio, so feel free to stop by, see the home on the tour with your own eyes, and say hello or ask us questions you might have!
The Home Tour is not the end of this home process and journey we are on, so we look forward to continue to post updates along the way. They may not be as frequent or as regularly timed as they were before, but we hope you all continue to check in with us and see how things in the D are continuing to grow, change, and improve! We have had thousands of readers and so many people following along, contacting us with questions, advice, criticism and praise, and even many who decided to move into the neighborhood after finding our story! We are so proud of the following it has gained and so thankful for all of those who have found inspiration in our journey!
We hope to see you on the tour and if not, you’ll hear from us after some much needed time to rest! I am thinking about maybe doing some kind of contest for our followers… maybe a way to get some free tickets to the Home Tour? If that’s something you’re interested in, be sure to follow the page on Facebook and keep an eye out!
Our journey isn’t over
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