The 1st Floor Plan (Starting Demolition)
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 4)
I think Detroit is already providing a model for change in the world…I mean, people come from all over the world come to see what we’re doing. People are looking for a new way of living. — Grace Lee Boggs
Our 1st Floor Plan
Maybe it’s time to go over our current master plan for the 1st floor. There are 5 major rooms on the first floor, a 1/2 bathroom, and an entryway that contains the main staircase. The major rooms are a Living Room, Office/Lounge, Dining Room, Breakfast Nook, and the Kitchen.
Living Room
The living room is one of the least damaged rooms in the home, the carved plaster ceilings are nearly perfect, the fireplace is largely in good shape minus being painted, windows are mostly free of damage, and the floors underneath carpeting seem to be in beautiful shape. We plan to essentially clean up this room, refinish the floors, patch walls where necessary, and call this one done. We’ve also considered building some shelving on either side of the fireplace for books.
Office/Lounge
This room probably has some of the best light in the whole house, with large leaded glass windows on two walls. This room largely just needs some cleaning up, (we already have removed carpet and wallpaper) but the big plan for this room is to combine it with the dining room it shares a wall with by opening up a large archway between them. It will be the perfect place for a grand piano for Brandon, and will turn the dining room into a great, open, loungey space. The built-in shelves will be removed and a large archway to the dining room will be put in the wall in its place.
Dining Room
Our dining room is a wonderful room. Nice windows, lots of light, leaded French doors to the Wendy’s-style sunroom, a view of our wooded yard, and the most amazing curved plaster carved ceiling we’ve seen in a house in Detroit as of yet. After walking through many homes in our neighborhood, this room really stands out. The archway connecting the office/lounge to this room will really open things up, and we’re considering opening up the door to the kitchen/nook slightly to allow things to flow a little better.
Kitchen & Breakfast Nook
The kitchen is by far where we have the majority of our work cut out for us. All of the walls, ceiling, appliances, cabinets, really everything is gone due to the massive water damage. This, however, gives us a blank slate where we want it. So we will be removing these stairs to give maximum room to the kitchen. The rest of our kitchen plans are customized to the space we have and much more extensive.
The Kitchen/Nook Plan
- Amish Custom Cabinets will allow us to customize our kitchen and maximize space.
- Updating the galvanized plumbing pipes throughout the house, as well as updating electrical. No more leaks!
- Widening the space between the former breakfast nook and kitchen will allow for an open kitchen floor plan. We plan on using the breakfast nook as our main dining area.
- Eliminating the kitchen door by the maid’s stair to give more wall space for cabinets.
- Converting the nook door into a large arch that matches the rest of the 1st floor rooms entryways and matches the curved ceilings in the nook currently. We also must extend the current curved ceilings to reach the new arch. This room and the archway will be one of the first things you see when you enter the home, so it’s gotta look good!
Laying the Groundwork
Before demo work could begin this week, we had to come up with a plan. The first floor is already partially demolished from the water leak that happened with the previous owners 2 years ago, which allows us to see inside many walls in the home. We schedule a structural engineer to come by and walk through the home with us to inspect.
We’d already noticed an area of the floor joists above the kitchen that were bowing down from the weight of the house above The structural engineer determined that it was due to the previous owners taking out a wall that used to be there and not properly supporting it. We must now replace the wood crossbeam the owners put in for a steel I-beam.
Our next big question is about the wall that separates the breakfast nook to the dining room. We’d like to open up a doorway slightly to make the space more open, however in order to do that, we must support the ceiling on both sides of the wall while we demo. Since the ceilings are curved on both sides of the wall, we will have to drill into our beautiful curved plaster ceilings and then repair them. Brandon and I still haven’t decided what to do about this. Either we leave the doorway in its current form, or we go for broke and open it up, but risk cracking and damage to the plaster that will then need repairing.
But overall our structural engineer gives us a bid of good health! He admired the home and it’s build quality, and noted that for being nearly 100 years old, the foundation is nearly perfect with no cracking or shifting. He is confident the home will hold up for much longer if we do our work well.
Let the Wild Rumpus Start!
Demolition has started! We will continue in our next update with additional pictures of the demo of the first floor!
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!
