The Eternal Waiting Game
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 58)
So it’s been a long time since we last updated you. Nearly two whole months to be precise! We promise we wanted to update you, but there simply wasn’t enough happening on site to warrant an update.
As I have said time and time again, the effects of COVID on a project such as ours which has very specialized crew and often custom ordered materials necessary for historic construction have been incredibly frustrating. Lots of broken promises from suppliers and sub-contractors, unavoidable and unexpected disasters, and price hikes have meant we have been constantly both waiting around like crazy for things and people to show up, and also panicking to make decisions quickly to avoid rising prices. But enough has happened now I feel it deserves an update for you all to keep track of where we are.
IPE Fence
After receiving a phone call from our ipe supplier warning us of a coming 20% price hike the following week, Brandon and I quickly finalized our final direction for privacy fencing in the back of the home. We placed the order for wood, and immediately placed a hold on delivery as we don’t have a garage floor yet to place store the wood in a covered place just yet. Calvin acquired a sample of ipe for he and Christian to experiment with and they brought us a small piece. It is unbelievably heavy compared to a cedar or traditional 2x4.
Cal and Christian are up to the challenge of working with this exotic material, and we’re excited to see this come together, but the fence will likely be a ways into the future before we will be ready to start constructing it. We also ordered enough ipe for our two trellises for the patio and between the garage and house.
Iron Fencing
Another phone call we got was from our Iron Fence supplier. They too called warning us of a pending 15% price hike the following week. So again, we quickly got together our expected measurements and rushed to place a final order before the hike would take place. This fence will be around the front of our property and will need to include 3 gates. 2 small walking gates for our front walk and side walk that runs along where our original driveway is, and 1 large powered double gate for our driveway.
Time for Utilities!
Electrical
Brian Anderson of Electricmax turned up and completed the rough electrical work needed for our garage. With concrete coming soon, Calvin and the team ran a significant amount of conduit through what will be the garage floor and into the walls. This conduit will be used for our EV charging cables, gas line for a space heater in the garage, wiring related to future solar installation, and finally an extra line or two for us to be able to pull additional wires in the future if needed.
Gas and Water Drainage
Calvin and his new son-in-law Alec were very busy in our yard last month digging trenches for proper water drainage, gas lines, and future irrigation. It was hard work in the heat, but it was very necessary to get this work done quickly before concrete is poured over this space.
All the water from our garage, driveway, sunroom and mudroom will drain into our lawn’s natural low point which we are filling with water-loving plants. There is some concern over the quantity of water and whether our lawn will be able to accommodate it all. We are investigating french drain style options for water retention to ensure we don’t create too large of a stagnant pool in heavy rains.
Gas lines have been run under the drive not only for the garage, but out to where the patio will be in the side lot for a large gas firepit. We look forward to having a large supply of fuel after we swapped out our gas meter for a larger one to accommodate the additional load we are potentially putting on the home for natural gas.
The Roof!
After months and months of waiting, delays, broken promises from the metal supplier, and more… we are happy to say that we finally have a roof! Our roofing material arrived about 3 months late and after a few more weeks of waiting on our roofer’s schedule, Trejo Construction Co. arrived and installed the roof over the course of about 4 days. We are missing 2 trim pieces, but are expecting those to arrive soon so the final touches on the roof can be complete.
The roof looks awesome. It’s striking (Calvin called it ‘handsome’), clean, and the right amount of modern to give a slight fresh twist on our Tudor-Revival garage. You can’t see much of the garage from the street, especially once we have the framing for the solarium up. But once Calvin and Christian put up the white oak starburst on the façade it will look absolutely stunning as you are driving down our driveway.
Preparation for the PGA!
One nice surprise we received was a request by a golfer to stay in our home again this year for the tournament. Given the state of the property, we were skeptical to agree. But after sending some video of the state of the exterior to the golfer’s agent… the golfer came back and said he didn’t mind the site and wanted to stay with us anyhow!
This is both good news, but also a source of stress. It means that we will get additional funds to help cover our construction costs, but it also means we need to make the property look as good as we possibly can to give our golfer the best time possible. We are in discussions with our landscapers to do some cleanup of the back yard even though landscaping won’t be started yet back there. With all the equipment and stuff laying around we haven’t been able to weed or mow anything in the back so a quick cleanup will definitely be needed prior to their arrival.
I took a quick opportunity to start doing a couple mini projects around the house. Our front porch cushions have become nests for squirrels as they have completely torn apart and destroyed them, so I took a day to sew new covers for the cushions which turned out well.
Next, with COVID I have been working from home full-time. So I spent a couple days organizing one of our guest bedrooms which has become my new office space. Adding some shelves for plants, changing out the rug, and cleaning up my wiring and equipment to make it as clean and nice as possible since guests will be using the space as a bedroom. We also did a little bit of reorganizing of artwork and created some new focal points like with our record player.
Furniture Ordering
In prep for the solarium (which won’t be done for the PGA unfortunately) we did go ahead and start ordering furniture for the space given wait times for shipping right now with COVID are pretty long. I’ve ordered most of our stuff from Rove Concepts which is a great source for well-made replica pieces and modern furniture. We want to push the interior of the sunroom to be more of a modern aesthetic when it comes to decorations so I think these pieces will work really well in the space.
I spent a lot of time laying out the furniture in the room trying to figure out dimensionally how we can get a dining space and living space to work best. It’s hard not having the physical room to measure from, but thankfully with our architectural drawings from our architects at END Studio I think the pieces will fit nicely in the space.
What’s Coming Next?
So if it doesn’t rain tomorrow, we are expecting our concrete contractor Dennis of Blackie Concrete to be here in the morning to pour our garage floor and driveway approach. Unfortunately, we will likely not have the driveway poured in time for the PGA event, but we were promised the garage floor and approach by Dennis. The golfer will at least be able to pull in to our property for their stay and park in the unfinished garage.
In the coming weeks, we expect Calvin and Christian to begin framing for the sunroom (starting with the floor) as well as the white oak starburst details on our garage. We aren’t expecting our windows for the sunroom, mudroom, and garage for at least a month, so rather than framing early on, Calvin opted to hold off on solarium framing in order to not risk any warping and shifting of the framing with exposure to the elements.
Thanks so much for checking in on us and hopefully the next update won’t be too far into the future!
Our journey isn’t over
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