The Last of the Wallpaper
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 18)
“Not to dog on other cities, but they don’t really have the angst and the need for community like Detroit and Michigan overall has.” — Jax Anderson (Flint Eastwood)
Scrubbing Wallpaper Paste
Holy hell, do we hate wallpaper now. After removing the wallpaper from the 1st and 2nd floors with mostly no issues, the 3rd floor just seemed like it would be a walk through the park. The thick, flocked mustard yellow damask wallpaper that adorned the majority of the house peeled off easily by hand. No tools, sprays, chemicals, or even water or steam were required. The glue that was holding the wallpaper in place was then fairly easily washed off with a spray and sponges.
We went up to work on the 3rd floor thinking our process would be roughly the same, but boy, were we wrong. Very quickly we realized that the plasticy quality of the 70s wallpaper in these rooms would cause us headache. The top layer would peel off fairly easily, leaving its paper backing in place. Wall by wall we then had to soak them with wallpaper remover (Chomp) and then slowly peel and scrape it off. The smell of the remover got to us quickly, and with many of our windows being painted or stuck shut, getting proper ventilation to work was difficult. Then after scraping off the backing, a third pass would have to be taken to vigorously scrub each surface in order to remove the thick paste.
In our 3rd floor bathroom the story was even worse. No matter what tools, sprays, or amount of soaking we did, the wallpaper wouldn’t budge past the very edges. My mother and our friend Ben came over to give us more manpower and finally after about 4 days of work we had almost all of the wallpaper removed and walls washed on the 3rd floor (excluding the disaster of the bathroom). Later, Brandon and I discovered that a combination of scouring the walls and steaming with an industrial strength steamer would release the wallpaper in this last room.
Finalizing Kitchen Plans with the Amish
The Schlabach’s are getting close to being ready to start the build out of our cabinets. We’ve been working diligently to finalize our measurements and design choices and are really happy with where we’ve landed. We can’t wait to see these pieces in person! We also expect our new leaded kitchen window to be completed this week!
Out in the Yard
The garden is in need of an incredible amount of TLC. Any day it has been nice enough out, we have been mopeding from where I am living currently to the house to work on the yard. Everyday it seems like a different bush, plant, or tree is blooming, and it has been wonderful to start discovering what we have to look forward to.
We started with working on getting rid of last year’s leaves on the ground and then began trimming back thorny, overgrown rose bushes, cutting down unintentional saplings, and pulling ivy from our garage. After extensive work on clearing the ivy tentacled into our garage gutters and tearing off vines from the walls, we moved to tackling the ivy in our garden that has overgrown. We discovered early this year evidence of stone walls underneath the overgrown ivy and decided to see what we could uncover. In one afternoon we filled about 9 lawn bags with ivy and cleared only about a 6 foot span of our secret rock wall.
The rock wall is clearly the edge of what used to be a koi pond we had been told our garden used to have sometime in the 50s/60s. We also have discovered some poured concrete in certain parts of the yard where we have dug to run new electrical to the house. The concrete pulled up is smooth and formed on one side and seems very likely to have been pieces of a pond bed under the grass and soil. We’d love to find some images of this yard while the koi pond was still active. If you happen to have any information/images of the pond, please let us know! We were told it had a wooden Japanese-style bridge and was one of the first koi ponds in the state, however I am skeptical of whether that is true or not.
Bathroom Progress
Our master bath suite has been chugging along with the completion of rough electrical and plumbing and installation of our exhaust fans in both bathrooms. Our plumber also completed the concrete base of our master shower to properly slope the floors towards our drain. Once a rough inspection is finished, we’ll be able to install insulation and drywall!
Radiator Problems Abound
While we are really excited for our steam heat system, which offers many benefits to today’s modern HVAC systems, we have a lot of hurdles to overcome before the system will be in top physical condition. Over the past few months, we’ve been dealing with piping hot bubbling steam traps, non-functioning radiators, old pipes, loud hissing and banging, disintegrated bakelite valve handles, and warping original oak floors.
After a thorough investigation into each and every radiator valve, trap, and supply, we’ve determined that A LOT of traps and valves are needing to be replaced. In some cases, we opened up traps and discovered missing internals, snapped springs, and rusted out components that are causing radiators to either not produce any heat or not properly condense steam before sending it back through to the boiler. These problems are causing issues with the emergency trap in the basement and doing damage to our beautiful original oak floors in our living room. It will be an extensive bill to repair, but we have begun the process of replacing these defective pieces throughout the home.
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 or follow us on Facebook!
And thanks for ♥-ing our updates to help share our story!
