Up, Up and Away!
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 56)
COVID Woes
If you can’t already tell, things are moving much slower than anticipated with COVID. Supply and distribution of everything from lumber, concrete, windows, and our standing seam roof material are ALL delayed. This has been frustrating overall, but we are quickly learning to be as patient as possible when it comes to everyone’s advertised timelines for delivery. We expect this project to operate on a ‘hurry up and wait’ kind of basis… with constant stopping and starting based on availability of materials. I’m confident though as we power through winter that things will become more steady.
Framing Kicks Off!
Framing is in full force, having begun a few weeks back. The walls of the garage went up in what felt like the blink of an eye. Our framing crew has been working in some cold, snowy conditions with no sign of slowing down, so we really have appreciated all their hard work!
After the garage walls were erected (and while we were waiting on roof trusses), the framing crew began creating the first rough in of our mudroom space. After laying out the floor joists, Cal and I determined that by switching from 2x8s to 2x10 joists that we could more evenly distribute the heights of our steps going into the mudroom and then into the house. So, after a quick adjustment, the joists were quickly replaced with slightly larger ones and the walls put in place. The mudroom feels like a nice size space that will be perfect for coming and going from the home with a built-in shoe rack, coat hooks, and additional storage above for things like lesser used kitchen items.
Roof, There It Is
Finally, after a few weeks of waiting (more COVID delays), our roof trusses arrived! The framing crew was eager to put them up and quickly got to work. Within three days, the entire roof structure was built with plywood covering the majority of the roof. The garage feels quite large. We knew it would, but with all the trusses finally up, it is now very apparent to us just how much more useful our new garage will be compared to the old. Inside, you easily could fit four cars, which means plenty of room for our vintage Chevy, two cars, mopeds and all our lawn equipment. I am also very glad that we decided to add a door at the back of the garage to give secondary access in and out without having to move cars.
Getting Steamy
With the walls of our mudroom going up, we finally were able to get our favorite Steam Heat Consultant/Expert, Harry Skrdla (former engineer for Detroit’s Fox Theater) to our home to take a look at our steam system. We want to expand the original 2-pipe Warren Webster steam heat system into not only our mudroom, but potentially our solarium as well. After taking the time to measure our radiators around the house and looking at our boiler, he is confident we can expand our system to include a few more radiators. He will be adding additional piping in the basement to Y off of our current supply and return pipes into the newly constructed spaces.
Harry located a vintage radiator for us that will be the perfect size for the finished mudroom and tuck neatly into a corner. He also has 2 wall mount narrow radiators that will be a great fit for our solarium space to mount under the small shelves we are building under the windows. We’ll be taking these radiators to Federal Industrial to be sand blasted and powder coated to match the others in our home before they are installed. Working with Harry has been a joy. We always learn so much about the history and science of steam heat whenever he visits!
Window Sleuthing
Cal and I feel like modern day Sherlock Holmes these days. You may remember years back in our first phase of reno, that we replaced a kitchen window with a modern replica. It seemed easy to find someone to make a replica window for us that looks nearly identical to our original lead windows, but with all the modern features of double-paned glass. That kitchen window was made by a local Detroit window manufacturer, Kelly Window.
Unfortunately, the owner of Kelly Window passed away just over a year ago, and the company shut down as a result. With no major window manufacturers (Melvin, Pella, Anderson, etc.) willing to work with us to create a similar style window, this left Calvin and I with a huge challenge of locating someone to make these leaded modern windows again. Our goal was to find the supplier responsible for making Kelly’s Zinc (faux lead) pane inserts and go from there, but that ended up being a more daunting task than anticipated. With incredibly common Irish names, it was impossible to find any contact information for the Kelly family.
Finally, Calvin decided to simply go to the boarded up Kelly Window and pay a visit to their business neighbor, a glass manufacturer, and ask around. Luckily enough, one of the employees used to work for Kelly, and gave us the contact info for his son, Sean. Sean got us the contact info for our Zinc pane supplier and we finally had what we needed! Now with him on board, we contacted another local window manufacturer, Antil Window, who agreed to work with us on our replica lead windows for the garage, mudroom, and solarium! We expect a window quote this week, which we anticipate will be expensive, as our solarium alone has about 28 “leaded” windows!
Finalizing the Solarium
After some weeks of back and forth emails with our architects at END Studio, we are in the final stages of planning for our solarium. We expect the final solarium drawings at the end of the week that will be the basis for the framing out of the space after the garage is complete. A few things required input from a structural engineer (especially the large skylight) so we are waiting on their input now.
Lots of little questions have come up with the solarium. Where and how large should the shelves be? Will the wood walls and interior be paint grade, or stained? How do we want to be able to shade the windows on a sunny day? How do we shade the skylight? Where should plugs and light fixtures be? How are we going to heat and cool the space? Where do you draw the line on historical accuracy vs modern amenities? We’ve been moving quickly to make as many decisions as fast as possible, as we don’t want to delay drawings further. But that means there’s a lot of pressure to make decisions without having much foreknowledge of how we plan to enjoy the space.
Electrical Prep-Work
Finally our last update for you is we had some preparatory electrical work completed in our basement. We have already maxed out our electrical panel in the basement with our project years back, so with all of the new electrical work scheduled to be added, we needed even more space on our panel. Our awesome electrical crew Luminaire arrived and assessed our current panel. With so much original wiring running to the panel, the crew decided that by creating junction boxes on the ceiling that we could save a lot of space and cleanliness with our wiring to a new, larger panel.
The work looks great now and the wiring is so much cleaner that it was before they started. Now we will have plenty of space for all of the fun things we are planning like EV chargers to the garage, exterior landscape lighting, and power to all of our new spaces like the solarium and mudroom.
What’s Next?
We are expecting a few things in the next couple days. Finalized solarium drawings from our architects mean that Calvin will finally be able to place orders for things like our lumber, windows, skylight, and more.
With those architectural drawings finalized, we’ll get some accurate pricing for the window package from various manufacturers to come up with final selections. The solarium construction will largely have its timing determined by when we can expect to receive windows. Calvin wants to ensure that when the structure is built that the windows are not far behind so timing this correctly is key.
Next, we are expecting quotes for our standing seam metal roofing and will quickly be placing that order to get the material here as fast as possible.
And finally, we are meeting with our favorite landscapers Brian and Dan of B&D Garden Design on Sunday to go over their landscaping proposal for our yard! I am very excited to see what ideas they have to create a lovely outdoor space for us this Spring!
Our journey isn’t over
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