We Knew It Wouldn’t Be Easy…

Rebuilding a Vacant, Historic Detroit Home (Episode 66)

Expect the Unexpected

We certainly didn’t expect it to be this hard!

Holy cow, everyone! What a long slog we have been going through since last we checked in. Last we talked, our sunroom woodwork was finished and ready for prime and paint. And while we had a few odds and ends outside of that to tackle, largely we were on track to be complete with our project by Spring! And yet here we are, in October, still not done.

I just HAD to ask for high-gloss black, didn’t I?

When deciding on paint and finishes in this room, I knew I wanted to take advantage of both the incredible amount of light this room would get as well as all the incredible woodwork that had gone into making this space feel truly special. A dark and glossy paint seemed to be a elegant, juicy, and provocative way to let the details of this space shine. I decided on the color Greenblack by Sherwin Williams.

Being in the automotive field, Brandon and I knew that asking for a high gloss black paint was a big ask…. we all know how hard it is to keep a black car looking nice, clean, and shiny. But when the idea was brought up to our contractors Cal, Christian, and Alec, they seemed excited, and up for the challenge of achieving this kind of finish.

Alec is up for the task

So in mid-January, after some Christmas time away with our respective families, Alec returned and started working hard to prep the space for primer and a first coat of dark paint. We would start with non-gloss paints, knowing that we would likely need at least two coats (likely 3) with sanding between coats. We planned to save the gloss paint for that final coat.

All masked, primed, and ready to go!

With the brick exterior wall and all of this glass in the room, a proper masking off was needed before we had any prayer of spraying paint in this space. Alec was hard at work masking off all the windows, ensuring the floors were taped off cleanly to protect our tile, and creating a zip wall over our brick exterior wall to keep it safe from paint.

Let the games begin!

With everything masked, Alec started strong with the first coat of color in our skylight surround and on the ceiling. Things were looking and feeling pretty optimistic. We were getting good coverage, and Alec was getting a feel for his spraying setup and methods. Given the size of the ceiling, keeping a wet edge while painting was a challenge, but is necessary in order to get a good end result and would DEFINITELY be necessary by the time we got to the full gloss finish to avoid any hazy spots from overspray.

So far so good!

By the time we were ready for a second ceiling coat, one issue had started to show itself. With the temperatures outside, and the dark color of the paint, Alec was finding that paint dry times were extending much farther than anticipated. This meant that the wait to sand between coats was exceeding 5 days at times, slowing down the process. We pressed on, and eventually got to a ‘final’ coat that looked pretty good on our ceilings, albeit not as glossy as I was really looking for. The definition of ‘full gloss’ paint between brands is quite wide, with some brands’ gloss paints looking like other brand’s semi-gloss. More on this later.

And then came the walls

Once the ceiling was dry and we were able to mask it off, Alec began the same process on the rest of the room. This is when our problems really started to show. A few things started happening in concert that I believe ultimately are what would cause our demise at every step:

1. Climate control: Unlike a true paint booth, with things like downdraft air supply systems and climate control… our room had no heat & no air conditioning. So controlling humidity and temperature was completely out of our hands, and moving air with fans meant introducing dust and particles.
2. Poor Lighting Conditions: Also unlike a true paint booth, our room didn’t have a way to control for excess sunlight or lack of light in corners, nooks, and crannies. And with black paint, it was very hard to see what you were doing when spraying. Too much natural light, or not enough light made it hard to know when you’ve laid down too much or too little paint.
3. Spraying: Lots of painters prefer to spray paint when they can, it’s fast, relatively easy when masking is done properly, and you can get a really nice cabinet-grade finish. But spraying an entire room means a few things. You cant just stop once you’ve started. Keeping a wet edge means painting the entire room or at least half of it at a time. And secondly, it means you are pumping a ton of moisture into the air.
4. What if there’s a mistake: Finally, mistakes in spraying have big labor costs, especially when it comes to gloss paint. You can see every blip, bump, hair, particle, too light, too heavy, everything (think of a balck car). You can’t just spot treat a mistake either. A single mistake on a wall means you need to sand and repaint the entire continuous surface if you want that final coat to be flat and consistent.

Dragging paint

After that first dark coat, we started to see significant areas of dripping and dragging paint. We chalked it up to laying on paint too heavy, and Alec decided to give it another shot. That meant waiting a week for paint to dry, and then meticulously sanding out all of the defects across the entire room until it was smooth as butter again. We were seeing consistent issues under the window sill, where it is especially hard for Alec to see what he was doing.

2nd attempt (same paint, same painter)

Another go, and another round of disappointment. More dragging paint, even where Alec seemed to be very careful about going lightly. It is at this point we start talking about keeping the room warm to encourage faster drying. We bring in 3 large spaceheaters to warm up the room hours before and after painting is done.

3rd attempt (same paint, same painter)

Okay, something is really wrong, we realize. Unlike the ceiling, this paint just really doesn’t want to lay on the walls and even out. We bring out a Sherwin Williams rep to take a look. They’re surprised at the issues we are having, and offer to bring us a different, even nicer paint product that should make for a nicer finish the next time. We wait a week to dry, sand the whole room down again (sanding takes Alec about a week’s labor), clean and prep for another go.

While the paint looks decidedly glossier… the new product brought the same sagging issues

4th attempt (2nd paint, same painter)

Well, that didn’t work… and at this point Alec is truly upset. We are all at our wits’ end with this room. Christian doesn’t know if it’s something about Alec’s equipment, his technique, the cold weather (despite racking up crazy electrical bills heating this room with space heaters), or how we can possibly get on the right track. Sherwin Williams sends out additional reps, and gives us names of a few recommended highly skilled painters to come take a look at the job. Another week of drying and another week of sanding for Alec.

Bringing in new guns

5th attempt (2nd paint, 2nd painter)

We bring in two different professional painters from the area. One is a highly skilled spray painter who was working on the Detroit Book Tower restoration at the time and he agreed to give the painting a shot with us in the evenings after work if Alec and Christian agreed to do all the sanding and prep. He comes by with his equipment one evening, sprays the job, and leaves feeling confident he nailed it. The next day? It’s dragging about as badly as Alec’s attempt. A week of drying, a week of sanding again.

6th attempt (2nd paint, 3rd painter)

Second pro painter comes in. He’s very experienced in lacquer and other high end paint finishes. He gives it a go. Same issue.

At this point it feels like we are trying to find someone, anyone, who can pull Excalibur from the Stone.

Christian decides to throw his hat into the ring

Up until this point, Christian was very much trying to avoid painting this room. He is an excellent painter, but Alec being experienced in paint and the need for Christian’s framing and woodwork expertise on other jobsites meant he needed to take a more managerial role on final paint. Well, now he’s decided to see if he can figure it out. He does a bunch of research. He decides to switch to Benjamin Moore products that he’s used to and more comfortable with.

I bring up the idea of hand brushing the room instead of spray at this point. Christian agrees that the issue with sagging might go away, but at the cost of hours of labor, and a sacrifice of that perfect cabinet gloss finish in exchange for a visibly brushed look. He decides he wants to try spraying. This time though with an HVLP sprayer instead of an airless. This means he will throw less excess moisture into the room as he’s spraying.

7th attempt (3rd paint, 4th painter)

Christian does a meticulous round of prep, sanding, and cleaning. He’s sanded the walls so finely that they feel like smooth acrylic when he’s done. This attempt goes by far the best of all prior attempts, but the issues of sagging still remain, and areas that are painted too lightly are hazy, while other areas are perfectly smooth.

Overall the paint is the best attempt so far. But we still have areas of dragging, and blotchiness and inconsistency in the finish of the paint.

He decides he’s made such progress over the previous attempts that he wants to give it one more go. Another week of drying. Another week of sanding.

It is at this point I start bringing up how one might know when you are stuck in a ‘Sunk-Cost Fallacy’ with Christian, and maybe we should just brush paint. But okay, one more attempt.

8th attempt (3rd paint, 4th painter)

Where some areas got better, others got worse. It was clear that we’d made some obvious improvements in the technique, methods and paint… but that we also were introducing so many new variables it was now impossible to know what would make this all come together. Another week of drying, another week of sanding. Christian starts to come to terms with the new reality: We need to brush this room if we want to get an acceptable finish in our lifetime.

Deadlines

On top of that, it was June and our PGA Golf Tournament was now fast approaching. We had booked a golfer to stay at our home, so we needed to get the room into acceptable condition for their arrival.

Christian agreed to get the room sanded, cleaned, and furniture in place for the week of the PGA tournament. We’d come back when the tournament was over with fresh eyes and a commitment to painting this room by hand. Christian is obviously exhausted at this point, but admittedly a little excited to use a full oil paint for a brushed finish in this room.

The ceiling was now so obviously a different sheen than the new paints we were using that it needed ANOTHER coat with the new paint to ensure it would match. With the decision on a new direction and a week to spare before the tournament, Christian got to work brushing the skylight surround in oil, and Alec re-sprayed the ceiling with the new paint.

PGA TIME!

With the ceiling repainted and even shinier than before, we decided it was time to hang our chandelier that had been lying in wait for 6 months. Cal and Christian got it hung, we pulled the floor covering up and cleaned up the space, removing all the tape and masking sheets… We wouldn’t need all of that anyhow since we were brushing once we came back.

Furniture arrives

We had tried to order a marble top dining table from Rove Concepts last year and unfortunately, it continually would arrive from shipping with a cracked top. We’d given up on that table choice, but had these legs left behind by the furniture company to figure out something to do with. We reached out to a mutual friend and of ours, Shelby, who has a woodworking business, and hired her to make a custom wood top to go with the legs we had. She created this stunning Walnut top to match the walnut inlay on the legs.

Room comes together

All of the furniture we had lying in wait was put in its proper place. For a brief moment, the weekend before the tournament, we got to experience our sunroom as though it was finished. The sanded smooth walls meant it still looked surprisingly done, with only a few spots of bondo and primer showing through to elude there was still more to be done.

You can taste the finish line!

Our golf visitor had a fabulous time in our home the week of the tournament. The room was functional, and with the yard and garage complete, you’d hardly know there was still more work to be done out here.

Back at it

As soon as we return, the furniture all goes back to into storage and Christian is ready to give it one final push to the finish… this time with full oil-based paint and a brush.

One last time (9th attempt, 4th paint, 4th painter)

One by one, panel by panel, surface by surface, Christian makes his way around the room with his brush and bucket of old-school oil-based Benjamin Moore paint. The oil paint itself was surprisingly difficult to find, as oil-based paints are becoming more and more regulated out of existence, even the commercial market. Christian found 3 gallons in all of Detroit Metro, but thankfully that should be enough to do the room with maybe a gallon to spare for touch-ups and repairs down the road.

Christian was right, hand brushing this room took a lot longer than a spray finish. What a spray painter could cover in a few hours, took Christian weeks. But the results quickly spoke for themselves. The paint looks great. Sure, it’s not that super flat spray cabinet look, but honestly, the brush oil finish makes the room even more believably from the 1920s. It adds an Old World, Old Money feel to the space that spray simply was never going to bring to the table. And this oil paint is GLOOOOOOOOOSSY. The reflections are madness.

O.O

Christian worked his way around the room and FINALLY we looked around and discovered there was nothing left to paint! A week to dry and a quick clean-up later, and we were ready to pull up the floor covering to reveal our tile for the first time since the golf tournament.

The big reveal

A quick install of our sill shelf brackets and roll up of the ram board revealed the room in all its painted glossy glory! The reflections out here are a sight to behold. Given how long we’ve been waiting, and how hard the team worked to make it happen, it just tastes that much sweeter.

I knew the paint in this room wouldn’t be easy, but we certainly didn’t expect it to be this hard. But to Christian and the team’s credit, they stuck to it. They didn’t give up, and they never tried to walk us back from the vision or change my mind on the color/finish to make it easier on themselves. They took on the challenge, and found a way to make it happen.

Other accomplishments

While these many attempts were going on, some other accomplishments were happening in the background. Christian finished the doors for our trash corral and they are a sight to behold. They also weigh about 400lbs each! We then scheduled a painter to come by and oil the entire property fences, pergolas, and trash area to finally get all this wood beautiful and protected.

Mudroom Paint

While Alec was slaving away in the beginning stages of sunroom paint, Christian was painting our mudroom. Our olive colored trim matches the cabinets and with that, Harry installed the radiator out here and we called this room complete!

Edging

Brandon and his dad spent a weekend getting some heavy steel edging installed in our backyard. We’ve been having some mulch runoff issues in heavy rain so this edging has been helping us keep our beds from washing away on us.

Sunroom Tile Step

Lastly, with the sunroom paint complete. We had our tile worker Marius of MK Tile back to tile our step in the sunroom. We waited forever to get this special version of our floor tile made for stair treads shipped from Italy and Marius did a fabulous job capping Christian’s clever custom stair/AC air return vent with the matching tile.

What else remains?

While things look essentially done, we have a few key things that need to happen still:

In the sunroom:

1. Radiator Install: Resident steam expert, Harry Skrdla is coming next week to install our two sunroom radiators out in the space. We are looking forward to having heat ready to go as the weather is turning rather quickly here in Michigan!
2. Final Electrical: Brian Anderson of Electrimax will be here next week as well to do final install of all our plugs and switches in the sunroom.
3. Smart Shades: Our Lutron shades are hear and ready for install, so next week or the following week we are hoping to get them out here to get those shades installed in our sunroom ceiling. That will allow us to keep this room from always being a greenhouse.
4. Window Trim: This is something we don’t have a timeline on yet, but I am being assured by Marvin Windows that we are being prioritized to get our sunroom window screens and trim pieces installed soon. They take a lot of finesse to set up, so we’re leaving this to the big dogs at Marvin to tackle.

We still need a deck!

Outside:

1. 2nd Floor Deck: Our mudroom still doesn’t have the matching ipe deck on top for the 2nd floor bedroom exterior door we have. This is something that given delays with paint issues, Maxwell Construction’s other work going on, and the change in the weather, we will wait till Spring on.
2. Exterior Sunroom Steps: We’ve been using plastic hot tub steps for 2 years, and while they’re working well enough, it’s time for a permanent and less dangerous solution. We have Dave (the man responsible for install of our beautiful fencing with Alec) who is a mason by trade, coming to build us some brick masonry stairs soon. Goal is to get that done this fall before it gets too cold.

Garage: This one is on us to figure out

1. Polished & Stained Concrete Flooring: To give our garage floors a little bit of protection from drips and stains, we want to stain and polish the concrete floors. We’ve got a contact to do it, but now need to schedule.
2. Garage Cabinetry: Once the floor is finished, we have metal wall-mounted cabinetry ready to be hung along the back wall of our garage. This will give us a great working space for projects going forward, and a place to keep our tools organized outside.
3. Clearing out the Basement: Finally, once those two things are complete, we can actually get our basement back. It has been our de-facto garage for the last 2+ years after we tore down the old garage. Everything from our tools, lawn equipment, my vintage mopeds, bicycles, and everything else has been in storage down there waiting for their new more permanent home in the new garage.

That’s all for now, folks!

We will be plugging away at these remaining projects over the course of the fall, and I’ll be updating once we get the sunroom in official use! This was likely the longest update I have written since we started our home journey in 2016. But given just how far South everything turned for us on the paint in the sunroom, and how many times I have tried and failed to convey why this seemingly simple task was taking so long to everyone who was following us and asking incessantly, it felt warranted. It was also a little cathartic to go back through all my old photos, texts, and timeline to evaluate out how things truly fell apart at every hopeful attempt.

Our journey isn’t over

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