You Didn’t Think We Were Finished Already, Did You?
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 52)
Let’s catch up!
Long time, no see! We can’t believe it has been over a year since our last post in June 2019! So much has happened in the last year and a half. We’ve got big plans coming — and we’ll get to that — but let’s catch up real quick first!
PGA Times
After our last post, we were fortunate to host PGA Golfers, Rickie Fowler, Jason Dufner and Jimmy Walker in our home for the first ever PGA event in Detroit! We enjoyed a much needed break of our own while our home was taken over for the week of the Rocket Mortgage Classic. We hosted another PGA golfer again this summer, and look forward to more PGA hosting in the years to come!
Airbnb SuperHosting
Beyond golfers, we also have spent time hosting visitors from all over the world in our guest bedrooms via Airbnb. We have enjoyed amazing guest from France, Spain, Germany, the UK, Canada, Georgia, Mexico, Canada and China, as well as from many corners of the US. We have gotten to host professional bowlers, documentarians, real estate investors, private yacht crew members, attorneys, and explorers- so many lovely, interesting people.
We have made countless new friends, and we have even visited some of them in their home countries since their stays with us. Our experience hosting on Airbnb has been just a fabulous way to both share our love of the city of Detroit with others and to meet new, interesting people from across the Globe. With the COVID-19 pandemic we have taken a break from Airbnb for now, but we have gained so much out of the experience that we can’t say enough good things!
Photo/Video Shooting
Another amazing opportunity that arose for us through this project has been using our space for professional photo and video shoots. Over the past year we have now gotten to work with the likes of Shinola, Hyundai, Homedics, StockX, Bloomscape, Netflix, BET, GoDaddy, Perrier, and more. We’ve been hosting shoots for everything from interviews, product photography, boudoir photoshoots, commercials, and more in our home! It’s been an amazing way to make use of our lovely home and again, meet some fascinating people! As I write this, we have several professional comedians being interviewed and photographed downstairs in our home for an upcoming major album release! It certainly keeps things interesting.
New, Furry Friends
Finally, our most recent major update is the new member of our family! A lovely little 3-year-old Cornish Rex cat moved in with us for Christmas last year. Her name is Aja (Pronounced “Asia”) and she is as sweet as can be, rambunctious, friendly, clumsy, and cute. She also has an instagram of course, so follow @oddyeyeaja for all your cute, furry needs.
Okay, now down to Business!
What problems do we need to fix?
We always knew we wouldn’t stop with just the indoor remodel, and there are many things still on our list of to-dos since we moved in. While our home is plenty of room for the two of us, (or I suppose 3 of us now) there have been a few parts of our property that have been challenging and things are finally coming to a head.
Firstly, the garage and driveway. Is there such a thing as too many motors when you live in the Motor City?
Built in 1927, our garage was probably a perfectly usable space for your everyday Model T at the time, and the driveway offered enough room to navigate a 1920s vehicle with relative ease. However, at about 7' wide (modern drives are a 9' minimum width today), that’s something we simply can’t say anymore with modern vehicles.
We don’t drive SUVs. We drive appropriately city-sized small cars, and after scraping our cars one too many times on the house and garage trying to “thread the needle,” we have decided that an improvement is warranted. We have also brought Brandon’s family 1954 Chevrolet from Ohio, out of storage, and to Detroit. This, combined with my personal need to amass an unseemly number of e-bikes and mopeds, is demanding more vehicle storage than the old garage can offer.
With no more room to expand our driveway, and with the amazing potential of our double lot, we think it’s time to start taking advantage of it. This has led to a complete reimagining of the entire experience, function, look, and feel of our property!
Second, Entertainment Space
The next thing our property lacks is a well-designed space for outdoor entertaining. We poured our large concrete pad last year and have used it for many things — hosting bonfires, projector movie nights, and lightning bug chasing all through the summer with our neighbors (now our best friends).
We really want a space outdoors to be proud of, one that we and our guests can enjoy with space to cook, eat, relax, entertain, gather around a fire and enjoy the lovely warm seasons Detroit always seems to bring us.
Third, the Sunroom
Aja’s favorite place in our home quickly became our sunroom. While we didn’t really like the 80s aesthetic at first, our sunroom quickly grew on us. Enjoying the changing seasons, thunderstorms, snowfall, and sunshine out there has been amazing, especially working from home with COVID and lockdowns this year. However, our sunroom has some issues. After 30-some years of use, the sunroom is showing major signs of disrepair. With screen doors busted, 2 leaks in the roof, sliding doors that don’t slide, and nasty old carpeting, we’ve reached an impasse.
The sunroom also isn’t built on a foundation, rather an elevated deck, and so keeping the space warm in the winter and cool in the summer is a challenge. We’ve decided it’s time for an upgrade- and maybe this time, a larger, more period correct, dramatic upgrade!
Finally, the rear entry
As we come and go from our home almost entirely at the rear kitchen door, our back door space leaves a lot to be desired. Coming and going with snowy shoes, wet coats, and more means we’re constantly messing up our kitchen and especially our floors. With so many visitors coming and going as well, a place to land in the home is becoming a must for coat and shoe drop.
Given we already have a small deck off our back door, we discussed what would it be like if we used that space instead as an enclosed mudroom? It would offer us a covered, conditioned place to drop coats and shoes, not worry about our floors, and keep our kitchen more organized.
Some Familiar Faces (They’re Baaaaaaack!)
There are many people in the world that can’t say they LOVE their contractor. We aren’t those people.
We couldn’t have gotten through the first major wave of construction and work without the incredible Calvin (Cal) and Christian of Maxwell Construction in Detroit. Their expertise, attention to detail, organizational abilities, and fun-loving personalities were so incredibly important to the success of our project.
We learned and accomplished so much and had such a fun time doing it that when Brandon and I started talking about this new phase of work, the first non-negotiable was that we had to work with Maxwell Construction again.
Some New Faces
With a project such as this and the need for new construction, we needed professional help to create the documents, proposals, and plans necessary to do the work. At Calvin’s suggestion, we have hired the incredible Architecture Team at END Studio in Detroit. The team at END is not only historically-minded, they’re sustainably minded, which makes them a great fit for our plans for the space. We are primarily working with Elise DeChard the owner and lead architect, with help from her team, namely Sophie Yan.
We acquired a Topography and Boundary Survey of our property over the summer to begin planning with Elise and Sophie at END Studio and the vast majority of our plan is now complete. This week we have finally given Cal and Christian the go to start working! We can’t wait to share the plan with you in posts to come. Thanks for being along for the ride with us!
Hopefully we will have our next update to you sooner rather than later! Once the true work begins, I plan on updating on a roughly bi-weekly basis, just like for the first phase of our project.
Thanks so much for joining us once again! Let’s get cracking!
Our journey isn’t over
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