More Shingles....

...is my battle cry when having volunteers at habitat shingles roofs. I also joking encourage other volunteers to hand people shingles and nails who ask for water....oh i'm so mean....

If you overestimate how many shingles you need....you have extra shingles and you drop them to the ground. But if you underestimate, hope you are good at carrying heavy things up tall ladders.





Jodi W00t!

Sometimes things come together

I'm getting burned out on some levels. I sometimes feel myself wanting to leave the house after completing only the most mandatory tasks to keep things ahead of the trades. But every once in a while I get a strong surge, often brought on by Andreas pushing me to stay later and work harder.

We have come to the conclusion that it's always harder to work on your own house, and easier to push hard on someone elses.

Anyhow Wednesday night I was sizing up the work for the 3 day weekend. It looked like it was going to be a slow weekend. Possibly just working on some soffits and details by myself.

Thursday night I got a text message from a friend offering help, then a friend stopped by mentioning he could come out, Friday morning Andreas said he could come out with a friend. I knew I had a shingle crew. I got on the horn with the shingle store at 9am and had shingles on my roof by 2.

My egar crew pounded out the hardest 40% of the roof today. Way beyond my expectations. 25% would of made me happy.

Props and love to Jodi, Andreas, Josh, Joe and newcomer Sheri!






Should be able to knock out the rest within a week.

On the wild side

Okay, not really wild, but we are taught in blogger school that you need catchy titles to your entries.

After tearing it up in Mississippi it's back to the house. It's go time.

You may or may not know this but one side of my house is next to a 50' wide lot that is on the corner of another street. This is awesome. It has left me plenty of room to shuttle 6 dumpsters in and out, will provide room for my sewer diggers excavator and equipment, and get charged less from my shingle delivery because they can get closer and use a smaller truck.

But on the other side my house sits literally sixteen inches off the next house. Many of the houses in the neighborhood are like this. The neighborhood was built before permits were needed and houses often expanded towards their property lines. Anyhow it makes for some pretty tight work. Luckily I have some scaffolding that is 12" wide and 24' long that i can 'thread' between the houses.
This only leaves 2" on either side of the scaffold to navigate before scratching up one of my new windows or gouging the rotting siding of my neighbor. But it turned out aok.

Andrew and Andreas demo'ed the last of the original siding and built up the east cross gable fascias and soffit.

I'm lucky that I have friends that aren't afraid of heights or tight spaces. They make this seemingly difficult task look like a cakewalk. How you ask? Because they are total bad-asses.

In other news I apparently have at least one neighbor who doesn't like me. Someone called the CoD Building and Safety department on me. They came out with an inaccurate version of my building permit and issued me a $275 fine for building without a permit for siding/roofing/windows.

I went to B&SE and showed them they were in the wrong and that the person who typed up my permit didn't include the entire scope of work that was on my application. They pulled the fine and apologized saying I was clean.

A special thanks to the Detroit Historical Comission for helping me with the documentation to prove i was right.

Not a big issue but it goes to show again that the CoD would rather hand out fines at random and gather money instead of really doing the proper legwork to ensure good structures are built, altered and maintained.

And that also leaves me to wonder what neighbor called BSE on me and how I'm going to burn their house down.

Most people hate dealing with the CoD. I agree, but it's my love for Detroit that helps me push though the crap.


It's shingle time.

Unexpected surprises

Blitzes are intense. I find myself wandering following my name being called out from room to room to answer questions. I often forget where I'm going or what I'm going to get amid the confusion.

On Tuesday during this myriad of construction I was called outside. At first I didn't know what was going on, I saw an elderly gentlemen in a baseball cap. And then I realized who it was. It was Jim and he wanted to shake my hand. I came down the front steps and reached out my hand. Unknown to me at the time one of my volunteers had a camera out at the right time.

We chatted for a second and I asked him if he'd help me finish putting the tar paper on my roof.....I'm not sure the secret service liked that. (Although he does put in his time in construction during the week)

He is a good man. I don't know much about his presidency, I was only a baby when he was in office. But his dedication to humanitarian efforts has definitely made him a role model in my world.

It was an honor to meet him. With 4800 people on site he only gets to interact with a fraction of them. Previously in 2005 the closest I got was this photograph:


But on the last day of the blitz my volunteers brought me this framed photograph.


It's a perfect shot. Construction in the background, Tiffany our family partner on the stairs, sawdust in my hair, my arm rippling with veins as if it was made of bronze and our hands just at the moment of interlock.

I know it wasn't exactly easy for them because they had to take a cab to the store after a long day of being slave-driven, and so I am even more thankful for it.

More motivation to get some drywall up!

My OTHER other house, JRCWP 2008 pt 2

Last summer I reported on my other house. A 2007 Detroit HFH Blitz house.

Last week I headed down to Pascagoula Mississippi for the 2008 Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Work Project.

Every year Habitat for Humanity leaders and volunteers worldwide descend upon one location on earth and blitz a number of houses in their efforts to eradicate the world of substandard housing, homelessness, and poverty. This year that location was the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The goal was building 30 brand new homes and 32 rehabilitated houses in one week.

I'm not a stranger to the JRCWP, as I spent a lot of 2004 and 2005 preparing in Detroit for the 2005 JCWP where I led a house and we built 30 new homes in Detroit.

It's a great event.

The week was intense. With an aggressive schedule and major oversights in preparation the immaturity of the affiliate became apparent. Low volunteer numbers, poorly orchestrated trades, short work days and bad weather compounded the problem.

We didn't finish the house, we didn't even get close.

But we persevered. I have been a 'house leader' on 8 blitz builds now and this was truly my most dedicated crew. For what they lacked in previous experience and technical ability they made up for in willingness, effort and sweat. It wasn't my fastest house, or my most pretty house but I truly believe it is my strongest house because of the love these people poured into it. I will not forget this crew anytime soon.

A special thanks to Dan my right hand man throughout the build. Dan, did you ever get that message to Lindsay?

As stressful as the week was I returned to the Motor City a little sore, with an awkward suntan, the satisfaction of good hard work, great memories of building, laughing late into the night and the feeling of unity that more people are going to be living in decent, safe, affordable homes.

JRCWP 2008

Frame

I used to have this friend in high school who worked at a store called 'frameworks II'. He used to steal money out of the cash register.

Anyhow, not that kind of framing.

Nobody Home...

If you are a long time reader you know that i'm trying to concurrently do some historical research whilst rehabilitating the house.

The Burton Collection at the Detroit public library has provided me with great insight into the previous owners. Especially the first century of the houses existence. But strangely the Burton was missing city directories beyond 1970. A tip from a reader and excellent resource informed me that Dearborn public library contained the Detroit directories as well. She was very right!

And since I work literally a 1/4 mile from the library, i have finally gotten around to filling out more of 'the matrix'.

Something very startling but expected happened though as i made my way from the 1970's through the 90's. It confirmed what my neighbor had told me. And that was that the house sat empty AT LEAST from 1971-1997.

So the 1985 picture is about the dead middle of the house being empty.

I've also become confident that "xxxy" is the other half of my 'duplex'. I will have to double check with some ariel photographs vs, the house next door. I'm going to start including it in the matrix.

I apologize for the strange formating. I'm too lazy to try and investigate...as you know i have other stuff going on.

Now, To the matrix!

Year	Owner	Address	Description
1850	x	Woodbridge Farm?	This is the last available directory before the 1865 directory where the house first appears. So the build date for the house is 1851-1865
1865	Joseph Kingston	104 Baker	first time the house appears in Detroit directories. Joseph is listed as a "dray man". Which is one who drives a "dray" or a flatbed cart for moving heavy items.
1867	Joseph Kingston	132 Baker	Address changes from 104 to 132
1899	Eliza Kingston	132 Baker	Owner changes to Eliza, this leads me to discover Josephs death entry in Michigan records. Eliza is a "housekeeper".
1904	Charles E. Rhodes	132 Baker	Charles is a carpenter. In earlier directories he lives in Delray, which is a place I have a lot of interest in. In Delray he is only a "Laborer"
1922	Charles E. Rhodes	xxxx* Baker	The entire city is renumbered and the address changes to it's current 4-digit address
1920's	Charles E. Rhodes	xxxx* Bagley	The street is renamed "Bagley" after Governor John Judson Bagley, who served Michigan from 1873 to 1877
1932-1933	Charles E. Rodes	xxxx* Bagley	It appears at this point the house was a duplex also listing a now non-exsisting address between my neighbor and I. There is also mention of a "MO&I Express Inc. Operating out of the back.
1941	Charles E. Rodes	xxxx* Bagley	Last listing for Charles E. Rhodes
1949-1950	Freda McCreary	xxxx* Bagley	the phone number is WO5-0497
1953	No owner is listed	xxxx* Bagley	vacant?
1958	James "Alma" T. Slater	xxxx* Bagley	He is a porter at a dealership Chevrolet (1960), Royal Pontiac (1964),
1970	James "Alma" T. Slater	xxxx* Bagley	Last listing for James T Slater.
1971	NP "no phone" or "no people"	xxxx* Bagley	First year the house is empty (1977-1995)
	NP	xxxy* Bagley	believed to be the duplex (lower half of house)
1977	NP	xxxx* Bagley
	NP	xxxy* Bagley	last year for xxxy*
1995	NP	xxxx* Bagley	empty from 1977 to at least 1995
late 90's	Anne	xxxx* Bagley
2005-2006	Bank of New York	xxxx* Bagley	Who I bought it from
2006-2007	This guy!	xxxx* Bagley

*omission of the current address is only to protect the quietness of my project. Anybody who has been near Corktown knows what house it is.

My Apologies...

Sorry guys, once my camera busted I dropped posting. I guess that comes from the fact I don't like to type just to hear myself. I like to keep the words to a minimum and the pictures coming.

So what happened recently?


Well I've been working on the soffits and getting my miratec fasica boards up. The front of the original house had a small 'casing' detail below the drip edge which I liked, so I continued this detail around the entire house. I painted it and the drip edge to match the 'reddish brown' color of the windows. So that is a lot of up and down the ladder detail work.


So also in the meantime I took delivery of the windows! Beautiful creations built right in Detroit By Kelly Windows. they are traditional wood double hung windows. They are more historically accurate because they sport a larger lower rail then the mid rails. Both sashes move and feature tilt/clean. They are counter balanced with springs and have color matching screens. They also feature double pane, argon gas, low-e glass and some of them are tempered. I Love them. Andreas and I put in the 18 windows in one evening having prepped the openings the days before. I have decided to replace the front 3 windows that i originally planned on saving because these units are so awesome.


okay anything else....I lined up a company to replace my sewer line and that should be soon i hope. Also contracted my HVAC and Plumber. Good guys.


Today I framed up some walls upstairs with my friend Jodi. Maybe half done. I did my washing armpits/singing in the shower impression for her. Also Joe continues to make strong headway on the porch.