Redemption in Corktown

Kahn-Krete

2010-07-12T22:41:00.003-05:00

Good news everyone!

2010-03-29T08:40:00.001-05:00

Pow!

2009-09-24T10:43:00.004-05:00

Hello?.....(hello).......(hello)..........

2009-07-20T21:32:00.008-05:00

Is anybody still out there?

....meanwhile back at the ranch.... I made a bathroom.

I made these sinks out of wood.

Why yes, yes those are LED lights behind glass tiles that were borderline impossible to do.

Oh and I started siding the house with Hardiplank. I like the look.

I don't know how to love you.

2009-02-25T18:57:00.002-05:00

So yea. I'm completely burned out on the house and the blog. I have kinda pulled back my efforts to just keep moving slow and steady on the house. I'm anticipating the weather breaking and getting a boost then to get back to the outside of this place.

Anyhow, we put some floors down and Andreas and I built a pretty awesome staircase.

It's been a long time my friends.

2009-01-15T10:56:00.009-05:00

So i'm going to skip the apology and we can operate under the assumption that i'm an unreliable blogger and that our friendship is one-sided. That way you can protect yourself from being emotional hurt everytime you come to my blog without updates and I can stop feeling guilty.

Since i'm living at the house I use my spare time for working instead of blogging.

So what has happened? Well the house got drywalled. I hired it out on account i'm running out of time. The company I hired did a pretty good job-especially with the cathedral ceilings upstairs.

While the drywall was going down my friend Andreas and I did some full-blown restoration on the 9 severely rotted and disfigured porch posts. I took them to Toledo to be professionally stripped of their paint. Upon their return they were in rough shape. Much more rot damage then I expected. We then molded some restoration epoxy to shape on the damaged parts. Andreas is an expert carver so we had at it and through heroic efforts we reshaped the damaged portions. 2 coats of oil based primer and they look brand new. We are very satisfied with the results.

After the drywall dust settled we took to priming and painting.....about 40 gallons of primer and paint later the house is in the home stretch for touch-ups. Check out the interesting colors.

Also meanwhile we laid the wood floor on the porch. I was able to get some salvage floors that came out of a house about 20 miles from here in a city called bloomfield. $1 a sq foot for red oak isn't bad and it looks awesome on my porch. about 400sq ft went down in 2 evenings despite single digit temperatures.

I had to fire my HVAC guy. He kept making promises and deadlines that he couldn't meet. So that sucked, but at least I didn't get taken on it.

thanks Patrick, Rebecca, Andrew, Jodi, John and Andreas.

Payback is not a......difficult situation.

2008-11-26T17:30:00.004-05:00

This is the first Saturday in Lord knows how long i haven't worked on my house. To change it up i went out to a fellow Habitaters house to help him with his addition. He has been out to my house multiple times, so i was more then happy to lend a hand.

It was fantastic not having to think. Normally when we work as a group the leadership defaults to either whoever project it is, or whomever has the most experience. And then the rest of us accept the hierarchy and work like beavers. The ten of us highly skilled carpenters working like a well oiled machine is a sight to see for sure.

Rick was putting on a sizable addition on the back of his house for his in-laws and we had a very productive day. We had the floor system done in a couple hours, and by the end of the day we had all 3 exterior walls raised and braced and the rafters cut. A great day with the guys.

Also I hate the legal aspect to building, but these are from my house.

Also the drywallers are finishing up hanging my house as i type this.

My house has rabies

2008-11-13T09:46:00.017-05:00

My house doesn't have rabies, but it looks like it does. It's foaming everywhere.

Let me backtrack. As you know the house is from 1859. There was zero insulation in the walls (which was nice for gutting). Most places there was plaster&lathe, lap sheathing and siding. And some parts of the house didn't even have the sheathing. One small part of the house that was rebuilt did have some R13 fiberglass insulation...but not much and by the time i had gotten to the house a raccoon had made that his home.

I wanted some high efficiency insulation. Because I plan on making this my homestead I was willing to pay the incremental cost up front for lower heating/cooling bills in the long run. I hired Arbor Insulation, one of the few 'open cell Poly-urethane' players around, to take care of me.

There are a lot of 'closed cell' guys out there who will try and convince you that it's 'structural' and 'waterproof', but the truth is unless an architect is specifying that it will be used in a structural capacity that does you no good, and unless it is below grade, it also does not need to be waterproof-that should be taken care of by an exterior weather barrier. Beyond those two things, closed cell just doesn't perform like open cell.

I haven't blogged about the inside of my house recently on account I didn't want to advertise that my electrical was completed. Now that insulation covers 90% of it everything is probably cool. Oh and i have a fancy security system.

The white stuff is open cell Poly-Urethane spray in insulation. A modern 2"x4" wall with a single layer of traditional fiberglass insulation provides an R13. 3" of open cell sprayed in insulation yields an R value of 13.4. But R-value only models conduction, the spray in severely cuts down on convection also. So that number gets 'adjusted' for the fantastic convection stopping power to a comparable R 26.7. In addition I have a 1" exterior insulation that gives me an additional R5. So the total system gives me an effective R 31.7 in the walls.....that is more then most people have in their attic. And honestly looking over the house in most places it is more then 3", more on the average of 3.5" - 4".

In the attic/cathedral ceilings they said they would spray me 5" effective at R 44.5, but again in a lot of places they out the entire 7.25" rafter.

In the basement/crawl space they sprayed 'closed cell' poly-urathane-which comes out green, but if left uncovered it needs to be sprayed with an intumescent paint. The paint is tan. I'm also using the close cell to seal a leaking brick basement wall I have.

Potentially one redeeming thing about a slowing economy is that the price of copper is plummeting due to decreased demand. It's hard to say if this will stop or slow scrappers because the slow economy might bring more desperation. But that remains to be seen.

Now I just have to pass an easy inspection on monday and drywall is en route

why does it have to get darker earlier in the winter?

2008-10-29T18:19:00.006-05:00

So we both know its been a long time again. And that I previously promised to post more frequently.

The truth is, nothing interesting has happened really. A lot of details getting hashed out really. But a few important things have happened.

I moved out of my storage facility which I had been storing things in since I moved to Toronto in December 2005.

Garage door is a done deal.

I passed my structural inspection. This is a big deal. It could of been a nightmare, but some attention to detail, some schmoozing of the inspector and having a friend put a good word in for me at the city all came together for a single inspection pass. That is a huge weight off my shoulders.

My alarm system is in. This is something that has been weighing on me for a while and i'm glad it's done. With more valuable materials going into the house I wasn't ready to rely only on my ingenuity of re-enforcing locks and door frames. It's good to hear the chirp of my alarm set whenever i leave the house. Granted Detroit police aren't known for fast responses, but I have half a dozen neighbors i could put a call into if it goes off and they would have my back.

Oh and we've gone full blown on the porch. Got the floor reframed and sheeted. Then framed the roof incorrectly (working off a bum print) then reframed it right and got things underway.

Here are some pictures of Andreas and I sheathing the porch and framing the tiny pediment gable.

Also when i bought the house the porch had pressure treated deck boards for the floor...not exactly period. I was able to get some salvaged 3.5" oak flooring from the Detroit Architectural Salvage Warehouse for $1 a square foot. W00T! It will look perfect period.

I'll get you some better pictures of the porch soon. It looks so straight and true it makes me tear up a little.

Come quickly December 21!

Travel down a road and back again

2008-10-04T21:28:00.008-05:00

My friend Dan, who always tries to convince us he is a bad guy, has a bunch of tattoos. He's got a japanese character on the back of his neck and i asked him what it stood for. I was guessing it was going to be something like 'hey i'm a bad guy' or 'carpentry badass'. But instead he told me it ment 'friend', which fits him and my saturday crew very well.

I love it when a project can be knocked out in a day. Plenty of preperation, no oversights, and flawless execution with a satisfying completion.

We roofed the garage today. Nevermind the fact that the shingles on the garage cost 42% more then the ones on the roof. (same shingles, oil prices drove up their cost over the last 6 months) With 4 nailguns blazing, it was a great day with my supportive friends.

The roof area was 675sq ft....that was the same size as my first apartment. God has been good to me. The 9/12 pitch was a bit of a pain, but it was a one time sacrifice for a roomy 'upstairs' in my garage.

My dedicated legion started early and pushed me to finish. Jodi, Keith, Dan, Edwin and Dustin made it happen. Part of me wants to pin all of them down and tattoo 'friend' on them.

Beyond the fact there was frost on my truck in the morning, i still managed a mild sunburn to the face.

In other news i poured 5 concrete footings for the porch foundation....it was a long lonely night mixing a dozen bags of concrete with a drill, but they turned out just great. But not worth posting pictures of. Hopefully this will be the start of a long stretch of porch work.

oh and BTW the song 'thank you for being a friend' was composed by Andrew Gold. I'm a fan. So don't be confused that i've been watching early 90's sitcoms with old women and underlying social issues.
Thankyou for being a friend

Happy Kepha day Kepha.

2008-09-28T18:55:00.015-05:00

Things are going well at the house. More on that in the next post. But I did want to take a minute out to recognize a big helper on my project and to give recognition for an unsung warrior in the restoration of this house.

Kepha my truck.

There are a lot of pickup trucks on the road. A lot of them are pretty. Not many of them carry stuff. Kepha has been daily beaten and comes back for more.

Here is a picture of me and Kepha on the day he became mine back in 2003.

At first I tried to change Kepha a lot 2" of lift, sound systems, an air intake, bed liners, a cover, heated seats, power locking tailgate, bed lights......But after a while i just started accepting him for who he was.

Over the years he has hauled and towed a lot for my family, friends, Habitat for Humanity and myself. From my brothers deck flowerbed projects, to helping my friends move, to pulling trees to ensure they don't hit houses on the way down, to moving my friends and motorcycles, and couches, and wood and all kinds of things. He has been there solid like a stone.

And then there was the time I put 3100lbs in bed (unknown to me at the time) when it's rated only for 2300lbs and still drove like a champ.

A fantastic truck. You know i work for Ford, but I'm also willing to share the times he fell short. Two unexpected rear axle seal ruptures at 67k miles caused me plenty of headache but only $12 in parts but a 4 hour tear-down and rebuild of the rear axle. Also an annoying driveshaft problem where the center bearing slides out of place has plagued me but never stranded me.

Anyhow to celebrate kepha passing 100,000k miles I wanted to share some pictures.

Bad Blogger

2008-09-13T23:53:00.011-05:00

Sorry everyone once again for slow updates. Last we left off I was building a huge fence. that is pretty much wrapped up.

A cullmination of things has led to few blogs. Finishing up a 3 year long program at work has kept me on my toes. The next time it will be this busy again it will be 2012, so i have some time to breath.

Labor day weekend a friend and I ventured up to the Bruce Peninsula in Canada for a little R&R.

Last week Habitat for Humanity Detroit held it's annual blitz. While I didn't house lead this time (last 7 in a row i have), or even stay for the whole week, I did volunteer to crew lead for 3 days of it.

But lastly, nothing seriously significant has happend worth blogging about. I've been touching up small things here and there in the framing like missing fireblocks, screwing down subfloors and moving framing for my HVAC guy.

Although here is one project that gave me a huge headache. It's a set of steel plates seeming my ridge beam. See when you have cathedral ceilings there are no collar ties or ceiling joists to help the roofline hold it's triangular shape. Therefore you need to have a 'strutural ridgebeam' that actually 'hangs' the rafters.

When I installed this ridgebeam in January it had not even crossed my mind that I would cathedral the ceiling in this room, thus I had a split in my ridge. Anyhow to fix it took some custom steel plates that were difficult to find and some inginuity to get it into place. Anyhow it's done and i'm cool with that.

The other somewhat significant thing i've been up to is working on the finish staircase. Should finish up the structure tomorrow.

Red treads and natural risers will round out the finish.

I'll be a better blogger I promise.

oh and in other news i'm sporting a Mohawk now.

lng wknd

2008-08-17T22:00:00.004-05:00

my man Andreas and I like the roof. at Habitat the two of us have possibly worked on 50 roofs together over the last few years. It's our thing

We sheathed my garage roof on Friday. 24 sheets in about an hour-Record time.

Saturday i rented a bobcat and we regraded the entire lot and got rid of all the extra dirt from the garage foundation/sewer line. Newcommer to the house my good friend Mike was out. Read about his awesome boss!

Joe pushed on with the porch.

Put the person door on the garage.

We also set all the posts (ten) to my huge fence....it seriously looks like its to keep ogres out of my yard. sorry for the horrible photos. The first one is Jodi trying to get a twisted segment of rebar off the auger, and the 2nd is massive fence and sheated garage.

You find out who your friends are ptII.

2008-08-10T19:29:00.010-05:00

The first owner of my house was a drayman. A drayman drives a heavy duty cart to the docks to unload cargo from the boats. This man, Joseph Kingston, had a team of horses kept in the carriage house that is shown in this sanborn map from 1884. The "X" through the structure indicates it's a carriage house, and the '2' indicates it's two stories tall.

From conversations with some of neighbors they say it had doors on both the first and second floors with a boom to load the upper floor. It sounds like in the 1960's the carriage house was half disassembled down to a single story building. The 1985 picture of the house shows some small shed like structure in the back yard.

Then it sounds like in the mid 1990's the owner completely demolished what was left. The only evidence I've seen of it is some barn doors in the attic being used as floor.

Fast forward to today: I'm building a garage.

I put an email out and again got a great response from my comrades. My good friends Tom, Jodi, Rick, Tiley and Josh came out Saturday to erect the first floor walls. Lucky for me I have good neighbors who were working some backyard concrete across the alley to help us lift the 10' tall side walls that are 26' long. I love this neighborhood.

Intermittent rain didn't help us out. 20 minute downpours every hour after lunch didn't help much, but also failed to slow us down. During one mad dash pulling tools in out of the rain the raindrops starting to 'hurt' more then normal......and then we realize we were being pelted by dime sized hail....hail in summer? Apparently there are no pictures of Josh.

Saturday Tom was back for more joined by Scot, Joe and Bob. We quickly knocked out the 2nd 'floor' and started framing rafters. Again random weather, but we prevailed.

I don't know how much you know about framing rafters by hand, but it rarely goes perfect. You often have to make small modifications, shimming things, tweaking and twisting rafters and ridgeboards. That was not our experience today. The roof went together like a fine piece of furniture. Awesome.

Oh and it's strange seeing the inside of Tiger Stadium from the outside. Remember to save the stadium and donate today!

quick!

2008-08-01T16:56:00.004-05:00

Joe is making big progress on the porch.

The foundation/slab for my garage was poured and it looks beautiful....save for the fact it's racked 3.5"....so they are going to have to come back, cut it and fix it...no building the garage this weekend...

Front windows came in and they look beautiful. Thanks Andreas! I think they really make the front of this house look good.

The middle window is actually double hung and the lower moves. The lower is about 4' and the upper about 1'. I'm told it's called a 'cottage style' window. The view from the inside is awesome.

I'm actually spending alot of time on the basement stair area which is so unnoteable so it doesn't get a picture.

....As bad as a i am

2008-07-16T20:42:00.009-05:00

I've been a bad blogger lately. A lot of stuff has been going on and I've reported nothing. Not only that but I can't say that I'll be at the keyboard much in the coming weeks. But here is what is going on.

Porch is starting to get framed again. The little wrap around porch is one thing that really drew me to this house.

I've been building a small retaining wall in my basement. I have a somewhat common Victorian-era house problem.

See up until the mid-late 1870's most houses with basements did not have internal entrances on account they didn't want to lose this valuable floor space. Almost all basement entrances were outside staircases down to an exterior door.

Later on people who wanted direct access to their basement did 1 of 2 things.

They either A) cut a stairway down directly into the basement. This would normally entail cutting through large structural beams or joist without much thought. I recently helped a friend of mine repair his 1901 with this problem. Luckily the old growth timber held up pretty well after all these years and the failure was limited and the floors were still subjectively flat.

or B) They added an addition that enclosed the exterior staircase. My house is like this. When i bought the house a makeshift staircase led you to a hole that you had to crouch through. Basically the 12' addition wouldn't allow for a safe or code-worthy straight staircase to traverse into the basement. As a result I made a platform for a 90deg turn after 2 steps down. Here is some dry fitting for my stairs.

So the retaining wall (not pictured) is to keep the dirt back in the crawl space where the stairs decend before entering the basement. It's a strange setup, but that is what old houses are all about. Strange things.

Also if you are wondering if your 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid can carry 20 concrete blocks, 2 80lb bags of mortor, 20 gallons of water and a fully grown man (1100lbs total) the answer is yes, yes it can. But it groans a little.

In other news my garage footings were dug and passed inspection this morning. I also ran 4 - 2" conduits from my crawl space to the garage to run electrical, security, gas, etc.

I have running water. I seriously thought about making a video of the toilet flushing and posting it. Goodbye 5 gallon bucket. Shower is also running, i'll be spending a lot of nights in the near future at the house transitioning into living there.

I know that this post is worthless without real pictures and i'm really sorry. I will do better in the future.

In other news as you may or may not of heard Tiger stadium is well under demolition and it is expected to last 180 days...or into the fall. Things are getting intense. The old tiger stadium conservancy missed it's deadline again, but now says it has the money it needs. Meanwhile the Detroit Economic Development Corp. voted to demolish the entire thing. I'm not sure how much weight this has.

It looks like it will be a nailbiter down to the end if dugout-to-dugout gets saved. Lets hope it does. Donate today! savetigerstadium.org

Great pictures can be found at dETROITfUNK

...and as bad as i am, and as bad as i am, and as bad as i am, i'm still here...-Great Big Sea

Not the only one getting work done

2008-07-05T22:24:00.002-05:00

About a year ago I reported on the Bagley Street Pedestrian bridge. It is a small part of the larger Gateway Project that fixes the I75/I96/Ambassador Bridge interchange.

The good news is it's moving ahead and the webpage reports 40% completion which seems ahead of the 22month schedule. The bad news is I96 between warren and the interchange is going down next week for 90 days. Although it will cause me some problems, I have learned all to well about having to endure some struggles to do great things.

oh and i put in my big 42"wx7'2"h exterior shop door, we started framing up the porch and hopefully will get to the stairs this week.

Alright back to work, I have to make sure to finish before MDOT

-1 year

2008-07-01T23:36:00.004-05:00

Thanks to the good people over at DetroitYes.com for posting CoD directories that are missing from the Burton Collection. I now have confrimation the house exsisted in 1859. One year older then the 1860 record i had found and only one year away from the suspected 1858 date I ultimately believe is the houses construction year due to a wayne county platts map that can crudely be read to believe that the land was divided that year.

Happy 149 years old house!

My demolition may be done.....

2008-07-01T22:48:00.005-05:00

You might of heard that the demo process has begun at Tiger Stadium
Well this is it. Right now just a hole in the wall with a couple excavators/claws hanging out outside.

You may or may not know, but the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy is trying to save the portion behind home plate from dugout to dugout to turn into a small field and sports museum. If you ever enjoyed a game there you should consider donating a couple bucks to the conservancy. They have until Mid-August to secure about $400k and have a full plan to get $12M for the project. They think they can make the deadline. It would be a crying shame to demolish it into an empty field as if nothing cool ever happened there.

In other news I got the city to replace my water shutoff box! Antiquated and leaking I needed a new one...only 4 weeks and 4 phone calls later and they replaced it! Thanks CoD!

Showers, flushing toilet, and sink here we come!

Srry for no posts

2008-06-30T12:46:00.002-05:00

Sorry, I've been doing lame things that need no documentation. Small amounts of framing such.

Corktown was mentioned in Forbes.com recently! They documented 10 of the oldest neighborhoods in the united states! Can be found here.

I have this week and possibly next week off to get some good stuff done. So i'm hoping to have more to report in the coming days.

That is all.

Full Circle

2008-06-16T22:04:00.004-05:00

The blog has gained some local attention. A development website called Model D recently contacted me to run an article on the house. You can find it here.

So it seems things have come full circle. When I living in Toronto in 2006 deciding where move, I heavily read sites like Model D, DetroitYes, DetroitBlog.

I really like the article. It highlights and captures the scope of the project well. It almost makes me forget about the dozens of hours i've spent loading 40yard dumpsters in the late night of the winter.

So i'd better step up the quality of the blog here with all my potential increased traffic!

But sincerely I do hope that the blog and the project brings inspiration to others to move into the city of Detroit. We can't do it alone. While there are droves of young people flocking here, I think we need everyone in the tri-county area to support the city.

Everyone in southeastern Michigan can benefit from pumping life back into Detroit. Remember, say nice things about Detroit!

Sunburned

2008-06-14T17:08:00.010-05:00

Progress is steady.

The plumber finished his rough and passed inspection friday. Awesome. And the fact he did it all with Pex tubing water supplies instead of copper makes me all the happier. Take that scrappers.

I had a friend who is a city inspector walk the house with me for tips in preparation for my framing inspection. He brought a couple things to my attention that I had missed and validated some things I wasn't sure on. I always learn something from Frank.

Whoever designed this house did some weird stuff. and I had this crazy
canilevered bearing wall on the second floor that could of easily just been a set of stacked bearing walls. Anyhow when i built my 'addition' I had a set of valley rafters that essentailly replaced this bearing wall....except for one square foot. Anyhow it had to be framed out and was essentially open to the outside.

Although this detail isn't original, it's acutally not uncommon in colonial/revival and victorian styles. So i'm cool with it today.

Jodi my rose came out and helped me with some exterior insulation and the house skirting.

Speaking of roses one of the former owners had at last 4 rose plants that still bloom beautifully. I'm not much of a botonist, but I can enjoy them.

In other news the 'toolkit tours' began last week. Basically an all inclusive tour to show perspective buyers historical properties in Detroit that have been renovated, properties available for sale, and resources such as the NEZ tax break tips and contractors that have experience in the historical districts.

I've been asked to be on the Corktown portion of this tour on October 12....so I'd better stop blogging and get back to work!

oh and here is a cool Corktown video starring my man Ryan Cooley of O'Connor Realty.

Various Things

2008-06-08T23:07:00.005-05:00

Roof is done.

Andreas and I framing ceilings upstairs.

Plumbing has started. The long blue and red plastic tubes are Pex tubing. A type of plumbing water supply line that has been kicking around for many years but never caught on until the price of copper skyrocketed. The flexibility of the tubing greatly reduces labor installation time. Builders like me in high construction theft/scrapping territories like it too because it's useless to scrappers.

Now we need to find an alternative to copper electrical wiring. Needless to say I won't be wiring the house until the security system is in.

Contingency Plan

2008-06-05T21:30:00.005-05:00

News about Detroit this week:

"Redwings Win Stanley Cup"

"Ford, General Motors improve in quality survey"

"Ford to cut salaried-worker costs 15 percent by Aug 1"

You may or may not know but I work for the Ford Motor Company. The largest family run business in the United States. I program the computers that control the engines on the hybrid cars....at least I do for now. This recent announcement stated that up to 15% of salaried workers at the Blue Oval could be let go involuntarily by August 1.

Details included that the cuts were to be made to the 'low performers' and 'low seniority'. While I'm a pretty decent worker and get reviewed well, I only have 5 years in at the company, much less then anyone else in my section. Could be cause for concern.

I'm also one of the few single/without family people of the group which may weigh in. But I don't mind taking one for the team in that respect.

While FoMoCo quality is now within a negligible amount with it's strong japanese competition, decades of poor quality and low fuel economy have been engraved in American consumers minds.

Surging commodity prices, a truck heavy portfolio, high gas prices and union labor costs have not helped the company stabilize either.

How does this reflect into the house? Well it's driving me into a contingency mode. I must do what it takes to ensure survival of the project.

What that means is I will refocus my efforts to obtaining my certificate of occupancy and to let luxury aspects be pushed aside for now. I'm going to plug the chimney hole in the floor and start eliminating other things that can be done later that will not impact my CoO.

One characteristic of people and organizations that I really admire is the ability to adapt and have quick recovery from obstacles. I hope to enact and refine these skills if needbe.

What is the best aspect of a contingency plan? Not having to ever use it.

Second best? Having a solid one that works.

Out of the Jungle

2008-06-02T12:43:00.012-05:00

You may or may not know about my backyard, but it was a mess. At some point somebody was a gardener in recent history, but then the following owners weren't. So it went wild and things overgrew. It was a mixture of beautiful flowers like roses and trupeter vines, mixed with a nasty broken chainlink fence with at least 6 ingrown tree stumps, scraps of concrete and brick, random garbage and stepping stones. There was also mounds of dirt from where i had dug out the crawl space, chimney footer and basement stairwell.

So my sewer line was bad. Built in 1889 it didn't last. I suspect a 40ft crab apple tree in the backyard had something to do with it. I didn't even bother to try and fix it with routers, or foaming chemicals or cameras. I bit the bullet and replaced it.

Anyhow this is before:
And this is now:

I was so happy when I saw it, almost gitty. Should be digging the garage foundation soon.

oh and the roofing is 98% and I got all 3 skylights in.

More Shingles....

2008-05-27T18:59:00.004-05:00

...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

2008-05-24T19:14:00.007-05:00

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

2008-05-23T20:14:00.007-05:00

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

2008-05-18T22:20:00.007-05:00

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

2008-05-18T10:51:00.009-05:00

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

2008-05-13T21:03:00.009-05:00

Frame

2008-05-08T14:15:00.003-05:00

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...

2008-05-07T12:15:00.013-05:00

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...

2008-05-03T22:56:00.011-05:00

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.

In the paper!

2008-04-22T13:59:00.001-05:00

My house is in the free press!......at lest it's in the picture...somewhere

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/NEWS01/80422033

sad news tigers fans

Q & A Part I

2008-04-15T09:26:00.010-05:00

Over the months some readers have asked questions in the comments section and I haven't gotten back to them yet. So here goes

Baby Sister says...

I love Detroit and I used to be a resident...well, until I was 7 and we moved to the burbs. About the evidence of fire. During the 1967 riots (rebellion), a lot of houses were set afire. Maybe this one was caught up in that drama. Is there any way to tell?

It seems that the house has under gone multiple fires and it's sometimes difficult to tell where they were. Some may of just been chimney creosotle fires while others may have been the house burning. But there was at least one major house fire in the rear. My guess is that it happened between 1985 and now. That is based on the fact taht in this 1985 picture there is a rear dormer in the 'fire area' (which happens to be centered around a chimney). This dormer did not exsist when i purchased the house.

As far as the 1967 riots go it sounds like it was very bad times for detroit. Poor working/living conditions, a lot of anger, mistrust, prejudice resulted in a lot of looting, arson, violence and death. (43 dead, 467 injured, over 7,200 arrests and 2,000+ buildings burned down)

Not to be confused with the 'race riots' of 1943

Geographically if you don't know the story it started with an incident at 12th street (Today Rosa Parks) and Clairmont. This is about 40 blocks away from my house. The riot then proceeded to sweep clockwise around the city and north.

'Corktown' is approximately south of michigan ave between Grand Blvd and the Lodge. Just outside of the 'riot zone' on the 2nd map and very far from the boundries of the first map.

Ultimately there is a lot to say about the riots. A lot of blame, hurt, and anger still resonates in a lot of people. But the healing has to continue, and I'm in for that.

While isolated incidents could of happened, my guess is that the main fire of my house happend sometime in the late 80's. One of the neighborhood residents that is my age once said they remember the rear of the house being caved in as a child.

Hopefully it's the last fire not in my fireplace.

Arhhhhhhhh!!

2008-04-12T22:11:00.002-05:00

Hauling large or heavy objects has become a way of life for me. It's not bad, it just takes a lot of preparation and consideration while driving.

So all kinds of things are happening. Today I framed 7 more window rough openings in preparation for the windows showing up next week. There are 24 windows total, and i'm probably ready for at least 17 of them. That should be exciting.

Joe did an awesome job getting the porch squared away. It had some bad history. The house sank and someone rebuilt the floor level. I jacked the house up in October level and the porch was all screwed up as a result. But now it is as flat as a runway.

I noticed I don't talk about technique or procedure nearly as much as the other bloggers do, so here goes some advice.

I'm putting up a blue styrofoam exterior insulation. It's 1" thick and has an R5 value. Let me tell you why. First off, free R5 and that helps. If you have 2"x4" studs and have R13 it brings you up to R18 which is pretty good. But more then that it creates a "thermal bridging" effect. Your studs have maybe an R.2-.3 per inch so you are losing heat/cool right through them. The exterior insulation helps you out there. It also takes the place of a tyveck or exterior semi-permeable barrier. Anyhow for those oldhousers it is a good idea if you have the siding off to slap some of this on. But do take into consideration it changes soffits, windows and other details.

It comes in Blue, Pink and Green (Dow, Owens Corning, and Pactive respectively.)

When I bought my house it had NOTHING in the walls.....R0

Face Off

2008-04-07T22:42:00.010-05:00

2008-04-05T08:36:00.002-05:00

New scaffolding.

Camera died....purchasing new one

other updates
New friend josh helped finish blitz week getting the roof sheathed and tarpapered.
heavy thing fell on me, bled from skull for 5 hours.
Andreas helped fix floor joists and door rough.

Sheathed!

2008-03-30T18:46:00.001-05:00

My Latin Cross house

Monday & Tuesday

2008-03-25T19:16:00.012-05:00

I don't think I mentioned this, but i've started another 'blitz week'. I have the week off work and am hoping to get a lot accomplished...so expect pictures and not much text.

Smells like seven layers....THAT BEAVER EATS TACO BELL!

But really, 5 layers? Way over the code restriction to 2 layers. At that point you aren't nailing shingles into the roof, you are nailing shingles into other shingles and overloading the roof. The top layers tore off very easy by hand. A strong wind could of done the same. What a waste of material...that roof couldn't of been more then ten years old.

Hole-ly Saturday

2008-03-23T17:47:00.009-05:00

Holy Saturday my brother came out to the house to help me tear the forward roof off. despite heavy snow on Good Friday, we made good progress-getting over half of it off.

After surprising my brother that Jesus spent Holy Saturday in Hell, we called it a day and I headed off to the Easter Vigil with my friends Mike and Tim at St. Hedwigs in Detroit.

What am I looking at Scott?

2008-03-18T22:24:00.006-05:00

You are looking at a couple things.

It is the underside of the porch. Joe is well underway of the teardown/documentation of the porch so we can rebuild it better, stronger and definitely straighter.

There is a couple things to note. First off you can see the original shake shingles peaking through the boards as they are on the bottom layer and have been for many years. Secondly There is a piece of galvanized flashing in the valley (badly rusted through) But this proves that the pediment detail is original to this part of the porch which was previously in question. Lastly note the roof sheathing, it's very roughly cut lumber. You can see the curves on the sides and that a log was just ripped and the edges weren't cleaned up.

Around the side is another detail that confirms what the Sanborns have been telling me. The original house had a covered side porch before the wrap around. Here we can see the hip rafter for it still in place. It was left and the wrap around porch was constructed post 1897.

Whelp, It has to get worse before it can get better.

The House Strikes Back

2008-03-15T18:52:00.002-05:00

Dr. scholls

2008-03-09T20:26:00.004-05:00

I had this weird protrusion on my house. Inside it was a set of shelves. When I initially got the house it was drywalled over inside. I kept my fasteners in it for the time being.

While I did find it very unattractive, at some level it has grown on me in the last 8 months.

But not enough.

Reconstructing the past, after deconstructing a house...

2008-03-07T18:43:00.021-05:00

My house looked weird when I bought it. While none of the houses in the neighborhood look the same, mine was very obviously different from an architecture standpoint.

Most of the houses have what appears to be an 'original' box-like house, then several smaller and very obvious additions protruding behind them as seen in the Sanborn maps.

It had this very strange sloping roof, that started at the peak of a cross gable and terminated at the rear of the house just above the first floor. At first this could be mistaken for a Colonial saltbox design. But this is the wrong time period (about 100 years too late) and the wrong part of the country. It was a very uncharacteristic roofline for this era.

The house contains at least 3 different 'types' of frame lumber, several different 'styles' of construction and many different fasteners.

After a whole lot of demolition and a little bit of thought, I think I may be able to reconstruct the past.

The Original House:

The front most building is constructed very different from the rest of the house. The lumber is very roughly cut-it appears with a vertical saw. They are 'nominal' 2"x"4" boards. All the studs and cross members are mortise/tendon style jointery and the nails are all square hand-forged type nails. My original perception is that the first 20 feet were the original house.....that is until I was talking on the phone and noticed this from across the room.

In the photograph it's obvious what is going on. But I walked past this for the last 6 months without noticing it. Mostly on account that stud spacing in the house appears to be random, and studs start and stop at will and it's very dark on the second floor.

So what is it? It appears to be some studs in a decreasing stud length in the "2nd" house part.....reminiscent of a rear 'shed roof'.....either that or part of an AT&T wireless commercial. Upon closer inspection those studs are made out of the old wood, and not the 2nd generation wood. (which the rest of the wood in that area is)

This is confirmed with a reference to the Sanborn maps. When I went to the historical commission they explained to me that the number inside each "cell" indicates how many stories are present in that part of the house. Note in this 1884 map, the first part of the house was "2,1,1" stories tall. (when I aquired the house it was "2,2,1) Some of the framing on the first floor also indicates there wasn't a 2nd floor in the middle of the house originally. The Sanborn also shows no wrap-around porch. Also note a 2 story structure in the rear. Highly likely a "carriage house" where the original drayman kept his horses. All of this leads me to believe that the very original house would of looked like such.

"2nd" House:

Something happened. But in the next Sanborn map issued in 1897 the rear "1/3rd" of the house is missing. Fire? Demolition? I don't know, but that part of the house has a very active history. As you can see in the Sanborn here the front part of the house is only "1 1/2" stories. Probably on account that it only has 8ft ceilings on the first floor and 7ft ceilings on the 2nd story....whereas most of the houses in the neighborhood are 10'/8'. But where the rear 3rd of the house went I don't know. On the wall that would be the rear wall of the house in the map I did find the remains of what could of been an "entry/exit" door which could confirm this setup. Also there appears to be a 1 story out-house.

The middle portion of the house is again different. The wood is "1.75 x 3.74" lumber and the nails are much smoother and obviously machined by mass production. There are no more elaborate joints-the only fastening is nails. It appears at this point the 2nd floor was added in the middle. The 2nd owner who took possession at the turn of the century was a carpenter and I suspect this was his work. So it appears he re-worked the middle of the house rebuilt the rear 1/3rd of the house.

Here in the 1921 Sandborn the house appears "2,2,1" including the wrap around porch.

Then a lot of time goes by without documentation.

Then the next evidence I have is the 1985 picture from the Detroit Historical commission that I posted a few weeks ago. This shows a full sized dormer on the back roof, and what appears to be at least a 2'-3' longer house (looking at the edge of the rear roof compared to how I got it).

Fire?

After much deconstruction it was obvious that there was a fire. A lot of charred wood and 'modern' (post 1930's) lumber in the rear 1/3rd of the building confirm this. This part appears to have been reconstructed since 1985. Probably by Anne-who I hope to ask about this tomorrow.

The 'Third' House:

Anyhow I got my hands on it. I'm adding a full 2nd floor throughout the house. (including re-rebuilding the rear part of the house) So now the house will be a "2,2,2". The roofline now very much fits in with the neighborhood and has a "roman cross" aerial view.

Okay, enough playing 'Sherlock Holmes'......back to playing 'Bob Vila'

Mortise & Peg

2008-03-05T08:53:00.002-05:00

Lazy Sunday

2008-03-02T23:50:00.007-05:00

Sunday brought some various work that involved doing some specific things. Thanks Andrew.

It also included some extremely unsafe acts of construction that are in such violation of OSHA code that I can't describe them in detail.

Corrections

2 things I need fixed. First off I forgot to mention Tom came out Saturday. He is one of my best resources, he got my wacky valley rafters in line and fixed my floor saturday.

The second thing is that Ann, the former owner who stopped by, was not the party that was foreclosed on. She was the owner from approx 1990-2000. Tax records indicate that the final owner of the house was "Krystal Langford" who paid '$155,000' for the house. This is most likely the point of mortgage fraud as the taxed value for the house was $32k when I purchased it.

Ann has called me and is being very generous and plans to provide me with work photos and a news paper article from the period when she owned it! Very cool.

Be sure to check out additional pictures from Saturday by Keith K. Don't miss the embarrassing pictures of my butt!

Great Day.

2008-03-01T17:47:00.011-05:00

We rarely get to see photos of the blogger as I am normally the one taking them. But here we see him in his natural habitat with sawzall in hand. (note the ambassador bridge in the background! great view!)

Great day. After shoveling 8" of snow out of the 2nd floor. The weather broke to a comfortable temperature and we worked a good strong day. The love poured forth as 6 of my buddies showed and we tore it up getting the roof fully sheathed by days end.

Oh and there were some unsafe acts of construction including but not limited to walking on snowy roofs, almost shooting Joe with the nailgun, sawing towards myself, aiming the nailgun at my heart and using a ladder that was far too short to get off the roof.

Thanks to Keith, his son Keith, Joe, Jack, Andreas and Tiley-T! Awesome work guys.
One 'frustration' that I'm still not used to is all the "custom" work that needs to be done. Ive probably had my hand in 150 new homes with the Habitat for Humanity. And when you build everything from the ground up, everything is plumb, straight, square, and level. As a result everything can be cut ahead, and things fall into place with very little modification. With this house it is quite the opposite, Every part is custom to make it fit or look correct. I'm getting used to it, but I just need to add 50% time for any task on a new house.

Another interesting and very unexpected event happened today at the house.....The previous owner showed up. She and her husband pulled up and jumped out of thier vehicle and greeted me with exuberance. She was overcome by the changes and seemed overjoyed. It sounded like she owned the house perhaps from 1990 until recently. She was happy to see the house getting new life.

I did feel a little awkward though as I did buy the property from a bank, meaning that it was foreclosed on her. I don't know the circumstances, I think she had other properties but I don't know. I also felt strange since I basically tore any 'newer' work she had done up, I trashed her garden, cut down some trees she had planted and tore off the relatively new roof. (although it had FIVE roofs on it, not good for hte structure by any means.).

Anyhow my fear and hesitation was overcome by her genuine friendliness. I showed her through the house and she and her husband were ecstatic at the work that had been done. I gave her my card an the link to the blog so she could read up on it.

And interesting thing she mentioned was that she had it featured in the metro times on the cover in the early 1990's. I'm going to do some archival research to see what I can learn from that.

Anyhow, great day.

Full....Speed......Ahead.......

2008-02-25T01:12:00.006-05:00

I know most house bloggers like to go on about their projects....but I think these pictures speak for themselves. Oh I got excited because I reused some floor joists from the first floor in the roof....that's all I got.

Forward Ho!

2008-02-23T23:11:00.005-05:00

Note tiger stadium in all it's majesty!

Permitted!

2008-02-20T17:26:00.010-05:00

I am permitted by the City of Detroit to work on my house!!! Only a scant 8 months late!

You know I hate bureaucracy. I would rather have someone smack me in the teeth with an axe or jump into a pool of double sided razor blades or have a porcupine fall out of a tree onto my face then deal with it. But this time it was unavoidable.

Let me share with you the 10 easy steps to obtaining a building permit in the CoD!

Step1: Get your application approved by a lady who moves slower then a sloth that has been sedated by a heavy tranquilizer. Make sure that for every mistake or unclear part of your application she scoffs at you and takes a heavy sigh then proceeds to move 10% slower.. Restrain yourself from jumping over the counter and processing the application 10 times faster then she can-even though you have no idea how to do it.

Step2: Go to zoning approval, wait for 40 minutes without anybody acknowledging your presence or your dignity for simply being a human.

Step3: Have a habitat friend who frequently deals with building and safety come in for permits right behind you. (Bonus!) After talking a little have her let you know that she went to high school with the 2 zoning reviewers! Then have her put in a few good words with one as he takes your case!(Double points)

Step4: Concede your garages proximity to the lot line because of Detroit zoning, even though it meets the State of Michigan building codes. (Go back one space)

Step5: Have zoning reviewer pull some "funny math" to allow for your oversized garage by including the alley as part of your lot for area calculations. (Score!)

Step6: Head on over to structural engineering where a niece and uncle are being reamed on a simple structural wall. Dread the fact that your stack of 12 structural drawings will most likely be scrutinized for the next 3 hours as he picks over your 4-ply LVLs, flangeless hangers, and other unconventional framing techniques.

Step7: Get approved for structural in 4 minutes by telling the engineer you are just putting on a "dormer" when he asks for clarification. Have him stamp your entire stack of papers (13 drawings) after only looking at the top 2 drawings. Lunchtime? (move ahead 2 spaces!)

Step8: Go to final approval. Watch another lady take your paperwork-ask you nothing-type on a computer for ten minutes then exclaim "oh-snap!".....and wonder what that means... After she returns she'll give final approval and stamp off every drawing individually that nobody has really looked at save the zoning reviewer. (proceed to the end)

Step9: Shell out a big chunk of money for worthless paperwork and documents with fancy seals and signatures on them. (pay banker)

Step 10: Obtain building permits!

I make light of it, but it is a horrible situation. The building department should really be trying to understand what you are doing instead of trying to process you and take your money. The system is really set up for people to try and hide things and cheat instead of being upfront about what they want to build in the city of Detroit. I really wish they would look at peoples desire to build as an investment for the city and try to work closer with them for structural greatness.

Anyhow i'm not sad that I won't be back there anytime soon-for I possess the fancy official paperwork.

Day four

2008-02-18T20:04:00.006-05:00

I'm beat. Four days straight of working on the house and I'm ready to take a couple off. Despite the cold and the rain though we really did get plenty done.

Definitely a big thanks to all who came out. I had 3 people on friday, NINE on saturday, 6 on sunday, and 2 on monday for a grand total of TWENTY 'volunteer days' on the house put in by my guys...oh and girl. (thanks jodi)

A wickedly out of shape ridge board was the biggest hurdle that is still not 100% solved. Somehow I managed to screw the roof up so it will no longer mate with a straight ridge. I'm sure it can be pulled back in with some "finesse"(read: sledgehammer/cum-along).

I think I'm looking to make another push towards the roof next saturday/sunday...so if anybody reading is free....

I need to make special mention of this guy Dan. He came out all 4 days and risked life and limb for the project. But I'm not supposed to let it get out that he is the super good guy that he really is. So if anybody asks, he is a big jerk.

Day three still going strong....

2008-02-17T22:57:00.008-05:00

A little wet and icy in the Detroit today.

You find out who your friends are.....

2008-02-16T21:23:00.006-05:00

...is what some people say in your times of need.

It goes without saying that I'm a blessed man.

we made a hole

2008-02-15T22:01:00.010-05:00

it is not a small hole.

Thanks to Larry, Tiley and Dan!

Thank You!

2008-02-11T22:57:00.000-05:00

First off let me apologize. I was trying to make the drawing only black and white to make it easy to fill. In my haste I left it greyscale making it difficult to work with.

But let me thank you for all your efforts! They are great. My design instinct is to gravitate to a single idea strongly. But it inhibits me from seeing the possibilities.

There is an overwhelming presence of moderate brownish colors for the body of the house with some nice colorful accents!

While I have already submitted a set of colors to historical, that was merely a placeholder and as long as I stick to the historical palate, a color change is a no work issue.

Enough of me, here are the houses!

Oh and there just maybe might be some interesting things happening this week...

Ash Thursday

2008-02-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Ash Wednesday signified the start of the Christian season of lent. The Lenten season consists of repentance of evil ways, soul searching, fasting, penance and it climaxes with the death and resurrection of Christ. And all of this is for the chance at salvation and redemption from ones sins and past wrongs.

Lent is a serious time for me that can often be trying in times of prayer and contemplation.

I have a feeling that the house will follow this trend through my lent. Things are about to get very serious. My historical permits will be granted next week, and I will submit for building permits immediately following. The truth is that I'm not going to wait for my permits to clear to start external work. Things will accelerate inside and out.

Sometimes making small steps on the house can be as good as making big ones. When I bought my house it had be repossessed. This was shown by the fact the door had been kicked in, and eye bolts were used to lock the door shut. It was obvious that the repo team did not have the original keyset, so they used the lock box itself to hold the door shut through the eye bolts. Today I took those eye bolts out and somehow it signified to me progress and the healing of one more scar this house had.

Trusty Andreas and Andrew made their way to the house tonight where we braced the cross gable and removed the rest of the ceiling joist. Most of them had heavy fire damage on the north end. During this deconstruction the details of the fire became more evident. To me it appears to of been a creosote fire that started either in a stove or in the chimney itself. We tore down the ashy boards until there was little evidence left of the fire.

Probably the last day I will have to walk away from the house with black snot.

I have 4 more structural drawings to complete before next wednesday, wish me well!

BLAAAAAH.....

2008-02-01T12:34:00.000-05:00

I'm not one for Bureaucracy. I avoid it if possible, but in order to make this project happen I have had to undergo the most bureaucratic litnay ever such as

Buying the house/Affidavit of compliance BSE
Vacant house insurance (difficult to get)
Bank loan
Title company
Historical NEZ property tax credit
Historical permits/Review by commission
Building and Safety Permits
State income tax credit program
and Potentially a rezoning process

Who knew building things required so much paperwork? I realize I brought it on myself but I have killed a small forest in order to document all this.

Anyhow I'm mid-stream in the Historical review. In general they are being pretty cool with me. I'm complying to 90% of their wishes by using wood windows, historical paint colors, historically approve materials and details etc. They are cool with my garage (even though planning might not like size/location). Sounds also like historical might completely pass my addition. But I do want to close off and move some windows and they are giving me a little bit of a rough time with that. As well as some skylight issues.

I really hope they see the fact I want to rehabilitate this property correctly and that they comprimise a little with me. I'm dumping a real amount of money in to fix the real problems. Not just cosmetic things. A lot of homeowners want deviations for vinyl windows or vinyl siding, they go in and cry about money issues and historical lets them. I'm hoping they will be cool.

One of my bigger issues is the east wall. There are 4 HUGE windows (biggest in the house) on it (2 up, 2 down). And that is a great facade.....Except they are 16" away from the next house. Two of them stare directly into walls of siding and Ghetto brick. One lines up with my neighbors window (so I can't be nature boy in that room) and the last one has a modest view.

So I'm asking to cover up the 2 rear windows and make one smaller and I'm already getting mild resistance about that. BLAAAAH.

I have a public hearing in 3 weeks where everyone who lives within 500ft of me can show up and complain about my garage, good thing I've only made friends and not enemies.

Building is on hold while the drawings get finished up. But things are going to kick into high gear near the end of February, so watch out!

Color your own adventure!!!

2008-01-25T10:00:00.001-05:00

While i'm off to the monastery to hangout with monks for the weekend.....

...YOU have a say in what my house ends up looking like! For those of you who are somewhat techy, copy this image and paint it in with the pallet provided!

please make sure to use the Historical
Color Guidelines.

When you are finished, email them to me at scott.robichaud@gmail.com and I'll post them!

Shady Architects

2008-01-23T01:33:00.000-05:00

My architect quit. Second time. I wonder if there is some class in architecture school like "how to flake out on your clients 210" or "stop returning phone calls 340".

The situation is that he wanted to do the whole operation without reporting it on his income tax. My bank requires a "waiver of lien" to cut checks to subcontracted work. (a very standard practice) and he didn't want to sign one so he dropped me. The waiver would of disappeared into a drawer and the irs wouldn't of been any wiser, but reporting income tax is his job-not mine.

His other concern was that he thought that the waiver of lien might alert his current employer that he was doing work on the side (which it wouldn't)

The great irony of the situation now is that if he wanted to recoup any of his losses he would have to sign a lien, the very thing he didn't want to do. Which in that case we might as well start working again.

Anyhow my time table is getting tight. I have until Monday to submit my paperwork for historical and 3 weeks to get the structural drawings done. I'm going to have to pull out an ace on this one. I'm going to have to put a call in to the only guy I know for absolute sure that will finish the drawings. My good friend Mr. DaMan.

Who is DaMan you ask?

I'M DA MAN!

It's been a while but I'm sure after a couple minutes with ye old drawing board and CAD I'll be back on track. The truth is I could of/should of done the drawings from the start. But I wanted some extra design insight and burden off my back so I could focus on construction. But at this point the direction is clear and pounding out the drawings shouldn't be bad.

He had produced 3 of the 4 elevations (though heavily inaccurate) they will suffice for the historical permits. A quick run to kinkos I used the "Mirror image" command and I had partially produced the opposite side of the house. A little white out and a few lines and I should be in business.

As for the structural I will pick up a house-cad program and push that stuff through. I was doing all the structural/framing design anyhow so it will go quick.

Bad day? nah. Some good, some bad. But you can be sure I'll be putting that money i'm saving towards a bigger garage.

In other news I had an excavation company out to quote me on replacing the water/sewer lines and I visited the window manufacturer, Kelly Windows, to ensure everything was in order to place my order.

Almost lost but found

2008-01-19T19:09:00.001-05:00

After a productive week with visits from Andrew Andreas and my father for a little labor, Saturday was spent in search of a bathroom door in preparation for framing up the bathroom next week. Which led me to my circuit of 3 architectural salvage stores in Ypsilanti, Toledo, and Detroit. This is to visit Materials Unlimited,
Toledo Architectural Artifacts INC., and
the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit respectively.

A trip to Materials Unlimited normally doesn't yield anything. While they have some pretty nice items, they are all high end restored pieces that are overpriced. But honestly this Colonial Revival (cira 1900s) chandelier caught and held my eye. I will have to keep this in the back of my head if I want to shell out for it.

Down to Toledo for my favorite of the three stores. I found this door, in not bad shape. At first I thought it was a 1910ish arts and crafts door because of the 3 lower horizontal panels. But upon closer inspection there are Egg and Dart details under the window, something an arts and crafts door wouldn't be caught with. So it must be late victorian-turn of the century. It will be the bathroom door, and yes I know there is a window in it. My guests will have to not be shy.
Another interesting note about this door is that it has spacers on the top, bottom and side indicating that it spent time in 2nd doorway that was too large for it. Time for it's 3rd use in it's life!

I had to have this Victorian ball and spindle fretwork. A Victorian staple.

After those great finds I skipped going to Detroit. While it is my town, honestly the Detroit store is newer and has more junk then architecture. BTW Say goodbye to the old sewer and water supply!

I'm an idiot.

2008-01-13T21:38:00.000-05:00

Or an evil genius. You choose.

Today I'm at the house alone and I'm pondering what my next task should be. At that point my eye catches the bathtub. It's upstairs and it's supposed to be downstairs. So I decide that I would attempt to wrestle said 300lb bathtub downstairs alone.

Either I have learned a lot about moving big objects during rehab, or I'm a lucky idiot. I put the tub on skids and rigged up a little belaying action. I don't know if it was the right friction on the stairs, or the tow strap or what. But it went so perfect that I was able to take this picture while holding on to the strap around my body with the other hand.

Other news? The floor is 70%+ Closed up. 100% at the site of the chimney accident. Also I have inventoried, denailed and cut every piece of lumber on site to useful dimensions....upstairs studs, downstairs studs, fireblocks and so on and so forth.

Another place, in another time. I'd know that face.....anywhere.

2008-01-11T16:22:00.000-05:00

When you are a real tough guy you rarely cry. You have an emotional stronghold to defend your emotions. I cry on average once a year. Maybe this is so that man can be strong for his wife, or that we are emotionally callus or who knows, but today my invincible exterior was penetrated for a second.

I haven't been able to find a historical photograph of my house. Asking neighbors, looking in historical photo collections and contacting authors of corktown books have come up empty. Until today.

Today I visited the Detroit Historical Commission for the first time. This is to start getting my business together for my historical permit. Lo and behold, they had a slide photograph from 1985-the year corktown was designated a historic district.

The lady at historical brought the slides out with a magnifying glass. I put them to my eye and I got a lump in my throat. My eyes might of even got a little misty.

I was really surprised. I wouldn't of thought that it could of changed that much from the 1980's. It's only been 22 years, but my how my girl has changed.

Some interesting things to note:

The most noteable thing is that the ghetto brick is fully on the house and falling off. I thought my house looked pretty bad when I bought it, but I have to say it looks even worse in these pictures.

The upper center decorations are in tact! This will really help me replicate them to restoration.

The original front door is present. Although badly damaged it appears to be a simple 2-panel.

The lower rails were replaced with boards. While not original, the current lower rails look better then this. I plan to recreate the original lowers.

There is a shack/garage in the rear.

The front windows were boarded up, an erie reminder of the darkness of the time.

2 large trees are missing today, one in the front yard, and one on the side.

And one of the most prominent changes is the rear 2nd floor. The roofline has a dormer lifted out provide headroom on the 2nd floor in the back-This will help my case when presenting to historical that I would like to bump out the roof there. There is also a small diamond shaped window in the rear. The house seems to extend about two feet more then today in the back.

Also you can see the lights from tiger stadium in the background. I probably went to a game that year!

The strange part is that 1985 isn't a very old photo for a 147 year old house. But I'll take it.

By the way, I didn't actually cry. I was able to force the lump back down into my throat...and maybe my eyes weren't misty, I could of gotten something in them from the magnifying glass (wink).

Deepher

2007-12-31T14:52:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately progress has been slow over the holiday season. Presents, family activities and sleeping have accrued a lot of time.

Right before the holidays I decided that for my brother's family I would make them a lamp. Last April my brother and I built a crib for his child. I took the extra wood and built a lamp that matches the crib in material and style. I think it turned out not bad.

What has been going on at the house? An unbelievable amount of hole-digging. I have dug more dirt in the last 2 weeks. And I have dug a lot in my day. Several classic examples I use to start digging a deep hole:

"No honey, I like your hair better when it was longer"

"I didn't say women are weak, I said they weren't strong"

"Did you gain a little winter-weight?"

I'm going to advise all the gentlemen not to use those methods.

But really there is some mystery in the back area of my house. There was a hack-job staircase going to the basement from outside of it, but you had to duck very low to get through the opening. After removing an amazing amount of dirt, I was surprised to find that it was bricked and paved at normal standing height. It appears at some point during the fire or fixing the water line that the extra dirt, along with a ton of garbage, was thrown into the stairwell and this hack job staircase was built over it. Who knows.

The "grey" line on the block wall represents where the staircase/dirt was piled up to. Now there is a nice recessed cavity to land a real staircase. Overall I'm guessing I moved over 120 wheelbarrows of dirt out of the area.

The sewer-line is the last digging project on site. I'm overjoyed.

John takes out a concrete footing as the crawlspace goes deeper

2007-12-23T18:29:00.001-05:00

Stolen!

2007-12-11T01:44:00.000-05:00

My parents enjoy history. I spent many of my childhood days in museums, battlefields, historic homes, historic government buildings, forts, ships, factories and the likewise. For many years of my life I thought all families spent the summer traveling up and down the coast visiting civil and revolutionary war battlefields. Note: Today they look like just "fields". (just kidding dad!)

Anyhow I spent a great deal of time at the Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum. I even was enrolled in several classes as a kid spending time at the tinsmith shop after hours making nutmeg grinders and candle holders. It's a pretty solid place for American history.

The Village is supposed to be "turn of the century" America. My house would fit in perfectly save the fact nothing significant happened there yet. Often after a long day of work and black snot from the 150 year old sawdust, the smell makes me think I'm at the village. Except I own it.

But in the 1930's the village took 2 houses from my street.

Henry Fords workshop at 58 Bagley* was where it all started for my company. Ford then rapidly expanded up to 688 Mack*, then to Piquette street, onto the revolutionary Highland park plant and then his crowning jewel of industrialization, the Ford Rouge plant. "58 Bagley" isn't easy to peg on a location because of the two street renumberings. My guess is that it was somewhere around where Bagley crosses 3rd street....present day MGM Casino. Also the street was "Baker" at the time all off this was happening. I shall investigate for you.

As much as I may or may not enjoy my job, I do feel a connection to "the old man" (as my grandfather would say) living on Bagley, having worked in the monster Rouge factory, and then in a historic Albert Kahn building that The Henry Ford recently absorbed, the former "Ford Powertrain Operations & Engine Engineering building or POEE".

The 2nd building was just down the street at Bagley and 20th. It's known as the Cohen Milinery. It is featured on the cover of the Corktown book that I mentioned several weeks ago. A good looking Victorian building again that the village probably moved in the 30's long before it would be missed. Today an empty lot sits next to the Matrix theater just down from the Mexican Village restaurant. It's a great example of turn of the century commercial space with some fancy brickwork that I would of enjoyed had it stayed a part of the neighborhood. Granted nobody really started noting the area as being historically significant until the 1970's. Long after the village had taken the buildings.

Check out the blog map!

*Note that 58 Bagley is a replica of the original building built with some original bricks from 58 Bagley Avenue duplex.

*Mack > Myrtle > Martin Luther King Blvd

Sweet Heat

2007-12-07T13:33:00.002-05:00

If you live in southeast Michigan you are probably thinking that I'm getting a bit cold these days as we are now operating below freezing for the high. But my good friend Andreas came through again with a furnace! He acquired this unit from our friend frank for his workshop, and he was nice enough to let me use it through the winter.

I temporarily turned my gas on to figure the unit out. After I got it working, I shut the gas of and I called up DTE to "have my gas turned on". This is how the conversation went.

Me: "I'd like to get my gas turned on"
DTE: "Okay. Let me just check, it appears it is already on"
Me: "Really? No seriously, it's off"
DTE: "Our records indicate your gas was turned on at the same time as the electrical"
Me: "Oh, you're right" (then I proceeded to hang up, get my wrench and turn the gas back on.)

Weird. I wonder if I will get a bill.

Anyhow the final phase of demolition has started. The house is essentially "3 additions" it seems. The original building consisted only of the first 20ft (1860?). Then the rest was added on at least by 1884, where a sanborn insurance map shows the house in it's entirety. At a later point the rear 1/3rd experienced a fire and was rebuilt. A neighbor tells me when they were a child, they remember the back half being caved in. So apparently the rear was "fixed" during the 80's. Now if you know anything about framing/construction this next picture will make you cry.

Even though it appeared "new" a quick look underneath and it was obvious that it all had to be rebuilt. The joist are overspan and shimmed with random materials from around the house. When I get through with it, it will be a tank.

Here is my rendition of what a 5 year olds rendition of the final product will look like! Enjoy!

More history.....

2007-11-29T23:59:00.001-05:00

Last week I posted about the new "Corktown" book published by Arcadia. It's great. I was able to get into contact with the author through the publisher! I emailed the publisher on sunday evening and by 9am Monday morning I had an email from Armando! I was hoping that in his research or connections he would be able to hook me up with a historic photograph of my house. Alas after about two weeks of asking around he was unsuccessful. But I very much appreciate the effort and promptness he gave me. Maybe there is a historic photo out there yet.

A couple months ago I went back to the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit public library and continued my earlier research. I just haven't gotten around to posting it.

One interesting thing I found is that the earliest owner (that I can find), Joseph Kingston, had a wife listed as "Eliza". He died in 1899 where the house changes into his wifes name. In 1904 it changes ownership to "Charles E. Rhodes" with wife "Eliza". Either a coincidence in names of Charles marries Eliza Kingston. Later on in 1941 Charles E. Rhodes is listed as being married to "Mary A". I'm tempted to explore the Catholic Church marriage records (which I know still exist in the Burton)

I'm a little sad to see the sparse amount of Detroit directories in the last 40 years. I would of expected them to be more complete. Where about 25% or more are missing. I'm sure I can find these records elsewhere when I have the time.

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.
1970-present	?	xxxx* Bagley	Sadly the Burton Directories get very sparse here. Although these might be electronic documents.
2005-2006	Bank of New York	xxxx* Bagley	Who I bought it from
2006-2007	This guy!	xxxx* Bagley	House gets a little redemption...

*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.

Digging myself into a hole...

2007-11-26T10:41:00.000-05:00

...something that I often do. Frequently with the ladies.

But this is a special hole. It's for the chimney and footing.

I like natural fireplaces. Nothing quite like a roaring log fire. Gas just doesn't do it for me. Everyone I've spoken to has suggested that to me and if one more person does, they might just get a surprise. But anyone who knows me, knows I'm all about the genuine. No fake beams, or imitation products or fake facades.

I'm looking forward to bricking this chimney though. I've never really done masonry and I'm looking forward to learning from my buddy Scott.

Anyhow it's a big hole that required a lot of digging by my brother Patrick and I. 4'd x 5'w x 4'd. It took a day and a half to dig.

Anyhow, my brother and said hole.

Saturday my old Habitat co-worker and buddy steve came over and we talked insuation strategy for the house and crawlspace. He loaded me up with plenty of good ideas to get the house tight.

Apparently I'm a spider... that weaves houses...

2007-11-24T00:35:00.000-05:00

Not much more to say really. More wood. More reenforcement of studs/rafters/ceiling joist/my belief that this project is completable.

Couldn't do this round without a little help from my friends Andrew, Andreas and Tom.

Tomorrow we dig the pit for the chimney footing, Sunday we start putting the floor back where the old chimney fell through, and Monday maybe rebar and pouring a footing.

peace my readers. More word content next time. I promise.

"Hey Bob, pass me the REALLY big nails....."

2007-11-17T09:59:00.001-05:00

This week after me friends helped me sister all the rafters, I cut in a ridgeboard. Building permits didn't start getting issued in Detroit until the 1880's. So things I would consider essential like a ridgeboard weren't always installed. It was a great project for a solo night. Jacking the massive 18' board into place was therapeutic and it went in without any problems.

Oh and a look ahead into the weeks to come! and the total number of roofs on the house comes to....FOUR! Black 3-tab, black rolled roofing, green hexagons (pretty cool) and pink 3-tab! During some initial exploratory surgery on the porch, it appears that it has more layers right down to the original shake shingles...I will let you know.

keeping pace...

2007-11-13T22:09:00.000-05:00

Pedal down...

2007-11-11T20:50:00.001-05:00

A lot of framing has been-a-going on. And I don't see letting up. I love it.

Sorry about all the pictures and not so much talk. Should be some more history and maybe some explanation of what is going on shortly.

Did I ever mention how much it tickles me to see my truck loaded up with lumber?

By the way a book on Corktown came out this week from

Arcadia publishing. Plenty of historic pictures and information!

Joist

2007-11-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

Beam round 2

2007-11-04T20:56:00.002-05:00

It's been a productive week. The heartache of deciding to rebuild a 3rd of the 2nd floor is sitting well after a lot of progress.

Friday and Saturday I built up the 2nd beam. with dimensions of 7"w x 14"h x 20'l. Weighing in at over 600lbs, it's a serious beam.

And while Tuesday night Andreas, Andrew and I muscled the smaller beam (400 lbs) into place, my sore shoulder was telling me that we would work smart with this one and not kill ourselves.

John Roos, Dan Garan, 4 saw horses, 3 ratchet-straps, 2 ladders, a 40 ton jack, a half million chunks of lumber, a nail gun, 3 clamps, a sawzall, a staircase and a 55 gallon drum of ingenuity later and the massive beam was set.

All sorts of things

2007-11-01T08:32:00.000-05:00

Devils night.

"What is devils night?" you might ask if you aren't from the metro Detroit area....

Let me translate for you. In your area it may be referred to as "Cabbage night" or "Gate night". If you are from Quebec you would call it "Mat night" and you are planning to steal your neighbors doormat.....

It's a night that has a lot of history for Detroit.

It has been said that it can be tracked back as far as the 1890's where kids would play small pranks on neighbors. Up through the 1960's it consisted of ringing doorbells and leaving, egging houses, toilet pappering trees, soaping car windows, lighting bags of dog poop on fire on peoples front porch steps and small other harmless pranks.

But in the 70's it took a turn for the worse and the world would watch to see Detroit set itself on fire. Houses, Cars and piles of debris were all targets. By 1984 the fire department would report 810 fires during the 3 days leading up to halloween.

There is a debate over this. Some firefighters say the numbers were higher, while records show up to half of those were plies of debris and cars and not houses. There is also a lot of dispute as to if these fires were set by teens and gangs, or by people from the suburbs that owned vacant detroit houses and wanted the fire insurance money.

Anyhow the city was sick of burning itself down so it took action. It mobilized "angels night" recruiting tens of thousands of volunteers to take to the streets to patrol. It asked people to adopt abandoned buildings to watch. The city imposed a curfew of 6pm on devils night for minors. It also set a $500 fine for anybody filling a portable gasoline container in the 4 days prior to "devils night". These actions severely reduced the number of fires in the 90's....

...With the exception of 1994. Statistically it sticks out as an increase of fires and this is inversely reflected in the amount of effort the city led to recruit volunteers and promote protecting the city.

On a normal day detroit has 40 real fires and 20 false alarms. This devils night fell below this daily average thanks to the residents that care about their city. Owning an "abandoned" house in Detroit I had a slight amount of worry, but after researching recent history I had no concern and was confident leaving my house after a long night of work.

I am beaming.

Tuesday night was a good night for me. We built up and installed a very large beam. 5.25" wide, 14" tall and 18' 2.5" long. There was some difficulty getting it into place at first. And let me tell you, the anticipation of the burden of guilt for killing two of your close friends and yourself is not easy to deal with.

But Andreas and Andrew manned up and we lifted this sucker into place and it looks awesome. They are my best friends ever. I bought them dinner and may have to buy them lower back surgery in the future. MASSIVE BEAM!!!!

P.S. the 2nd beam is wider, longer and heavier. (are you busy this weekend?)

Oh and I passed out candy at my house and stuff for the childrenz on the halloween.

happy all saints day!

My Barn.

2007-10-19T22:02:00.000-05:00

The rehabilitation process isn't always easy on the heart. A lot of times I find it's a two step forward, one step back operation. At some point you will think you've done all the demolition you were planning, then the next day you'll rip down more of the house and feel farther behind.

I struggled with if I should rebuild the 2nd floor in the original building. The floor joists were 2"x6" and had an 18' span. By today's code they should of been twice that depth. When working with floor joists if you double the depth you increase the strength by 4x. So basically they were a quarter of what they should of been in strength. Added to that is the fact someone had pulled up the floor boards and cut a notch in them for a gas light line reducing the strength even more (down to effectively a 2"x4").

After a long struggle with it I realized that it had to go.

And that is where I almost killed myself.

I realize I titled the section "Scott almost kills himself, #1" but it's probably more like #4.

Anyhow my good friend Andreas and I ripped out the subfloor planks. I walked out on the joists to pull a couple last boards. I stepped on one that happened to have a knot on the opposite side of the notch and it gave out from underneath me.

Now I've worked on constructions sites for the last 6 years and I credit my survival to that. As soon as the joist gave out everything went slow motion and I was able to spread my arms out and catch myself by the remaining joists. Sans a couple scratches up my side and arm from the nails I was uninjured.
Anyhow Andreas came back this week and we removed all the joist. So now I live in a barn. It's 18' wide, 22' long and 16' tall. I really need some cattle.
Andreas and I set a new ribbon for the new joist height and called it a day with some mexican food at the Mexican Village Restaurant.

My architect has some AWESOME designs for the replacement floor though...so stay tuned.

Beyond the new demo. A vacation day led me down to Toledo to a store called Toledo Architectural Artifacts Where I went in search for some doors. I found 2 awesome front door sets that I fell in love with. It will come down to cost and historic approval.

I did buy 4 2-panel interior doors for $80 a piece that are beautiful. Now for the educational part.

The doors are Shellaced which I want to remove. I was informed by the owner of Toledo Architectural Artifacts that Shellac is excreted from the "lack beetle" and denatured alcohol is it's solvent. I was told to use denatured alcohol and a #3 steel wool. It works very effectively. What else I found was that the denatured alcohol works so well that I put it on and actually use a squeegee to take it off. VERY EFFECTIVE. Anyhow...doors.

Scott almost dies working on his house #1

2007-10-12T17:10:00.001-05:00

Batten down the fort...

2007-10-10T20:59:00.002-05:00

Detroit, if you don't know it, has a slight history of crime. If you were unfamiliar with that, just ask every single person who tried to convince me not to move into the city.

So there is some evidence that this house may have been broken into in the past. A couple things that lead me to believe this is
1) The basement stairway had a solid-core oak door that locked from the upstairs. As if someone was scared of a crawlspace/basement entry.
2) One basement window had a metal mesh on it that had been cut away from the outside. And the other window was just gone.

Not that the window would of stopped anyone. The frame was so rotten that I pushed the entire assembly out with one arm.

The other opening had a sheet of paneling adheared with spray form insulation that a mild breeze could pushed out.

A couple cuts of wood, galvanized some screws, glass blocks, silicone sealant and a few hours later and the basement is locked down. And man those suckers are in there good. Anyone attempting to break in might as well try something else.

I'm not disillusioned with the fact that crime in Detroit is real and more prevalent then where I've lived before. I might get broken in to truck or house. But I have a 3 pronged attack for dealing with it this ever looming problem.

1) Not have anything cool or let myself get too attached to my stuff.
2) Lock down the house as well as I can without making it feel like a prison.
3) I've joined the neighborhood watch so we can all watch each others backs and lower the instance of crime in Corktown.

Oh and then there was the time we moved 48 wheelbarrow loads of pea stone into the crawlspace to prep for a slab.

Oh and one very last thing. I have to give a shout out to the Detroitblog.org

I noticed this week that he linked to me and I consider this a bit of an honor. When I was deciding where to move when I came back to michigan his blog played a pretty instrumental part in convincing me to move to the city. If you get a chance check out his blog and archives. He has a pretty deep understanding of the city, it's history and some awesome photographs of places the rest of us only wish we had the guts to go to.

How weird would gas lighting of been?

2007-09-30T21:49:00.001-05:00

Awesome Finds.

2007-09-25T13:10:00.000-05:00

Things got off track with the house starting a couple months ago.

I'm looking to get a special tax credit for investing money into a historically designated house. In order to get this credit you must abide by specific architectural standards. I got a lead on an architect who not only knew all the standards, but sat on the committee that passed them. I thought this was perfect.

So in July I got this guy Brian Hurtienne, who does a lot of local work, to walk through the house with me. He did and I asked him if he wanted the job. He said yes, but asked me if we could wait until mid-August to start. No problem, I still had other things to deal with.

Apparently he really didn't want the job because he did the professional thing and just stopped returning my phone calls for 4 weeks. Nice work Brian.

Anyhow it worked out in some respects because I found another architect who is much more in tune with my design ideas anyhow and willing to try some radical things. Beyond that he is very open to my suggestions. Some architects consider thier designs their children and do not want to comprimise them. My new guy is open to exploring all the options.

In addition to that awesome find, my architect was able to hook me up with some architectural details that I personally would consider priceless.....but more on that later.

Speaking of design, any color combination suggestions???

She's a brick......house

2007-09-12T20:17:00.001-05:00

No not really, but someone in the past apparently thought it could pass for one. Only one side of my house has these panels remaining on it. Only a couple hundred square feet at that.

My question is why? They are ugly, they absorb water like a sponge, and by it's architecture it's obviously not a brick structure. I bet James slater put them on.

But at some point it appears to have been a trend. Potentially the 50's or 60's? I'm still researching this. Sadly, many of the Corktown houses still sport these faux brick facades in entirety. Luckily it seems one comes down every couple months, the nails being pulled, filled in and the houses are returning to their natural wood siding finishes.

They come off relatively easy with a flatbar. The nails pull through the water-soaked material and you can get them off generally in full pieces. Also i'd been warned that they panels potentially have asbestos in them. So wear a respirator, better safe then sorry.

Look at my next door neighbors house, am I really supposed to believe that only the sides of this house are brick?? 'Tis a shame that such a beauty must wear such an ugly coat.

What Once Was

2007-09-07T20:16:00.000-05:00

This is a map of my street from 1899. It's from a collection known as the "Sanborn Maps" from an insurance company by the same name. Little did they know at the time that their scrupulous documentation of structures and streets would be honored assets by historians, urban planners and genealogists.

As you can see every inch of the street has houses on it. Today out of these 28 structures, only 4 remain. #106, #110, #130, and my house #132. I can't even fathom looking out from my front porch to see all of those magnificent Victorian homes in their prime in the late 1800's. But I guess I will have to be thankful that mine was saved.

Ironically not only saved, but my house is now protected by the National Park Service.

Beam me up Scotty! / "No, not "leveled" it as in "tore it down" as in "made it parallel to the earth""

2007-08-23T10:08:00.000-05:00

Real construction begins.

Residential structures around the world very in construction techniques. They also vary in time.

Post-mid evil house construction in Europe centered around a method known as "Post & Beam" construction. Basically the structure is a series of large posts for vertical (walls) elements and beams for horizontal elements (floors, ceilings). The large posts carry the weight of successive floors, roofs and ceilings. The spaces in between these large elements were filled in with "curtain walls" that are non-load bearing.

North America and Australia have historically used a framing convention known as "Light framing". In light framing, instead of using large posts to carry loads, smaller, lighter "shear walls" are used to carry them. A shear wall normally is a light frame of studs that is then sheathed in a thin plywood or OSB. This sheathing gives it rigidity from coming out of square and able to support vertical loads.

Anyhow my house is a combination of these methods. While most of the house is "light framed" the crawlspace is beam construction. And because some hoser let their plumbing leak for many many years, a 6 1/2" square beam rotted out. This beam carries a wall that carries the second floor that carries a wall that carries the roof. It might be the most load bearing beam in the house.

Okay to the updates.

-My awesome friend Tim helped me dismantle the 2nd chimney without incident.

-My awesome friends Andrew and Jessica helped me build a temporary wall and remove before-mentioned wall and beam.

-My awesome friend Bob helped my level the structure with a laser over the course of 2 days. The whole structure is now within 3/8ths of an inch level. (note the porch is tearing itself away from the house because of how much we raised it!)

-My awesome friends Bob and Tom helped me re-frame before mentioned beam and wall

...cleaned out the crawl space (found a dead dog), started demo on the rear of the house, got my bank loan all in line, got temporary water on and did a little dusting...

Digging in the dirt

2007-08-18T21:21:00.001-05:00

I dig in the dirt for my house often. Normally it's in the crawl space, or on the stump of a tree I'm taking out. This week I did a different kind of digging. I went to the library...

Now most of you have never heard me utter those words. I've often proclaimed that I'd break out in some kind of rash if I got near it....I run cavalierly off the idea that most of the generic historic or modern information that I need is available on the internet. If I need specific I go to the source, such as a person. But in this case I ended up at the Detroit Public Library.

With my shiny new library card in hand (last time I got a library card I was in the 2nd grade) I headed off to the renowned Burton Collection. The Burton is a collection of history started by Clarence Monroe Burton in the mid 1800's. He personally collected for 40 years and then donated it all to the DPL in the early 1900's, including the building he kept it in. It is very extensive including books, directories, papers, pamphlets, photographs, maps and just about anything you'd want to get your paws on.

You can feel it's eminence as you walk into the room.

I only had a couple hours to search as I was going to meet a friend later that day. I thought that was all I would need to find out about a dinky house deep in a neighborhood. Boy was I wrong. This is what I found.

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
Late 1900's	James T. Slater	xxxx* Bagley	No information

*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.

Sadly my research ended there as I had to dash out the door. But it's obvious at this point there is a lot of information and a lot to learn. I would like to know more about Joseph Kingston and if he built/had the house built. I'd like to know if Charles Rhodes built the addition to the house himself...and I have a few choice words for his family about the plumbing placement...hahahaha. I plan on making it through all the directories to make a complete list of residents, even the insurance fraud in the early 2000's that I've been told of.

I really want to know about the fire, when/why. What did the building originally look like perhaps? There are additional footings behind the house. It could of been even longer then it currently stands today.

The original paperwork I got said the house was 1895 which is now busted. It's at minimum 1865, making it AT LEAST 142 years old, and possibly up to 156 years old. There are a lot more resources to hack through though. Including the rest of the directories, death records, obituaries in the Detroit Freepress & News, the Sanborn fire insurance maps, building permits, photographs etc....

There is a little part of me that hopes some person decades from now is looking through the Burton and sees my name in a long list of Detroiters.....

My other house....

2007-08-11T07:09:00.000-05:00

It's been two and a half weeks since I've been at the homestead. I'm feeling a little uneasy about that.

Two weeks ago I had to go on a work trip to Palm Springs and Arizona for hot weather testing, which turned out to be a total waste of time. Not something for this blog.

Last week Habitat for Humanity Detroit, an organization I'm pretty involved with, had a "blitz" of twelve houses. I was responsible for one of the houses. It turned out pretty not bad...

I've led many of these houses in past builds, but this one was was better then most. I had a close group of my personal friends for crew leaders, a fantastic sponsor, amazing volunteers, and most of all an awesome family partner.

By far it is the best house i've ever built with habitat. The quality of the work is top notch, and in the extra time I had I was able to experiment with a cross gable and a sunburst on the facade.

Low income housing in the city of Detroit has been a passion of mine for a long time. See the thing is that all humans are born equal in dignity. Unfortunately they aren't all born with the same social status, or economic resources, or biases against them, or opportunities for growth.

And because of that I use the few skills and talents that i've been blessed with to try and level the playing field through Habitat for Humanity Detroit

Seriously, if we all help build each others houses, we'd all live in mansions.

Another great blitz and twelve brand spanking new houses in the great city of Detroit.

Now back to the dirty hole that is my lovely Corktown house.

"Some of those bricks went to China man"

2007-07-16T20:55:00.001-05:00

"Un-Be-freaking-lieveable"
"Aye..."
"A minor setback"
"frick"
"Two steps forward, one step back"
"Why you do me like that, baby?"
"so i had a bad day..."

I had a long time to think about the title of this entry on the drive home from the house today. But I don't think it could be more poetically said then by my good friend John Roos.

Let me explain.

I had a scary chimney. When I first bought this house I couldn't tell which wall it's foundation was behind. SIX WEEKS ago we did the initial demolition. After that day it was clearly evident that my scary chimney literally sat on a shelf in the living room. In addition it was what is known as an "offset chimney" which means in the attic it slight steps over before making it's exit through the roof. Mine was offset in two directions. It was unstable and would clearly need to be dismantled and rebuilt.

Yesterday at 3pm I locked up the house after a day of nail pulling and vacuuming with my friend Jessica. All was well with the house. At 4:14pm today I called John and asked him what day he wanted to take the chimney down. John said "Today is good, it's my day off". Perfect. I knew it had to come down before we started jacking the house to level it. Today would be great.

4:47pm I opened the door to see this:

Apparently the chimney wanted down faster then I was willing to take it down. I was in shock. A pile of rubble lay on the floor with splintered wood everywhere. Sometime in the last 24 hours the sucker came off it's shelf and hit the floor like a ton of bricks.....hahahaha i'm so funny. Nearly 20ft of brick chimney was now were in 2 piles one on each floor.

A 10'x18' section of the floor was crushed into the crawlspace and several of the 2nd story joist were cracked beyond repair. The stairs came off after a couple trips up and down them.

One odd thing was that the chimney above the roof line stayed in place. So much tar had been used for flashing that it literally held it in place and we had to disassemble that part at the roof.

It could of been worse. It could of taken out a huge chunk of the second floor, a structural wall, part of the ceiling, or a more structural part of the main floor.

It could of been A LOT worse. We could of been working on it and someone could of been severely injured or killed. My plan was to "reinforce" it before we started the disassembly. Who knows, that could of been enough to set it off. Maybe it was a huge blessing after all.

The cause? Who knows. There was a storm that night, but like I said, the part above the roof line was untouched. I hadn't worked or done any major pounding in that area. It had stood for over six weeks unscathed. Who knows. I did leave the radio on country that night...that could of had something to do with it. Anyhow it's down. It is a setback, but not a horrid one and nobody got hurt.

But I have to admit it bought a smile to my face when John walked in and said "Some of those bricks went to China man"

It probably wasn't bugging you...

2007-07-12T00:20:00.001-05:00

...but it sure was bugging me. I had to bring my mirror within 2 inches of it everyday backing into the backyard. My 40' crab apple is now a short stump.

My friend Andreas wants a look at the trunk to see if he can't carve something out of it. Well I have a couple hundred pounds of trunk Andreas, I hope your miniva.....I mean "Man-Van" can handle it.

Dawn of a new day

2007-07-02T12:51:00.000-05:00

In 1805 Detroit, like all good North American cities of the 19th century, burned to the ground. (Chicago 1871 , Pittsburgh 1845, Cincinnati 1866, Toronto 1904) The early layout of Detroit was a simple grid, starting as a French outpost "Ford Pontchartrain du Detroit". Centuries before urban planning or greenspace existed the gird is what naturally came to order. After the 1805 fire though the leaders of the city took a step back and considered using this tragedy as an opportunity for something better.

Michigan territorial judge Augustus B. Woodward came up with a plan that would consist of a series of diagonal boulevards that would intersect at plazas, giving the city a very dynamic feel. This idea was taken from Washington D.C., which ultimately got it from the French.

While the entire plan wasn't followed though on due to property issues, a lot of it was. And because of that today we have things like Grand Circus park, Washington Blvd, and Cadillac square. The layout forces beautiful greenspace, interesting shaped buildings and enjoyable walkability.

Toronto rebuilt a grid, and during the 6 months I lived there, I never found a part that I enjoyed as much as the angled streets of Detroit.

My house like Detroit appears to have suffered at least 3 fires by looking at the structure. It appears that a large fire in the rear of the house was responsible for it's non-period roof. While the walls in the back date to the late 19th century framing, the floor, roof and 2nd floor date as post 1922 lumber. A stove or chimney fire perhaps? There are plenty of char-marks along the floor in the rear upstairs rooms to assume this is what happened.

I plan to restore the rear roofline to a period architecture by adding a room in the rear of the 2nd floor to take the roofline to a full 2nd floor height.

At this point the house is an open canvas. Like Detroit there are some things I won't be able to change like structural walls, sewer, and architectural details on the outside. But I am going to use these constraints much like the planners of Detroit to make this structure the most magnificent it's been in it's 112 year history. This phoenix will rise from the dust.

(P.S. "Dawn of a new day" is a reference to a metal song mike wrote for our band in 1993)

Rub A Dub Dub, a heavy cast iron tub.

2007-06-24T08:43:00.000-05:00

Pay Dirt

2007-06-13T06:54:00.000-05:00

Round two of gutting the house was this weekend. After the awesome showing the previous week and only one confirmation with the weekend approaching, I wasn't sure we'd finish. But my friends pulled it out again. There were five of us this weekend, but we had John Roos. And for those of you who don't know him, he is the equivalent of 3 or 4 men, that is when he is trying to walk off a broken leg.

"Stop shoveling, I see money on the floor!!!!"

Things get intense in the house. Shovels are flying, wheelbarrows are rolling and the dust is so thick it's very hard to see a couple feet. Somewhere in the confusion Jessica was able to spot some green on the floor. It was $95 that someone had slipped inside the wall. The earliest bill was dated 1934....amidst the depression. I ran an inflation calculator on it to find that the equivilant today would be around $1400. I'm glad Jessica found it for she was out both weeks and came back even knowing how dirty of a job it was.

Also during the day someone shoveled up a battery powered smoke detector. It ended up in the dumpster and every time we'd dump another dusty load in it would go off. It was pretty funny.

Thanks to everyone who came out both weekends: Andreas, Bob, Dan, Jessica, Joe, JohnR, JohnT, Don, Larry, Scot, and Scott. Now for the fun part: to reconstruct.

Also I have to give some respect to my soft-spoken friend Syl. Over the last two weeks he helped me fell a very branchy 40' crab apple tree in the backyard. It had several limbs over the house power lines and he is the only man I trust to figure out how to get them down. The man can cut a hinge into a branch to make it land on a dime.

Over the years at habitat we've taken dozens of large trees down together, one we estimated at 95'. He is a great man and I'm honored to work beside him and be his friend. Thanks Syl!

Genuine Friendship

2007-06-04T14:43:00.000-05:00

There is a little bit of screwyness going on with the legal side of the house, but i'll catch you up on that later.

Corktown was primarily built and inhabited by the Irish, but at the turn of the century a handful of Maltese men moved into the neighborhood. In the following years and many of their fellow countrymen joined. There is a saying about a house like mine where every piece of trim, door or window has been painted over time and time again. It's locally known as a "Maltese Makeover". Well, we fixed that.

Demolition has started on the house. Last week I spent about 10 hours over two days tearing down the second floor. I was amazed at the mess it made and was intimidated on how long it might take to remove it.

The walls are made out of all kinds of things. A majority of the house is plaster and wood lathe. Some is drywall over lathe, some is a later plaster over wire mesh, and a couple places are painted luan. I thought there might be some smart way to go about removing it, but it turns out that a sledge hammer or maxdox and a lot of brute force is the best way.

So I sent out a simple email asking if anybody could help me unload it. The response was overwhelming. I quickly got 8 definite yeses and quite a few regrets with the promise of future help.

Let me explain, these aren't ordinary people.

The 8 were from a group known as the "Detroit Habituals". It's a group of regular volunteers at the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate. It's a group of about 70 people who give thousands of hours of their time every year. They are master carpenters and craftsman who can build entire houses without consulting a book or blueprint. They have the strength and stamina to work a long hard day on the most remedial task without the incentive of pay. And these traits pale only in comparison to the size of their gigantic hearts and belief that every one of God's people deserves a decent, safe and affordable place to live.

When it comes down to the wire and your back is against the wall, the Detroit Habituals are the kind of people you want to have in your corner.

The crew didn't work themselves out of energy, rather they worked themselves out of a dumpster. All 30 yards were filled in a matter of hours. The second floor was sqeaky clean down to the framing that probably hadn't seen daylight in 100 years. The first floor is waist high in debris just waiting for another dumpster.

Thanks again guys.

Restoration in Mexicantown

2007-05-02T09:55:00.000-05:00

I love Detroit. Did I mention that? I love the neighborhoods. They are diverse. They each have their own individual history, culture, architecture, customs, shapes, families, trees, festivals, ethnicities, and colors. Yet they all come together to make one Detroit.

Growing up the suburbs I never knew about what a neighborhood really was. Canton Township was long tracks of cookie cutter homes in lazy curving streets of subdivisions that were confined to the grid that was laid out by the Land Ordinace of 1875. Next to these subdivisions were expansive farms.

Every year the subdivisions would eat away at the farms claiming another grid square. With each aggressive annexation the houses would get larger and uglier. The farmers were unfairly treated as their land was taxed for the value that it would be worth if it was covered in houses. They had no choice but to sell. Developers raked in the money with bland generic houses in townships that had no city-center, master layout plan or identity.

Anyhow back to the neighborhoods of Detroit. To the east of Corktown is Downtown, or the "CBD" (Core Business District) as locals call it. To the north a neighborhood formerly known as "Briggs Neighborhood" that has now been absorbed into "North Corktown" to protect it from large urban renewal projects like Woodbridge Estates, where entire neighborhoods are leveled for new housing. Although it's in very rough shape and missing many houses the recent addition of 30 infill houses are bringing revival to the area. And to the West is Mexicantown.

Unfortunately Mexicantown took a serious blow in the late 1960's. The freeway system needed to get to the Ambassador bridge to make itself complete. And the best way they found was right through the heart of Mexicantown.

I-75 was merciless yeilding to no house, business or church. So Mexicantown was divided into two halves. The mainstreet of Bagley was severed. And while both sides suffered with Detroit, the east side was especially hit hard. It seemed like the two sides would forever be apart only connected by the overpassing street of Vernor.

If you've ever been to Mexicantown, you know it's a happening place. It has a vibrant culture and nightlife. There are a lot of significant places including St. Annes church, The Ambassador bridge, Bagley Housing Corp, the Honeybee market and the Matrix theater. It has a bright future, but the old wound of I-75 is still present.

This year MDOT confirmed that it would build a pedestrian bridge across I-75 on Bagley. More then that it will be a slick-art-cable-stay type bridge in part to serve as a gateway for people coming over the bridge.

After 40 years Mexicantown gets some restoration.

This bridge is going to be 2 blocks from my house and frankley, I can't wait. In addition to the bridge a welcome center and mercado are being erected on Bagley for visitors and to support a possible second bridge crossing. (scary)

Caged

2007-04-23T07:59:00.000-05:00

Although I haven't closed on my house I do feel one step closer to it. The reason being that this weekend I finished off another project that was on my plate. See my brother is reproducing and his kid needed a cage....er some people call it a "crib". Had I closed on time this would of been eating away at my focus on the house. I'm sure my brother is going to post more on it at his "baby blog" over at the BabyChaud.

It was my first piece of fine finished furniture and I learend a lot along the way. I plan to build a shop into my house and produce most of the houses furniture from it. Here it is and a goofy picture of me.

The chance at Salvation

2007-04-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

In 1834 the the Roman Catholic church recognized the need to serve the people of downtown Detroit with a church of their own. St. Anne's (1701) was a French speaking church ~~in southwest~~ downtown (it didn't relocate to soutwest until 1886) , and Assumption Grotto (1832) was a German speaking parish serving the needs of the farmers up on the east side. And thus was born Most Holy Trinity, Detroits first English speaking parish at the intersection of Porter and 6ths street to serve the Irish and German people of Downtown/Corktown. It was and still is today a cornerstone of the community. (Literally the south east corner)

Well God was in high demand and MHT parish was busting at the seams. As seen in the above picture from 1875. Notice all the horse drawn carriages and the continuity of Porter street. This same year MHT became the first Catholic church to get electrical light fixtures.

So in 1865 St. Vincent de Paul parish was founded a mere 3,500ft away. But that wasn't enough. In 1869 St. Boniface was founded 1000ft north of St. Vincent de Paul and next to Navin Field. St. Boniface was the third German church spun from St. Marys downtown.

These three parishes flourished as communities each with a school, packed to the teeth every Sunday.

But communities change like the tides. The Michigan Central Station across from St. Vincent was erected in 1913 eating away at the neighborhood. Then the expressways cut through and the south half of Corktown was cleared for a commercial/industrial area. MHT was barely being grazed by the construction of the Lodge freeway. Corktown was became a slum. The churches were no longer packed. In fact they had a hard time sustaining, and then came a day when they couldn't.

In 1965 Archbishop John Dearden closed St. Vincent and the structure was soon demolished. The only building that remains is the newer high school building on 14th street.

So St. Vincent sacrificed itself for the greater community and moved in with St. Boniface. At this point St. Boniface was serving the Maltese, Latinos and 50 Native American Mohawk. But St. Boniface couldn't fight the dark times of the 1970's and '80s in Detroit. In 1989 the AOD closed an astounding 31 parishes. St. Boniface Among them. It met with the wrecking ball a few short years later and today is an empty lot like so many of the great structures of Detroit.

This brings us back full circle to MHT. Today it serves what is left of Corktown. It is one of the cornerstones for the revival of the area and spends much time in outreach to the community (which will be covered in the future!). MHT still runs a school which the young couples of the area send their children to. With the dedication and love rooted strong in faith of 200 years, I think that Detroit might just have a chance at salvation.

P.S. I haven't closed on my house due to the title company not finishing their search. Whoever said that patience was a virtue obviously wasn't buying a house. Hopefully within the next two weeks.

Corktown

2007-04-06T21:50:00.000-05:00

It's Good Friday. A very important day in the world of Christianity. The day that God sacrificed himself for all our wrongdoing against one another.

Not so good is the fact I didn't close. The selling bank said that the title company wasn't finished yet with their work. My guess is that the selling bank started the title company late. So far they have been a pretty big pain to deal with. They have been uncommunicative, late, and demanding. It sounds like they are just a clearing house for foreclosed homes. Anyhow, my favorite part is where the little guy works through the big guys bureaucracy to overcome and prevail.

Anyhow. A little more about the neighborhood of Corktown. It's Detroits oldest standing neighborhood. Most of the houses are from the 1850-1900 period. Being that Detroit was founded in 1701 it makes you wonder how many structures have come and gone. By 1850 half of the area was populated by Irish immigrants, mostly from the county of Cork (the southern most county in Ireland). Corktown used to be described as "Anywhere within a mile of home plate" of what is now Tiger Stadium. (changed from Briggs in 1960, and Navin Field 1938, and Bennett park built 1895). But after the expressways cut through in the 1940's, an industrial commercial district took over the southern half in the 1960's and the plight of urban sprawl of the 1960's & 70's only a fraction of the original Corktown remains. It has been designated a National Historic District Nationally & Locally.

Below are some aerial shots of the section my home is in from 1949 and 2006. Some interesting things to point out is that across the street all the homes have been cleared and modern apartments have been built, as well as a partial closure of 10th street and the alleyway. Also quite a few other houses are gone (including one next to mine) and sit as vacant lots. Hopefully as the neighborhood revives these lots will one day contain houses again. At this point "Bagley" is named "Baker Street" (not yet renamed for John J Bagley, one of Michigans Governors). Also this was just before the streetcar system was shut down in the 1950's. It opened on Baker in 1873, originally drawn by horses.

Happy Good Friday everyone.

Historic pictures from DTE Historic Archives

Finding Closure

2007-03-24T18:21:00.000-05:00

So I found it. After months of feeling like I wouldn't, watching the same houses stare back at me on the market, and of dreading the thought of living another day in my parents house, it happened. She is a beauty. She is in rough shape. And she is going to be mine.

So I'm tentatively to close on Good Friday. Maybe that means something. I put my offer in for the house on Ash Wednesday. Needless to say Lent has been more about patience then normal.

I really can't wait. I lie awake at night thinking about my plan of action. I don't have the vision of what it will look like in the end yet, but I can see the start perfectly in motion. I can't wait. Seriously.

After all the bureaucracy of loans, liens, insurance, purchase agreements, licences and taxes it will be a home. A place where I can call my own and invite others into.

So here is hoping for a Good Friday, a very Holy Saturday, a Joyous Easter Sunday, the day our Lord has risen, and a Happy Demolition Monday.

The Search Begins...

2007-03-24T18:20:00.000-05:00

I started my search in June when I moved back from Toronto. I thought it would take a few weeks-a few months at absolute most. Little did I know the Michigan economy wasn't going to help me out. While I listened to everyone telling me how lucky I was because it was a "buyers market" I had to really deal with a stagnant one that wasn't turning any houses over. At all.

I considered 3 neighborhoods on the southwestern side of Detroit. Corktown, Woodbridge and Hubbard Farms. Each with their own distinctive architecture, culture and layout.

I saw a lot of houses and a lot of variation. It's not the suburbs where every house is 2000sqft and has beige vinyl siding on it. I saw houses that were 900sqft to over 4200sqft. I saw ones in pristine historical condition to rotting carcasses that should of been torn down. I saw a house that had a sink behind every door, one that had been gutted to the frame and another that had electrical wires stapled into the front side of the drywall. Some strange stuff.

All in all I seriously considered 17 houses that were in my three neighborhoods. I walked 9 of them.

But then came my ideal house.

The first time I walked it, my initial reaction was that it was unsalvageable. the floors were lumpy, the walls were curvy and the layout made zero sense. I felt like I was in a funhouse without the fun and serious cat smell. Within five minutes I was thinking I had seen enough.

It was my fellow habitater who I asked to walk the house with me who convinced me otherwise. For the price pretty much anything could be done. I could gut it and start fresh making everything straight, level, plumb and laid out how I liked it. After a couple hours to mill it over I was sold. I was basically buying a frame, some siding and a little bit of basement, oh and an amazing location.

What feels like home?

2007-03-24T18:14:00.000-05:00

In the year 2000 I started an affair. She was much older and more distinguished. She was weary and i've always been drawn to need. Over the years I found myself caring more and more about her.

In 2005 I moved away to Toronto. When I came back there was only one place I wanted to be. And that was with her.

She was Detroit. I was going to buy a house, and it was going to be within the city limits of Detroit. With her rich history her pocket young vibrant hopeful culture and her real dirt and gears day to day operation this is where i wanted to live. I was willing to deal with high insurance premiums, petty crime, city income tax, and lack of grocery stores to trade for close neighbors, unique restaurants, real people, rich history, amazing architecture, and being able to walk to church.

On June 12 I read an article about a young business man who with his brother opened up side by side businesses on Michigan Ave in Detroit. His was a branch of his grandfathers realty and his brothers was a barbecue restaurant. He was a big shot in Chicago living it up, but he saw hope and opportunity in southwest Detroit. After some thought and planning he packed up and moved to michigan to open his business.

If you ever need anything realestate related in Detroit use O'Connor. Seriously. http://www.oconnordetroit.com

The story hit home with me. I immediately identified with him being young, hopeful, and sold on detroit. And so i'd embark on my search for a home in the Motor City.