Slow, But Sure Progress
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 60)
So we have had a little bit of everything going on since we last updated you. While we are still waiting on our windows, doors, and garage doors, we have been making progress in other areas of our project.
Front Porch Paradise
One of the very first things that began since we last wrote is our front porch rebuild. Franco Masonry showed up after a long medical hiatus ready to begin the tear off and reconstruction of our front porch.
If you dont remember, our front porch was badly damaged, had settled and cracked from the home, and not only was the tile badly flaking, cracked and falling out … the brick walls of the porch were falling away and the cast iron handrail had been disintegrating from bad rust damage.
With the handrail removed and sent off to be repaired and powder coated, Franco started to tear off the brick walls of the porch to reveal the never before seen crawl space underneath. What we found underneath was quite interesting.
Inside the porch crawlspace was a bunch of rotten wood … clearly, a wood form that was used for the initial concrete pour for our porch base in 1927. I also noticed a labeled red tile that told us where our tile originally came from.
“U.S. Roofing Tile Co.” in Parkersburg, W. Va. was just a short Google search away and revealed some history of the origins of our Quarry Tile:
By 1920, this business had changed owners and names, and the original product of roofing tile had been discontinued. The United States Quarry Tile Company would purchase the plant in the latter years of that decade. Their main product, quarry tile, would soon cover the entrance ways and porches of houses throughout the country.
— From: Mackey’s Antique Clock Repair
No Time to Spare
So with just a few minutes to act, as Franco started to close up the walls of the porch with re-done brickwork just after tearing the walls off, I reached out to the neighborhood to create a quick Time Capsule of sorts.
Our lovely neighbor and history professor, Erin jumped into high gear and produced for me a copy of the Detroit Free Press from the previous Sunday, and a lovely letter from her daughter Bea addressed to “People in the Future.” Combined with a couple photos of Brandon and I in front of the house, a business card from Franco, and a small note with our names and the date, I placed all of the items into a glass Ball jar and sealed it up, placing it in the corner of the porch just as Franco sealed up the walls for what will likely be another 100 years.
Putting the pieces back together
Now while Franco hasn’t completely finished the porch rebuild, hes made lots of progress. He re-poured a concrete base, rebuilt the brick walls and limestone edge, and placed the new replica Quarry Tile into place. Next week he will grout and place in the black mosaic to complete the original pattern and we will reset the newly repaired handrail into the limestone.
The Solarium Begins
A day after our last update, Christian finally showed up for the first time on-site after wrapping up their last job downtown. He, Alec, and Calvin immediately got to work on our solarium floor. Using LVLs for their extra capacity for weight and durability, The floor joists were put in place and we were finally able to call Harry Skrdla (our steam heat consultant) on-site to install new piping for our two solarium radiators and single radiator in the new mudroom.
Harry began by hacking into our piping to create new steam and condensate paths for our radiators. He assembled and hung new piping from the floor joists and worked his way from their locations back to the basement where they connect to our original steam system.
With the steam piping roughed in, we are now ready to cover up the floor and bring in HVAC for the installation of AC in the crawl space under the sunroom that will be ducted directly from under the floor.
Cal and Christian will then build the solarium walls and call in a dry ice blasting company to clean the brick wall of any paint, debris and imperfections that will beinside the new room. Hopefully by then the arrival of our new Marvin leaded glass replica windows for the sunroom will be here and ready for installation!
Pergola Puzzle
Next up is our two pergolas! So these pergolas became next in line for our project in order to be complete in time for our new driveway that is scheduled to be poured ASAP. The pergola connecting our garage to the house will be embedded in this new concrete, so Calvin and Christian had to get it in and built in order to be ready for that concrete to be poured.
The two big challenges with these pergolas are:
- The Ipe Wood Material — None of us have seen/used this material before and so neither Christian nor we know what to expect when it comes to working with this incredibly dense, strong, and heavy wood.
- The lack of a complete plan of attack — We placed the ipe lumber order before fulling knowing how we’d assemble the pergolas, and so we have a lot of design decisions and a puzzle of sorts to work out on what the best way is to put these together and acheive the look and feel we are going for.
Right away, everyone was stunned at just how dense this wood is. Only carbide blades and drill bits work and even still, generate so much heat that everything you’re cutting or drilling is immediately smoking. Theres nearly no flex, and therefore no wiggle room in the design for bad measuring… so triple checking before every cut and screw is key.
Brandon took on the task of pre-sanding every board before passing it off to Christian, Alec, and Cal to cut and put together. This will allow us to be ready to oil the ipe as soon as the pergola is complete! After some trial and error with scrap bits, Christian crafted a strategy to start putting the pieces together. We hadn’t determined some details at the get-go like how we wanted the ends of each beam to look, how much they should overhang, etc., and so we needed to make many of these decisions on the fly simultaneously with Christian building it.
After getting all the posts and beams up, the biggest task of figuring out how to mount the joists came. Christian decided he wanted to notch each joist that went up to nest it into the beam, and that immediately brought on challenges. Cutting 4 tooth shaped notches precisely into each board (two on each side) meant he’d need to create a custom jig to ensure all of our measurements were accurate.
The joists are now all properly notched and cut. Next week Christian and Cal will complete the build of the pergolas with final assembly and move onto the walls and ceiling of our solarium.
What’s Next
Things are finally moving at a consistent, however slow pace. After the front porch is complete, Franco will move to our garage to begin stucco work. Once the solarium walls are built, we will have the dry ice blast and then hopefully new windows for the solarium shortly after! Our driveway pour should begin very soon, which will also mean that hardscaping around the pergola will be able to finally begin as well!
We have contractors hopping all over the place to get things done and can’t wait to see some of these bigger items like the windows and garage doors very soon!
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Our journey isn’t over
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