It started innocently enough. Daughter Haley was graduating from college and moving back to Grand Rapids in anticipation of starting med school in a year. Housing prices had tanked. Interest rates were low. And if those factors weren't incentive enough, the feds were offering a 10% tax credit to first time home buyers.
And so, doting parents that we are, Scott & Deb went house shopping. Our goal was to find a home close to the Medical Mile in downtown Grand Rapids. Walking distance was preferred; easy access to the bus line was a secondary consideration.
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| Let's find a house in this region |
We wanted to find a home with 3-4 bedrooms to enable Haley to have a couple of roommates to help her cover the monthly house expenses and mortgage payment. Like all parents we wanted something in a safe neighborhood. But the idea of a 1970s ranch on a suburban cul-de-sac was not at all appealing. The house had to be "in the city."
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| Archive photo - 1984. Just moved the furnace. |
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| Ruddington, our home in Charlottesville, VA, after renovation |
For my part, I was looking for a house to which I could add some value. Maybe one that needed a kitchen makeover and a bath upgrade. I wasn't afraid of bad plaster, bad paint or bad wiring. Way back in the 80's, Deb and I renovated a hundred-year-old farm house in Virginia, (see archive photos) so we had some experience with demolition and reconstruction. And for more than 20 years, I swore that I would never do it again. But the home renovation bug has an insidious way of striking. After laying dormant for two decades it came creeping back. "You can do it, Scott," it whispered in my ear. "Find a house. Fix it up. It'll be good for you."
Mesmerized by the spell of the renovation bug, we started our journey with a few searches through local real estate websites. Deb changed her commuting route home to drive past potential acquisitions. We talked at length about the process. Did we really want to incur all of the hassles and missteps and financial commitments that go along with rebuilding a home? In the end, the renovation bug prevailed.
We decided that if we could find a suitable house at a reasonable price, we would leverage all of our knowledge from our earlier renovation and do things differently this time. In Virginia we lived in the house through eight years of never ending construction. Do you know what it's like to have the water in your toilet freeze solid because you don't have central heat? (January-February, 1984) How would you like to use a ladder to reach your second floor bedroom because the narrow staircase that had been there for nearly a century was removed? (Fall, 1983) Can you imagine rappelling from your kitchen floor down into a water-filled hole that earlier in the day was your basement but which now (at 4:00 in the morning) was a mess of collapsing concrete block walls while the monsoon rains of Hurricane Hugo undercut the tarps you had set up to prevent such a disaster? (Fall, 1984) Such are the foibles of the undercapitalized, "ready-fire-aim" home renovator. In 2010, we resolved that we would not repeat the mistakes of our past.
This time we would:
- Find the right house. Think Location. Think Character. Think Potential.
- Arrange for sufficient financing to finish the job. 'Nuff said.
- Work feverishly until the job was done. No long, slow marches of the half dead. This was going to be a renovation Blitzkreig.
- Not be afraid to hire experts to accelerate project completion.
Consider this our Renovation Manifesto.
The Hunt
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| This home had been subdivided into five apartments. Badly. |
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| Do not enter. Good advice after seeing the interior of this one. |
Tell a Realtor that you're interested in finding a fixer-upper with potential and oh what fun you'll have. The spring of 2010 is noteworthy for the large inventory of available Handyman Specials. It's amazing that people actually lived in some of these houses.
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| 1346 Logan at the start of it all |
After several false starts, we approached 1346 Logan. The block appeared to have several homes in various stages of renovation. 1346 had some curb appeal. The ornamental dentil molding in the gables immediately piqued our interest. A "bumpout" on the side of the house had a cluster of four stained glass panels behind a phalanx of storm windows. The foundation wall and front porch, like many of the neighboring homes, was clad in large, split-face stone. The symmetry and scale of the home were also reasonably attractive. On the other hand, the front porch enclosure made the house appear bottom heavy. The siding on the upper gable ends was in obvious need of paint. The windows were in bad shape. Black aluminum gutters dangled at a useless angle from the eaves - small trees were trying their best to grow in the buildup of asphalt and dirt clogging any possible water flow.
As fixer-uppers go, this house met the first logical screening criteria: it needed fixing up.
While our Realtor knocked at the storm door to announce our arrival, we waited patiently on the curb. A woman's voice rang down from a bedroom window. In spite of the fact that we had scheduled (and confirmed) the time of our showing, we were initially denied access to the house because the owner "had a gentleman visiting" and she wasn't "dressed for company." If we wanted we could wait on the front porch.
And so, this is what we were allowed to see - the front porch. Tempting, eh? The overwhelming clutter was exceeded only by the nauseating aroma. Clearly, the staging crew from HGTV had not had any input for this listing.
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| Revel in the splendor of the front porch at 1346 Logan |
While we waited on the front porch, the "gentleman visitor" finished his "visit" and we were allowed to step into the foyer and living room.
It was clear from the moment we crossed the threshold that this was no ordinary house. Indeed, this was the Time Tunnel itself. In seconds we were transported from 2010 back to 1975. The plastic vertical blinds. The velour sectional sofa. The stomped plaster ceiling. All that was missing was a copy of TV Guide with a picture of James Arness on the cover.
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| The formal living room |
And yet, if you could look past the flotsam and jetsam and the layers upon layers of paint, there was something quite appealing about the house. The structure appeared to be stable. The floors were flat. It was the right size. Large enough to meet the basic needs and small enough to be manageable. Behind the blinds we could see both leaded and stained glass windows. And there was lots and lots of what we hoped was oak trim. We concluded that it warranted a follow up visit.
On Second Thought
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| One of the four bedrooms. Note the deadbolt lock on the door. |
The second visit gave us the opportunity to explore the second floor (four bedrooms, one tiny bath), the basement (which apparently served as an auxiliary internal landfill - ughhh), and the attic (double ughhh). There were some oddities - deadbolt locks on all of the bedroom doors, bizarre closet configurations, the floor of one bedroom bowed like a ski jump, and an exterior door led from one bedroom onto the roof of the back stoop. But when you're wearing rose colored glasses, these were all correctable defects. And so, after a few days of anxious indecision, (were we nuts?) we decided that this was the house for us. If we could get the house for the right price, we were going embark on an epic journey.
The Transaction
Our Realtor, Chad Sytsma, was extraordinarily helpful in putting together an offer that worked for both us and the sellers. Because Chad lives within a few blocks of the property and he focuses his practice in the Eastown area, he knew the house well and knew the family that owned it. We wrote our offer following Chad's lead and it was accepted without modification. That led us to the closing.
Surprise! You've got Lead
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| A familiar pose: ladder, scraper, grinder, mask and safety glasses |
We were motivated to close quickly. Though we had plenty of time to meet the first-time home buyer tax credit that would expire in the summer, our naive goal was to complete the renovations by the end of the summer so that Haley and her roommates could occupy the house in time for their fall semesters. We scheduled a professional inspection of the home and weren't surprised to read in the inspector's report that "there was a high likelihood that the house had considerable lead-based paint, given its age and general condition." What surprised us was the response from our mortgage lenders informing us that all of the exposed lead based paint that was "chalky or flaking" would have to be scraped and covered with a primer coat" BEFORE we could close on the loan. Since it was obvious to us that the sellers weren't going to take on the job of scraping and painting (after all, they had lived with the flaking paint for nearly 40 years), that meant that we would be responsible for attacking the problem. And so it was that we began renovating a house that we did not own on May 9, 2010. For two solid weeks, son Colin and dad Scott climbed our 32 foot ladders to scrape, grind, sand and prime the elaborately detailed gables on the south, north, west then east sides of the house while the sellers of the home somehow managed to live comfortably in the house while we scraped and banged and otherwise made great nuisances of ourselves.
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| The triangular shape at the top of the back wall is the gable. This house has four such gables all of which needed to be scraped, sanded and primed. The lower portion of the house was covered in vinyl siding, so any lead-based paint that might lie beneath the siding was considered to be safe (as long as the vinyl siding remained in place). |
Because the lower two-thirds of the home was sided in a boring gray vinyl siding, our initial plan was to paint the gables a complementary accent color such as a slate blue and leave the vinyl in place. There was no doubt that the trim boards around the roof (the frieze, rake, soffit, and corbels) would be painted white. But as we started peeking behind the vinyl siding to assess how we would repair the areas around the windows and doors that we planned to replace, it became clear that we had a much bigger decision at hand than simply a paint color. For once we began scraping and sanding the siding we could see what beautiful material had been used to side the house. If you were willing to work hard enough to remove the paint, the underlying cedar siding was remarkably clear and (for the most part) intact. I imagined what the house could look like if we eradicated all of the vinyl siding and the abominable aluminum trim.
Suddenly the thought of removing the vinyl siding in its entirety became all consuming. Without the gray vinyl, we would have complete flexibility to choose a color palette that enhanced the architectural style of the house and set it apart from the other homes on the street. Little did we realize at the time that this one relatively small decision would establish the standards that we would follow for the rest of the project.
I'm reminded of a children's book that we used to read our kids called
If you Give a Mouse a Cookie in which a cascading series of consequences follow from one innocent act. You give a mouse a cookie then he wants a glass of milk. In the case of 1346 Logan, the cookie was the vinyl siding. Because if you remove the vinyl siding, you're going to need to repair, replace, scrape, prime and paint (2 coats) whatever you find underneath the siding. And once you've committed to do all of that work, it seems only right to replace the windows. And if you're going to get new windows, you may as well replace the doors. And if you're replacing the windows and doors, then you may as well remove the trim around the windows and doors to make it easier to strip the layers of paint. And if there's no trim around the windows and doors, then it's obvious that you need to do something about the lack of insulation in those areas and wouldn't it be easier to add insulation if there were no plaster walls in the way? And so you remove the plaster and lath. And now that the plaster and lath aren't covering the wiring, you can see how antiquated the electrical service is, so doesn't it make sense to replace all of that? Before you know it, not only do you have a house with freshly painted siding, you have new doors, windows, wiring, drywall, insulation, lighting, plumbing, heating & cooling. Oh and new bathrooms, kitchen, deck, flooring. Even a new mail slot. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
After our two weeks of scraping and priming the paint on the four gables, we satisfied the expectations of the FHA lender and we were able to close the sale. This is what the house looked like on the closing date, May 26, 2010. If you look closely, you'll see that there is already a dumpster sitting in the back yard. Which brings us to a statement about the The Project Scope.
When we took full possession of the house, we knew that we had a mountain of work ahead of us. It was clear that we were going to remove the vinyl siding and paint the entire exterior. The windows were bad. They would have to be replaced. The kitchen was tiny - completely inadequate for a modern home. We would need to expand the main level of the house to accommodate a new kitchen. We also knew that the bathrooms would have to be redone. The four bedrooms on the second level were, in a word, gross. Bare light bulbs hung from corroded fixtures, The ceiling in one room was partially collapsed - evidence of a water leak. The closets were useless. Throughout the house there was oak trim buried behind layers of paint - four piece crown molding on the main level plus eight-inch baseboard with a carved base cap. In the dining room there was wainscoting and a plate rail plus a pair of stained glass windows. In the foyer, a full wall of oak raised panels was juxtaposed by an adjacent wall covered with smoky gray and gold mirrored twelve inch tiles reminiscent of a Vegas lounge. Several of the tiles were broken.
On every surface there was dust. Decades of dust. Welcome, Haley, to your new home.
Demolition
Confucius wrote that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." For us, the first step was trash removal. We gave the sellers the option of leaving behind anything that they didn't want to move themselves. Did they take advantage of that offer!
It took one day to fill our first 20-yard dumpster. Two days later we had filled another. (Through the course of the project we would fill seven 20-yard dumpsters.) It's debatable which room was the worst. Bedrooms were strewn with clothes, bedding, food containers, paper. The kitchen counters were loaded with open containers of food. The peanut butter "sell by" date had expired five years earlier. A plastic gallon jar of ranch dressing was equal parts green and white. Dollops of grape jelly were bonded to the plastic counter top.
In the basement the trash was knee deep in spots.
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| Front porch before picture |
As bad as the bulk of the house might have been, at least it didn't stink. Not repulsively, anyway. The same cannot be said of the front porch. Priority one had to be cleaning off the porch. The dark paneling and tinted shades on the storm windows made house uncomfortably dark. And the ragged carpet on the concrete floor had absorbed inestimable quantities of grease and goo over the years.
So we started with a wrecking party. Buy a new wrecking bar (with a 100-year warranty!) Invite Grandma. Start digging in.
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| Hours after the demolition began |
Within a few hours, the storm door was gone. The storm windows were in the dumpster. The plywood covering the brick rail was removed.
After a couple more days the vinyl siding above and below the porch roof was gone, the aluminum wrapped around the box beam and the dangling Christmas lights were removed and the new paint scheme was emerging.
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| The green paint on the siding is the original finish from 1915 |
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| What a 52-year-old man looks like after removing 35 feet of chimney |
At about this time, we decided that we needed to remove the flue and chimney that were near the center of the house. The water damage in the second level bedroom was evidently caused by bad flashing around the chimney. If we chose to keep the chimney in place, it would have to be reflashed. More to the point, the chimney was right in the middle of things as it descended from the roof and attic down through the second floor, first floor and basement. If we wanted to rework the floor plan, we had to eliminate the chimney. This would mean we'd need to replace the existing furnace since it used the flue for its exhaust, but given its age and condition, this was an easy decision. A new furnace could be vented through the foundation wall. There was no reason to keep the chimney other than the fact that it would be most unpleasant to remove it. So we climbed onto the roof and brick by brick we took the chimney down, down, down. All the way down to the basement floor.
Allow me to digress for a moment. When we bought the house my weight was the same as it had been for the previous 10 years or more - just under 200 pounds. For years I thought my ideal weight was in the 185 to 190 pound range but I wasn't inclined to diet to get me there. Working on the house entailed extended periods of manual labor. Climbing ladders. Scraping siding. Digging. Busting concrete. Hauling plaster out. Hauling lumber in. Apparently all of that labor has a therapeutic impact on one's waistline. By early summer, I noticed that my work pants were regularly slipping down my hips. If not for my belt, I would have looked like the young men from the house next door who deliberately wear their pants BELOW THEIR BUTTS. What's up with that?
Anyway, as the summer progressed, I kept losing weight. Between the long hours, the constant sweating and the limited quantities of food I packed for lunch, I reached a new baseline weight of 170 pounds in late summer. I haven't weighed 170 since I was a junior in high school. We'll see what happens when I stop the daily grind of construction, but for now I'm enjoying the new wardrobe that Deb was compelled to buy for me.
The Design
With the chimney removed and a few walls opened up, it was time to develop the architectural plans that we would need for our building permit. We asked Clayton Schutter (whom I had worked with at Homescape Design Group, a residential design company) to design a master suite under the rafters on the third level, a "bump out" addition on the back of the house for the new kitchen, and a half bath, laundry room and mechanical room in the basement. Clayton was especially adept at matching the roof plan of the new addition to the existing roof. If we did our job right, our neighbors to the rear and drivers down the alley would not be able to differentiate the old and new portions of the house.
With a building permit in place, the pace of change seemed to accelerate. We hired an electrical contractor (Winkle Electric). The old 60-amp electrical service panel was replaced and the overhead wire that would be in the way of the new addition was moved to an inconspicuous corner of the house. With the old electrical service bypassed, we were free to remove the obsolete knob-and-tube wiring throughout the house.
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| This was the bedroom with the ski jump floor. The floor joist on the left wall (right under the door) was a full inch higher than joist next to it. The odd spacing of the joists on the right side of the room demonstrates the former location of the chimney. That's the old kitchen below the joists. |
We needed to find a plumber. By unanimous decree among our neighbors and our Realtor, we had no choice but to hire Rodney Jubelin, a transplant from Australia, to handle the total replacement of the water service, ventilation, and waste. Rodney is affirmation of the power of word-of-mouth advertising. Not only did we get the plumbing service that we needed, we also gained a good friend. One who seemed very happy to work at the start-and-stop pace of a total renovation. In his first project at the house Rodney replaced the cast iron plumbing stack and added underground waste lines for a new toilet and sink in the basement. Over the ensuing months he would rough in two more bathrooms, plumb the new kitchen and laundry room, and handle all of the final plumbing trim.
With the underground plumbing in place, we patched the concrete slab and prepared to start new construction. I wisely decided that we needed help from an expert. Wayne VanNoord, an experienced home builder who was fully engaged in his own full-time job, and his friend Les Katt agreed to work evenings and weekends tackling the carpentry projects that were beyond my experience level.
In the first weekend, Wayne and Les framed new walls in the basement, reframed the staircase connecting the basement and first floor, and replaced the six-foot-high hollow-core side door with a six-foot-eight insulated steel door.
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| The original side door. All six feet of it. |
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| The inside view of the side entry with the six foot door. |
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| New door, standard height. Fresh paint. |
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| The side entrance: New stairs, new door, new drywall, flooring, lighting... |
At the same time, we made the decision to replace all of the windows in the house. The original windows had long since passed the point of operational viability. Many of the sashes were painted shut. Others were missing their stops. In an effort to blunt the breeze that undoubtedly blew past the windows, the previous owners had installed aluminum storm windows and storm doors.
Soap box time. I hate the look of aluminum storm windows, particularly on period houses with architectural detail. Similarly, I hate the way that vinyl siding installers compromise the proportions of window and door trim. For the sake of the house we had to return the window trim to its original (before vinyl and aluminum) condition and upgrade the windows to an energy efficient product line.
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| Notice the storm windows, missing sash, and the unbalanced window trim in this Before picture. |
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| This is an after picture showing the Eastern elevation window stack. The neck molding had been removed when the vinyl siding was installed decades ago. The side and top trim boards were covered by the vinyl. This picture shows the original cedar siding after the scraping, sanding, priming and paint. |
Replacing the windows turned out to be the single largest expenditure we would make through the entire project. Our window contractor, Rivertown Windows, did a very professional job of measuring, configuring and installing the windows enabling a remarkable transformation - both outside and in.
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| Inside view of the attic windows in the new master bathroom |
While I alternated between scraping and painting the exterior of the house, and removal of plaster and lath from the inside walls, Wayne and Les followed along behind me rebuilding what I had demolished. After they finished in the basement, they proceeded to the second floor where we had removed almost all of the plaster and the noxious, gag-inducing cellulose insulation that lurked behind. Our redesign of the second floor required us to move several walls and doorways as we transformed four bedrooms and one small bath into three bedrooms with walk-in closets befitting today's wardrobe excesses and a large, modern bathroom.
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| Eventually, all of the plaster and lath shown in this picture would be gone. Note the gas pipe on the bedroom wall sharing space with the ungrounded knob-and-tube electrical wiring. Can you say "fire hazard?" |
After they finished with the second floor framing, Wayne and Les turned their talents to the transformation of the attic. The attic was accessed by a very steep staircase (six inch tread, nine inch rise) hidden behind a door on the second floor landing. The attic floor was covered with eight to ten inches of loose fill cellulose that had broken down over the years into a massive pile of dust. There was no insulation along the rafters, so in the heat of summer the attic was an unbearable space.
What it lacked in creature comfort, the attic compensated with great potential. The 10/12 roof pitch meant that there was enough space beneath the rafters to build a full bathroom, walk-in closet and a spacious bedroom. This was destined to become Haley's owner suite.
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| The hole in the foreground of the attic floor shows where the chimney used to be. |
Our first priority was to remove the cellulose and the junk that had accumulated in the attic since 1915. It took two days and 48 contractor-sized garbage bags to get things to the condition shown in this picture.
Next we had to reinforce the floor framing. The joists between the attic and second floor weren't intended to support anything more than the odds and ends that wind up in attics. If we intended to have a bathtub and bed and dresser and other weighty elements of daily living, the floor joists would have to be beefed up. This meant that every 2x6 spanning from side to side had to be "sistered" with a new 2x6. A new subfloor was then glued and screwed down on top of this bundle.
With a solid floor in place, we framed the new walls that would define the bathroom, bedroom and closet. Add some wiring, plumbing and ductwork followed by a battery of building inspections and it was time for the spray-foam insulation. We used EcoFoam, a knowledgeable, skillful installer of closed-cell foam. Incredibly, within a few hours of the foam installation, the attic was cool, quiet, and comfortable. Spray foam isn't cheap, but it's a tremendous product.
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| Foam was blown in over two days. The first day the foam was yellow. On the second day it was blue. |
As the attic was taking shape, we began laying the groundwork for the new kitchen addition. For a time we considered using the existing foundation of the back stoop as the foundation for the new framing as a budgetary concession. This notion was quickly scuttled, however, when we stuck a shovel into the dirt outside the foundation wall to examine the depth of the footing. Building codes in our area require footings to be 42 inches below the finished grade level to prevent frost from heaving the footing. The footing under the back stoop was all of two inches deep. Clearly we couldn't use the existing foundation. A new concrete wall would have to be poured outside of the old foundation. So, like Forrest Gump, I started digging.
A few feet away from the house there was a chunk of concrete poking out of the grass. This seemed like a good place to begin my excavation. As I dug around the concrete, the shovel struck something solid. So I moved the shovel to the other side of the concrete pad and tried again. Same result. I moved farther away from the concrete center. The clinking continued. After much more exploration, we discovered that the solid buried object was in fact an abandoned water cistern made of brick and concrete measuring eight feet in diameter and just over four feet deep. The cistern had been completely filled with dirt and hundreds (perhaps thousands) of rusted cans, light bulbs, and bottles of every shape and size imaginable.
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| The start of the cistern excavation |
For a time it was fun to emulate Indiana Jones. But we were on a tight schedule. We set aside some of the more interesting bottles and continued the digging. Within two days, we were ready for the concrete truck.
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| The cistern was in the foreground of this picture. Note the lack of footings beneath the existing stoop. |
One day later we had the new footings poured. The addition measured 8 feet by 15 feet. Another day after the footings the foundation walls were poured. Now we were making some progress!
Next came the interesting challenge of removing the old stoop without damaging the new foundation wall. Gravity did its thing after we pulled out the last of the supports.
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| Perhaps I should have been wearing a hard hat at this point |
With the old stoop out of the way, we back-filled on both sides of the foundation wall, leaving a crawl space accessible from the basement for the benefit of the plumber, electrician, and HVAC contractor. The new floor deck was framed in a morning. The walls and roof trusses went up in another day. It took only one week to go from this Before to this During. It took several more weeks before During turned into After.
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| Before |
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| During |
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| After - Rear View |
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| More rear elevation views. Notice the corbels on the addition that match the original dentil molding above. |
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| The front elevation shortly after Christmas. Fortunately, all of the exterior work was completed before the winter weather arrived. |
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| Good design doesn't happen by accident. Our goal was to blend the new construction with the old so that one was part of the other. This view confirms that we did a pretty good job of integrating the addition. |
Let's see. What came next? We removed all of the oak baseboards, crown molding, window & door trim and wainscoting to strip the layers of paint, sand and stain it all. Weeks and weeks of mindless labor ensued. But in the end it was worth it.
Between stripping and sanding sessions we took care of installing new insulation. Next, based on another strong referral from our neighbors we hired Mallory Drywall. At the time I was resigned to the fact that we would have some areas of the house that would inevitably retain the scars of just being old. Cracks, broken edges, holes. There were so many flaws in the walls where we hadn't stripped to the studs that a reasonable person would assume that we would just have to live with those defects. I foresaw the house being like a good looking kid with some bad acne scars. But Mallory had higher standards than I did. Any flaw in the walls had to be corrected whether by a skim coat of plaster, a thin layer of drywall, or a full half-inch sheet. The transformation that Mallory Drywall brought to the house is indescribable. Even in those areas where the old framing was far from perfect, the drywall was hung with care like a Christmas stocking and carefully finished. For all practical purposes, the walls of the house are entirely new.
With the drywall complete we could start a portion of the project that we'd been looking forward to for months - painting the interior. Before we tackled the exterior painting we asked Jennifer Butler, a talented interior designer, for help in choosing a color palette. Jennifer came up with the two-tone yellow green (actual color names: Dill Pickle and Pale Sea Mist) combination that we used on the siding. Deb and Haley were more than happy to work with Jennifer choosing colors for the interior.
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| But that's nothing compared with the fuchsia kitchen walls. |
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| I believe that the laundry room is Tangerine. |
It's probably safe to say that men, as a sub-species, are less adventurous than women when it comes to color selection. If it were left to me, the house would probably be three shades of gray or tan. Jennifer was savvy enough to realize that this house was destined to be occupied by three or four young women, so she suggested color schemes that reflected the personality of Haley and her friends. "Valentine" in the kitchen. "Jalapeno Pepper" in one bedroom. "Dill Pickle" in the living room. (Surprisingly, the color is much different as an interior paint than it is as an exterior paint.) And on and on. There are blues and greens and yellows and reds. I protested weakly about the "wild colors" but I relented and dutifully painted the walls. Now that it's all done, I have to say that I love the color choices. Advice to all of the men out there... Give your interior designer, your wife, and your daughter the benefit of the doubt and wait until the house is completely finished to pass judgment on a color choice.
From paint we moved on to finished flooring (DuraCeramic tile in the kitchen and bathrooms) that we installed ourselves. Cabinets. Door & window trim. Lighting fixtures. Plumbing fixtures. Furnace & air conditioning. (Kudos to Arctic Heating & Cooling.) Carpet. Wood floor refinishing. A new front door.
I'll let the pictures speak for me for awhile. Here are some looks at the final product alongside original views of the rooms:
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| The lone remaining unfinished area in the house - my home for the last several months in the basement. |
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| Before: You can't see the failing plaster in the ceiling, but you can see the layers of paint on the woodwork. |
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| After: Stained glass on the east wall of the dining room. These windows were soiled with paint and obscured by furniture when we first toured the house. Needless to say they were a pleasant surprise.The two-tone blue walls and ceiling beautifully complement the hue of the oak stain and the green highlights of the stained glass. |
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| The grain in the oak floors was completely obscured by an opaque black stain. A drum sander and a random orbital sander brought the wood back to life. Stain and three coats of satin-finish polyurethane completed the renovation. The walls are Dill Pickle. |
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| The new kitchen. The area left of the refrigerator is the new addition. Notice how the Valentine walls recede into the background with the cabinets and appliances in place. |
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| A reproduction Tiffany light fixture complements the refurbished leaded glass windows flanking the new oak front door. Here the walls are Pale Sea Mist. |
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| This is the front door viewed from the outside. No more screen door, storm windows and white and black paint. |
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| This view of the kitchen is looking from the new addition back into the area that was the original kitchen. Compare this After shot with the following Before picture. The window in the old kitchen would have been behind the new refrigerator. |
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| Before: The old kitchen with its "one butt" work triangle |
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| The short wing wall at the end of the mobile kitchen cart (World Market, $144) is the back wall of the house before the addition was added. |
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| This is the stained glass in the "bump out" over the staircase that originally caught our attention when we first visited the house. The glass panels were removed, professionally repaired and cleaned. Energy efficient windows were installed behind the stained glass. |
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| It's an eclectic mix of furniture, but the living room shows well. Remember... |
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| ...this is what it used to look like. |
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| This shot shows how the living room and dining room flow into one another. |
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| From the living room you have a nice view of the dining room. |
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| This is the Jalapeno Pepper bedroom in December. |
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| And this is what it looked like in May. |
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| Here's a view of the new bath on the second level. |
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| Let's climb the new staircase to the former attic |
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| Makes a nice bedroom, eh? |
Credit Where Credit is Due
You can't complete a project as big and complex as a renovation without a lot of help. On the other hand, it would be a financial boondoggle if you paid contractors to do all of the work. So in the interest of full disclosure, I present to you a list of the chores that were done at the house and identify the parties responsible for the work. The list is organized roughly chronologically.
- Property search: Chad Sytsma, Griffin Properties, Keller Williams
- Mortgage lender: MetLife Home Loans, Rick Veldman
- Construction financing: Sally Kammeraad (thanks, Grandma)
- Architectural design: Clayton Schutter, Scott
- Color selection - exterior & interior: Jennifer Butler Interior Design
- Paint supply - Sherwin Williams, Seven's
- Exterior scraping - siding & trim: Scott & son Colin
- Paint siding & trim: Scott & Colin
- Remove vinyl siding, storm windows & doors: Scott & Colin
- Remove chimney, concrete patio, stumps: Scott & Colin
- Remove rubbish, plaster, lath, insulation, wiring, duct work, furnace, etc.: The whole family
- Trash hauling: Grand Rapids Dumpster Rental
- Plumbing rough-in & trim: Rodney Jubelin
- Framing: Wayne VanNoord Builder, Les Katt, Andrew Stob
- Electrical rough-in & trim: Winkle Electric
- HVAC: Arctic Heating & Cooling
- Insulation: EcoFoam, Scott & Haley
- Windows: Rivertown Windows
- Stained glass repair: Pristine Glass
- Excavation for new foundation: Scott
- Poured concrete walls: Meidema Concrete
- Roofing: Wayne VanNoord & Scott
- Lumber supply: Lowe's, Standard Lumber, Meekhof Lumber
- Drywall, plaster repair: Demetric Mallory, Mallory Drywall
- Cabinets: Direct Buy
- Cabinet & counter top installation: Wayne VanNoord, Les Katt
- Appliances: Lowe's
- Tile flooring installation: Scott, Haley, Colin
- Interior trim: Scott
- Wood floor refinishing: Scott, Deb, Haley
- Carpet installation: Mark Dyer
- Interior paint: Scott, Deb, Haley, Colin
- Ceramic tile installation: Scott, Haley
- Shopping - cabinets, hardware, flooring, lighting, plumbing fixtures, appliances, accessories: my wife Deb, the real hero of this project
Post Mortem
Haley and her two renters/friends moved into the house on November 7. Wayne and I were installing doors on the bedrooms and bathroom while the girls set up their beds. The rooms still didn't have baseboard or window trim. The closets had no shelves or doors. But the floors were sanded and sealed. The walls and ceilings had smooth drywall and fresh paint. The light fixtures worked. The shower, toilet and sinks operated.
Haley set up temporarily in the yellow bedroom on the second floor while we finished painting her attic suite, installing the tile floor and tub surround in the bathroom, adding the trim and laying the carpet.
For a few weeks it was like summer camp at 1346 Logan. The girls couldn't quite unpack their things. I was the old maintenance man wandering from cabin to cabin with my nail gun. It wasn't as creepy as it sounds, but it was unusual.
On December 30, I declared the house "Done. Finito. Complete." At least as far as my day-to-day participation in its rehabilitation is concerned. There are still small things to be done, but there are small things to be done in every house. I have been asked many times since we embarked on the Odyssey of 1346 Logan if I would do it again. I think of the experience that we've gained, the power tools that we've bought, the relationships that we've built, the weight I lost. I see the pride my daughter and her roommates have when they invite their friends and families to tour their new home. And I feel really good about what we have done. It's hard to justify the commitment of time and the financial investment in a project like this, but I've never felt so productive in all of my years of "professional work." Seven months earlier 1346 Logan was an eyesore in a lot of ways. Now it's the belle of the ball.
But beyond the tangible results of the house and its before-and-after transformation, there's a less tangible but equally valuable transformation that has taken place in our family. Though Deb and I had done the renovation thing ourselves some twenty years ago, this was an entirely new experience for our kids. Each week of a renovation is a venture into the unknown. And though I only heard them ask me once, "Dad, how do you know how to do this stuff?" I imagined they were thinking it everyday. The fact of the matter is that I didn't know how to do everything. I am indebted to my father for getting me interested in building things, but he didn't teach me how to use a nail gun or a chop saw. What he did give me is the confidence that I could figure it out on my own. So while I hope that I've passed along some specific knowledge about houses and tools and techniques to Haley, Colin and Dara, I hope that in a larger context they have gained some of that same confidence that they can figure things out on their own, regardless of the challenge.
So would I do it again? Not just yes. Hell yes.
