incendiary events

ahh, detroit. detroit on fireworks night, when kids get to stay up waaaaay past their bedtimes, lighting incendiary devices on the city sidewalks. in our case, we watched the very large annual fireworks display from the sidewalk of michigan avenue, in front of our friend cathy's place. here's the view:



and here's sacha, looking mighty pleased at the idea of his parents letting him play with fire...



of course, the kids found a better vantage point:



but the big fireworks display only inspired them to do more of their own pyromaniac activities (assisted by marc).



oh, and we did some house renos today too. including having a new hot water heater installed and finishing with the floor sander. and a whole lotta little things, like oh, cleaning out the crap from the back porch, and putting knobs on the kitchen cabinets, and that kind of thing. it's coming along. will it get done? we're starting to race against the clock... marc returns to victoria in 10 days. can we do it?

it's starting to feel more and more like a reality show around here...
stay tuned!

counter intelligence

we had to call in the experts today. yup, our good friend adam, an ikea fan from way, way, back before there was ever an ikea store within half an hour of his house, came over today to help assemble a bunch of AKURUMS, some RATIONELLS and a bunch of other swedish-influenced kitchen stuff. it was, as they say, a counter-intelligence coup.

here's some of the unsuspecting cabinets blissfully basking on the shiny floor, not knowing that they'd soon fall prey to a cordless drill, an allen key, and the dreaded fuller 313 screwdriver wielded by adam himself.



of course, not all the pieces were ready to submit to such torture. some even had to be further bedevilled by both adam and marc, who took a hole cutter and cordless drill to their helpless frames. let me tell you, those solid wood ikea countertops? yup, they're solid. yup, they're wood. and yup, they're hard to cut. marc actually scorched the cut edges with the saw. wowee.



meanwhile, magritte was busy wiggling away at her loose tooth.


said tooth finally departed from her mouth as we were all about to get on the peoplemover for a ride to comerica park, where we'd hoped to sit in the baking 33 degree heat on the bleachers and catch a detroit tigers game while sipping $8.50 budweiser and nibbling $6 hot dogs. alas, the game was actually some kind of big deal, and it was sold out. (on a tuesday? in june? in detroit? wow, things -have- changed around here.)
anyway, no game, so we and adam and audrey and their adorable kids went for a pleasantly air-conditioned dinner, where we were surrounded by TV screens playing, guess what, the tigers game.
the tigers lost.
but we won.

be-floor and after

while sacha's busy practicing to become the fastest cherry-pitter in the midwest...


the rest of us are hard at work on more renos (now there's a surprise...).

marc worked on making the floor look shiny (it's got a few more coats of stuff to go, and then there's the other room that hasn't even been started yet). but it's coming along!



meanwhile, i donned dustmask and eye protection once more to go into battle with ikea cabinets.


no, it isn't so very dangerous assembling cabinets with an allen key and a pair of pliers. it's just that the sander in the next room kicks up a whole lot of dust, and in order to co-exist with it, well, i need to swelter under an itchy hot dustmask and a pair of ever-fogging, sweat-inducing goggles. did i mention it was 33 degrees here today?

but at least there were a few breaks.
first was the screech of tires, followed by two gunshots, followed by another screech of tires. we hit the (newly sanded) deck and then when it seemed all clear, checked in with all the neighbours who were also wondering what the heck it was. one bullet hit the brick of the corner house, which the neighbour living there said sounded like chunks of drywall falling in. someone said they saw a guy running like mad up the block, wearing a white t-shirt and a blue towel. hmmm. anyway, nothing like a little excitement like that to remind us we're back in detroit after all.

and second was a lovely dinner with our friends ken and kim, and their five kids. the gaggle of kids had a blast bouncing around on too much sugar, and the grownups had a great time bouncing around on questions of ethics and government (ken has a certain high mucky muck job in politics, so it got pretty amusing. he may be the last ethical politician left...).

and third was a late-night drive through downtown detroit, which has a few things different from last time we were here, like, oh, lights. and stores. and people out after 11.
incredible but true. could this actually be a real city, after all?
stay tuned...

tenant intentions...

the floor is done!!


now that we've got a kitchen floor, plus a new fridge, and a new dishwasher, plus a whole lot of kitchen cabinets and counters and such all ready and waiting to be installed, we're starting to realize we've got to install tenants pretty soon, too. we've posted an ad on craigslist, and will place one in the metro times tomorrow for this week's edition.

of course, if we could believe all the folks who say they want to rent the place, or say they know someone who wants to, or say they'll pass the word around, well, we could have dozens of tenants.
now, of course, there's the question of will they turn up, let alone pay the rent once they're here?

let's see. for possible tenants so far, we've got:

--the older guy the woman next door knows.
--a buddy of one of the cuban crew who helped with the early stages of cleanup/tear-out
--a buddy of another one of the crew
--one of the crew and his dog
--the guy who delivered the kitchen stuff from ikea today (hey, he says, at least he knows it's going to be nice)
--a buddy of the aforementioned guy
--a guy who the crazy lady down the street recommends. he's out of work now, but he used to specialize in off-licence pharmaceutical delivery and occasional informal insurance policies. and rodrigo down at the corner can give him a good reference. um, yeah.

accomplishments of the day:

--cleaned up the last of the grout bits from the kitchen tiles
--sorted out all the various components of eight different ikea cabinets
--assembled one cabinet
--buttered more floorboards with wood filler
--sanded more floors to the next stage
--cleaned the upstairs bathroom
--constructed a giant cardboard target for sacha to use with his slingshot
--fed the children lunch before 4 pm.

oh, and what have the kids been up to? good question. they've been amusing themselves quite well.
magritte's been drawing a lot:



and they've been making up all sorts of games and things, with the occasional breaks to go outside and fly gliders, kick a soccer ball around, fire slingshot ammo at the house, or make friends with the neighbour kids. but mostly, they seem to like spending time in their lair:

minor triumphs!

the kitchen floor is done!! i'll post a photo when the camera batteries recover from the shock.
i got the grout finished today, and while it still needs to be sealed, it's looking quite fine if i do say so myself.

minor triumph of the day:

- cherries from our trees! yellow ones, red ones, pie cherries, sweet cherries...mmmm. this is why i planted those trees back in 1999. they're huge now and provide lots and lots of fruit. we won't be here when the apples and pears are ripe, but it looks like there'll be quite a few.





- challenge of the day:

putting wood filler into the cracks on the hardwood floors after my spreader-thingy broke. ended up doing the rest of the job with a spreader so small, i could've done as good a job with a butter knife.

- excitement of the day:
marc waving a lit torch around as he used it to disconnect the old bathtub faucets

- departure of the day
the old fridge and stove are both gone. the stove had been out in front of the house for a week or so. it finally disappeared. we credit the stove fairy (a demented and larger relative of the tooth fairy, that takes away old decayed stoves when houses no longer need them, leaving empty beer bottles in their place).
we're leaving the fridge out to see what happens. we're hoping for full beer bottles at least.

the cake-construction conspiracy

i've long suspected that there's a conspiracy behind the whole renovation mystique. yeah, sure, you think it's a big macho tough guy thing to do, but i'm now quite convinced there's a whole other side. and it's all about cake.

yup. ever notice how much building products resemble dairy products?
check it out:
spackle...cream cheese
expandofoam...whipped cream (the kind from a can)
paint...cream, or liquid whipped cream
grout and tile adhesive...cake mix (just add water!)
caulk...icing
wood filler...cheez whiz

and the list goes on... clearly, it's all a big conspiracy. the tough reno guys want us to think they're doing something really difficult, but actually.... it's a piece of cake.

of course, when you're baking you never have to wear something like this...



and for those interested in today's progress notes, here you go:

--final adhesive of floor tiles completed
--grout bag acquired (oooh, pastry bag!) so that grouting can start in the morning
--more sanding done. one more room to go for the first round.
--much crap, junk and tools consolidated and placed out of the way of the sander.
--tub surround halfway installed (don't ask)
--four trips to the neighbourhood hardware store
--one trip to lowe's hardware superstore
--one load of laundry washed and folded
--one nearly new aluminum step ladder acquired from a woman drinking beer in a truck and holding a "garage" sale on a corner by the freeway, in front of a building last used by a campaign for Hoffa '96. $15.
--nutritious dinner prepared and served before 9 pm by the lady of the house. the one in the safety goggles.

the 'hood

a brief intro to detroit history, here. our house is located in corktown, detroit's oldest neighbourhood. it was originally the home of immigrants from county cork, ireland, hence the name. now, it's a well-integrated neighbourhood, with some original irish-descending residents, lots of latino folks (mexicantown is nearby, and most families living there come from the jalisco area of mexico), lots of black folks (including the cuban ex-patriates who make up most of our reno crew) and lots of youngish white folks like us who like the old houses.
here's ours:



and here's what's behind our house:




the big building behind the tree (i promise, i'll get a better picture at some point) is the old michigan central train station. it's been closed since 1979, when the railroads decided it wasn't busy enough in detroit to have a big passenger station anymore. we wish it was still open--it'd be so convenient!--but as it is, it's a nice view.
it's owned by the same guy who owns the ambassador bridge (i'm not making this up--there really is such a guy!) and he's waiting for someone to present him with the right amount of money to do something with it. so far, proposed plans have included a casino, a new police headquarters, and a hotel. but this is detroit. nothing happens fast. and usually, nothing happens.
here's another view, just to the right. this is immediately behind our yard.



and this is our back yard. well, part of it. house needs paint. ohboy does it ever...

utterly floored

ever play with that stuff called ooblick? you mix corn starch and water and get a weird kind of goo that's not really liquid and not really solid. and it hardens up in strange ways.
so, it turns out, does levelling compound. only in reverse. it starts out gooey and gets hard. fast.

of course, we should've been tipped off by the package instructions that said not to make more than you can use in 15 minutes. well, they meant it. after discovering how fast a building material can set up, we finally perfected the "splash, smooth and run" technique, with the following results:


next was drilling the pieces of underlay in place. i don't have a great photo. it wasn't all that exciting. then, the big moment:
placing the tiles!



they're all still a little wonky because i haven't stuck them down yet. that's for tomorrow. (gotta leave some excitement for myself, right?).

in addition to the tiles, we're getting started on refinishing the hardwood, which turns out to be red oak. it's already looking lovely and we've barely begun.


and of course, there are continuous safety hazards to be dealt with. like the bad back steps:



which i got to destroy today with a crowbar, sledgehammer and, well, i could've used a nail file and it would've been just as quick.

then marc replaced the treads. railing to come.



in addition to plenty of floor work, today also contained:

- the departure of the junk-filled trailer



- a trip to hamtramck to see this:



and yet another visit from "bill" the off-licence plumber. seems he fixed the problem. maybe.

bad windowsill. no cookie.

bad windowsill. bad, bad windowsill.

not only is it water-damaged, but it's cracking due to neglect. how can a window like this be expected to keep the cold/heat out or in, depending on time of year? or vice versa...

said windowsill is all better now. after a lot of air sealing, spackling, primer and paint, it's good as new. well, not really, given that this house is 107 years old, but it's pretty darn good. of course, there's still the question of having to wash the darn windows, too, but we'll get there...

today's progress included:

fitting the underlay boards for the kitchen tiles



fun with expando-foam (more air sealing thrills!)



a 25-lb bag of levelling cement (to put on the floor before we actually affix the underlay boards

a whole lotta money spent at ikea to acquire cabinets, sinks, appliances and such

(no photo for reasons of homeland security)

swedish meatballs.

ja.

pain(t) and suffering

all day, i've had a certain phrase running through my mind: "It's better to paint a wall than wash it." That comes courtesy of my wonderful friend Elizabeth, who says her mom used to say that. i couldn't agree more. it's amazing what a fresh coat of paint will do for a place.
of course, when that coat of paint happens to be trim, and you've just finished the whole house and realized you used the wrong paint, and have to add another layer, it's not quite so rewarding.
but it's starting to look good.

except...

we were hoping for an earth-tone neutral kind of colour scheme. but then, well, we got the paint tinted at the local hardware store, where the clerk clearly went to the ice-cream-sundae school of paint mixology. we have spumoni and lemon cream rather than greenish and yellowish. yup, detroit service at its finest...oh yeah, since the paint wasn't purchased there (no clue where it came from, but we found ten cans of paint in the house already), we had to, um, tip the mixology whiz.

here's how the yellow looks so far:



and the green. note also the lovely hole in the floor. that's next to get fixed... although it's been handy for passing stuff down to marc when he's doing plumbing in the crawl space. you know, flashlights, matches, sandpaper, beer...



just for the record, today wasn't all about painting. it also contained:

- a whole lot of tossing out junk into a trailer
- more street excitement when the asphalt truck finally showed up and almost paved our car
- a giant crash that turned out to be a 4'x5' mirror landing on marc's head (he's okay now)
- a homeless guy coming to the door to try and sell us junk that looked suspiciously like the stuff we'd just tossed out into the trailer
- sacha deciding he needed an electric motor to complete the craft project he was working on, and insisting there had to be one somewhere around here, despite our insistence that there really wasn't.
- artichokes for breakfast and lunch, frosted flakes for dinner

eastern market rocks

so, there's this wonderful place here called eastern market. it's open every saturday, and has farmers from all over who come and sell produce. or vegetables that fell off the back of the turnip truck. or plants, and flowers, and such.
and that's where we got those awesome-looking artichokes formerly mentioned.
i'm posting pics just to share the experience.

plumb tired

water. water, everywhere, and all of it collecting in a giant puddle of mud in the crawlspace. at some point in the past two years, the copper pipes froze and cracked. and the leaks go on.

so marc decides to try and fix it. a generally good idea, given that we've been getting water bills here that are outrageously high for a house that nobody actually lives in...

of course, the fixing doesn't go well at first. apart from his heroic crawling around in the muddy, dark, spider-filled crawlspace, the leaks are worse than a simple fix could take care of. time for a plumber.

but this is detroit. you don't do the normal thing and look in the yellow pages for a plumber who'll drop by that afternoon. noooo, you ask the guy next door, who's got a buddy who works for the water company who does plumbing on the side. and you call "bill" and he says he'll come sometime between 6 and 8 am next friday. uh-huh. so you're not really surprised when he doesn't show up until noon, and looks under the house and says he'll take care of it.

and then, several days later, it's still not fixed. a week later, same story.

so marc's back with the spiders in the crawlspace again. four hardware store trips later, plus a search for matches to light the acetylene torch, plus many loud words i'm not going to repeat here, and it seems the leaks have finally been staunched.
maybe.

a plumber could still be in our future.

we'll check the yellow pages.

america food

okay, i forgot about the supersized world of american food. although the picture of the meijer shopping cart should give an indication.
here's what we've been getting re-acquainted with:
styro boxes. when you can't finish everything on your super-sized portion plate at a restaurant, they bring you a box. not like some other places where they wrap it up for you. no. here, they bring a box (or a stack of boxes, depending) and let you go to town with whatever's left on the table. bread basket? bbq sauce? salt and pepper? toss'em in.


and then there's the patriotic food. yup, it all started with freedom fries. now look what you can get:




but it's not all bad. super-sizing might be a bad thing when it's mcdonald's, but when you get supersized artichokes too, well... yum.

shopping adventures

of course, it's not all fun and games when it comes to renos. there are some serious shopping trips to be made.
such as this:



Not pictured (but in cart)

48 bottles of decent beer (Killians, Goose Island, Leinenklugels, Dundee Honey Brown, Newcastle, all for about $40)
2 frozen pizzas
1 - 36" wingspan glider
3 foam stomp rockets
1 slingshot (real) for sacha (plus nonexploding ammo)
1 box of grits
unsmoked pork hock
5 litres (not metric marked) half & half
2 bags sweet potato chips
1 bag red white & blue gourmet potato chips (not a joke)
3 - 1lb containers of strawberries (3 for $5!)
1 bag prewashed, chopped country greens
2 kid-size t-shirts
3 men's t-shirts
4 pairs underpants (guess whose)
big bag of beet sugar (4 lbs?)

Also not pictured:
We paid $1 to rent the shopping cart that plays a video feed of "The Wiggles" to entertain children while parents shop.
The shopping cart kid doors lock from the outside, to reinforce immobilization (though the kids did discover that they could climb out the windshield)

Best of all:
All of this shopping was accomplished at 12:20 AM. Most Meijer stores (and their video-immobilizing kid carts) are open 24 hours, 364 days a year. Closed on Christmas Day.

wabash and other adventures!

the address: 2215 wabash.
the city: detroit.
the challenge: to renovate an entire 2-bedroom suite in less than a month

the players: alisa, marc, sacha and magritte
the challenges: water supply being fixed by city and non-functional for several days. house in advanced state of disrepair. yard overgrown. city services such as phone virtually nonexistent.

today: saturday, june 16

work to date:

de-mold the walls (a vacuum cleaner worked!)--fortunately for us, the mold was all on the surface and hadn't penetrated the very good paint barrier. let's hear it for mold-resistant primer.

rip out kitchen. including gross lino, non-working dishwasher, old sink and stove.

rip out bathroom, including tub surround and fixtures.

clearcut weeds in backyard.

prime walls

paint walls



strip peeling paint

sand places where needed


the assistants to the project: hugo, luis, montoya, sanchez, rodrigo, james