We’ve been working our tails off to get moved into the Sullivan House by the end of the month. It’s a breakneck pace, and it’s wearing us down pretty fast. I arrived at the house before 8am today to have the kitchen floor measured. Today was special because several key things came together.

First, we now have wifi. Internet means I can do my job (for Vanilla Forums) from the house. Second, we have a water filter installed and a microwave. That means… hot tea!

I sat out on the porch for the first half of my day, the morning summer sun rising. Joggers, deliverymen, neighbors walking dogs, flier hangers, and the postwoman all passed by. A neighbor moved in. I waved to a lot of people. And worked. It was a perfect peaceful morning and I got a ton done.

As I sipped on my tea to keep warm, it hit me: this is my new morning commute. After all this moving crap is done… I get to sit on the porch of our new castle to do what I love while the neighborhood hums quietly around me.

Glorious. Onward.

I got sucker punched, so I snapped right back. I got together a mess o’ gear, donned goggles & mask, and tore into that mold-infested space with a crowbar and a huge bucket of bleach water.

Terror building as I prepare to enter the void.

I took out two big bags of shattered drywall and found… nothing. Well sure, there was some white and yellow mold, and there was indeed a strip of black mold by the opening. But that strip quickly fell to my spray bottle, and its expected siblings were nowhere to be found. The darkness and stench had fooled us.

Actually... it kinda looks OK. Huh.

Suddenly, I had a manageable project again.

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Last week was a setback. Today, it was a sucker punch.

Andy and I were investigating why the walls in the rear stairwell were always damp. I’d previously determined the walls outside weren’t leaking, but we went outside and had another look anyway. Nope, still fine. But the walls were definitely abnormally damp, even after repeated priming and spackling. Then Andy said those fateful words: “It can’t be coming up from the ground, can it?”

He asked if it was wet under the stairs. I said “You can’t get under the stairs, it’s sealed off,” and my stomach dropped a little as I could see where this was going.

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Today I made a decision on the carriage house roof. We’ll be removing the old roofing materials ourselves and building the subroof. Then a professional roofing company will install a metal imitation shake shingle roof. It will be the second truly major expense of this project, on par with the boiler and heating system repairs. And, we’ll be doing it in the next month.

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The Sullivan House has matching, original handcrafted wood trim around every door and window in the entire house. The wood is gorgeous, and it’s a very bold and wide trim. In fact, I’m resolved to removing the paint from every inch of it in the entire house because it’s a crime for it to be covered.

In the renovated kitchen and bathroom, we need new trim to replace pieces that were lost, broken, or no longer cut correctly from before the renovation. We have sources for trim, of course, but it will be a poor substitute for the original. In the kitchen, especially, it will stick out like a sore thumb against the originally-trimmed windows. Getting it professionally custom cut seems prohibitively expensive.

Does anyone out there have the ability to either produce custom cut trim or produce router bits for custom patterns? Of course, if someone has the actual rotary tool for producing custom trim (I’m forgetting the name presently) that would be amazing. Additionally, if anyone has skill at identifying and matching wood types, I’d appreciate help with that as well.

I met our contractor Andy at the house this morning and we talked strategies and solutions for a lot of issues throughout the house. Smoothing walls, minor electrical fixes, appliance and cabinet installation, and door placements were some of the many things that came up. I notice a water leak in the upstairs near the rear chimney, and a litany of smaller issues.

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I had an agent from American Metal Roofs come out and check out the Sullivan House. I’ve been interested in metal roofs for a while now. My uncle originally mentioned them to me after discussing them with my cousin, who’s an architect. They are essentially permanent insofar as they’ll never need to be replaced again in my lifetime, and they absorb far less heat. You can also get them in various styles, like vintage shake shingles to match the original style of my house, and they look damn good.

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Some friends showed up for the weekend, our contractor Andy returned from his trip to the motherland, and suddenly we’re back to ludicrous speed at the Sullivan House. We’re aiming to have the kitchen and bathroom functional by Memorial Day weekend, and we’re well on our way. Check out the renovation log for what we’ve done the last couple weeks.

The last of the “junk” left by the previous owner exited the house yesterday, which felt like a big milestone. We’re getting ready to put up the kitchen ceiling, and the bathroom is almost ready for that magical moment we install a working toilet in the house. My current project is clearing the main room and office to prep for painting. As usual, we’re figuring it out as we go.

Two rooms have sold in the second & final round of sponsorships, but there’s still quite a few spaces available if you want your name to forever grace the halls of our new community headquarters.

My uncle visited again last week. It was his first time in the house since just before I bought it, and he was duly impressed with the improvements that had been made. It made me remember what things were like that day back in January, and it made me feel a little better about our progress. We’ve really done a lot in three months, but it never feels like enough when considering how much is left to do.

These days, a lot of things are moving between the two houses. Outdoor furniture and supplies head downtown, and left-behind junk for our impending yard sale heads to the suburbs. We typically only get to work on the house on the weekend, but it’s usually for 4-8 hour stretches when we do.

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We asked for people to sponsor the Sullivan House, and you responded in a big way. Every room we put up for adoption was snapped up, and you found even more spaces in the house to sponsor that we hadn’t thought to include.

Here’s the breakdown of how the rooms sold.
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So how’s the Sullivan House coming along? Here’s a quick run down of what remaining tasks we currently know about. Before we can move in:

• Bathroom needs tiling, painting, appliances and fixtures installed, and radiator adjusted and installed.
• Kitchen needs tiling, painting, countertops, sink & cabinet & appliances installation, radiator installation (including re-running cut copper lines), a gas line for the stove, and ceiling & light installation.
• Ground floor needs more electrical ground (office, dining room) and CAT-6 runs
• Exterior requires repairs to the fascia and sophets, new rain gutters, and a ton of primer and paint.
• Chimneys need repairs, liners, and a new damper.
• Boiler / water heater needs to be installed.
• Basement and carriage house need to be further emptied of junk while we have the dumpster.

Other than that, we have a litany of other tasks ahead that are not necessarily going to be finished before we move in:

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I am so very tired right now, but it’s time to write again. I’ve been quiet here for six weeks and now I have a lot to say.

Since the major events of St. Patrick’s weekend, progress has been significantly slower on Avery Street. I’ve been swamped at work and met someone special in February, so I’ve been pretty limited with how much time I spent at the house. We put in a big effort every Saturday, but otherwise I’m usually restricted to coordinating work and purchases. Brian’s been awesome about scheduling & meeting our myriad experts (heating specialists, chimney sweeps, electrician, and plasterer) these last few weeks. It’s been our contractor Andy who’s probably putting in the most time, but he just left for a three week trip home to England. Luckily, just as he left the rest of us sprung back into action!
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I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have power on at the house.

It took a dozen calls to DTE and two weeks, but electricity has been restored to the house. In the meantime, we were burglarized twice, I lost entire days of work due to being restricted to daylight hours at the house, and there was precious few repairs we could do. The house was cold and dark most of the time.

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I really can’t believe the amount of help we’ve already had since we bought the one in Woodbridge. A dozen friends have already shown up on short notice (and on Superbowl weekend no less) to help us clear out the house. Several more have given ridiculous amounts of money to help buy materials. Thank you so much.

We’ve set up goals to sponsor each room in the house if you wanted to help out and weren’t sure how. We want to make sure everyone who gives like that is recognized. We set a goal of $10,000 total for all the rooms combined. We basically made that number up and are painfully aware that it may be crazy talk.

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Of course, everything’s more complicated than we thought.

A lot of pipes were copper, and the thieves were very thorough. The bathroom was devoid of plumbing save the drain lines. “Well, it’s not the end of the world,” our contractor Andy tells us. We get an initial run up to the bathroom and the rest of the lines blocked off. Essentially, we can now fill the toilet with a hose. Ryder and I flush it for the first time (evacuating the parting gift left behind by the movers). Meanwhile, in the basement, Brian and Andy are watching the lines. A trickle of water seeps out of the floor at the sewage line.

“Andy, that’s piss.”

“I think you’re right.”

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