The Hamilton Rd. Project!

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Open House - 7-14-2012

With things mostly done on the house and hopefully 99% by the June we are going to have an open house before my grad school starts. As the name implies it is an open house and if you or anyone you know have followed the project and are interested in seeing it personally here is your chance! The details are below:

When: 7/14/2012

From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Where: 2188 Hamilton Rd., Okemos, MI 48864

Contact: David DeLind

(734) 945-6488

dmdelind@gmail.com

If you plan on attending please rsvp either by the facebook event found at the link below or by mail so we can get a rough idea of numbers. Amber and I look forward to meeting everyone in the neighborhood who have put up with our mess and noise for the past three years.

http://www.facebook.com/events/154476641348157/

And some new photos for the post. They aren't as pretty as the ones last week but they are progress just the same. We successfully put all the nosing on the bookshelf and now have some small remainder pieces of trim to add on, and we finished tiling the downstairs shower. So with some tweaking of the hot water valves it should be a two bathroom house very soon.

Installing Nosing

Still Installing Nosing

Top of the shelf varnished and ready to be assembled

Bookshelf Ladder ready for assembly

Ladder Rail Installed

Nosing Piece Closeup

Almost Ready for Books

Shower Door Installed Properly Despite the Camera Optics

Drying Grout Ready for Cleaning

#BobVila

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

April Adventures

For the first time in quite some time I am excited about the work that was finished the past month. Even though it went slower than I wanted, and was more expensive than initially budgeted, big plans for finished areas of the place are falling together. The first is a floor to ceiling bookshelf which was actually quite a lot more work to design and build than I have initially thought. It did come together though and the first level only had one or two easily fixed mistakes. In the end the shelf will be floor to ceiling as mentioned above and have a sliding ladder system (coming soon).

The second project that was completed I had planned on since the beginning of demolition, to the point where even the finish trim on the windows was recessed. I will admit, the window trim looked pretty odd and I had to field a lot of the age old question "So whats going on with that...?" I mean the clear answer was stained glass privacy screens. They are done, in place and now there is one room in our house where the neighborhood can't stare at us.

Front Door View

Assembling the Bookshelf

Securing the uprights

Adding in the Shelves

Still Adding Shelves

Yet More Shelves

Tying together the sections

Putting It Upright

Level One In Place

Construction Inspector No. 1

Construction Inspector No. 2

Checking The Plans

Sun Room Windows In Place!

Window No. 1

Window No. 2

Window No. 3

Window No. 4

Stairwell View

Basement Stair View

#bobvila

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

On With The Show

We moved into the house over Thanksgiving on top of having both of our families and some friends coming for the holiday. Despite having a great time with everyone who came I wouldn't recommend this level of stress for any body. The meal and the move went off with out really any real problems though, despite some hardships getting the bed up the stairwell. Christmas and Hanukkah were less stressful with a few friends coming to town to visit and stay with us. The goal was to get back in action after the new year, but it was so nice to not working on the house we decided to blend back in a few of our old hobbies (mainly brewing beer and cooking) instead of getting back to major projects. That is not to say we haven't done anything around the house for three months, it has just been at a much slower pace, and a calmer nature. We have more or less just been putting out fires here and there that come from new construction on old houses and making the rough edges disappear. So any given week there will be more cupboards here, or a new table there, or door knobs on the bathrooms. Other than finishing up the detail work (hopefully we will have everything "done" by mid summer) things are going pretty well for us right now. Amber has a great job working for the Center for Michigan and recently graduated from GVSU with a masters in public administration, and I am going back to grad school this fall at MSU to pursue a masters in business administration and was recently awarded "young engineer of the year", by MSPE. The next projects are more dictated by the weather than anything else, we don't particularly want to do a lot of varnishing or painting when we cant have all the windows open, so instead we are planning to rough frame in some bedroom closets and some pantry storage.