How We Got Here + Log week 4-5

Hi Friends,

Welcome to the second newsletter from the Hancock House! We have been working for 5 weeks now and after a frantic and high energy 3 weeks of cleaning and demo, we are starting to turn our attention to getting the house dry, safe, and secure before the cold winter months. Along with updates on our progress, we wanted to give you some background information on how this project came to be.

The seed was planted in spring 2021 when I got the jab and visited my friends Miles and Sloan in their neighborhood of Detroit. Despite watching them wash their dishes from their shower head which simply drained into the storm drain of their unfinished basement, I was hooked.

While Julian and I endured the pandemic in Ann Arbor, beefing up our handyfolk services and befriending the fantastic John Roos, Miles and Sloan started restoring their house bought from the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DBLA), a few blocks from where they grew up. Miles joked that we should buy the DLBA home next door to their place to help them avoid bad neighbors. Julian and I joked about it and then got quickly and deeply serious. So we toured it, put a bid down, and were told that we were too late — someone’s offer had already been accepted. We’ve met Greg — the other neighbor — and he’s fantastic btw.

Losing out on the house made us realize how much we wanted to do this project. We realized it was our perfect storm — I could adapt my Big Idea Award 2020 and create an artist residency, we could take our newly found love for building, fixing, and experiential learning to the next level, Julian could enroll full time in Youtube.Edu, and we could first-hand build the future we wanted to live in — as Solomon says, creative worldbuilding. Not to mention the end product is a home, land, community, and a jumping off point for other dreams: passive solar retrofit, small-scale farm, experimental builds, etc.

We bought the house in July 2021 through the Detroit Land Bank Authority Auction Program in which homes are up for 48 hours to blindly bid on. There were 4 other bids and we won at $3,500.

DID YOU KNOW: Most of the abandoned homes in Detroit are owned by the DLBA. If you buy a home from the DLBA like we did, you must get into Compliance with the them before they hand over the deed. Compliance is a checklist that you must finish that ensures you are working steadily on the house. If you do not show progress on the house, the DLBA has the right to take the house back from us and resell it to someone else. Since we are paying property taxes, water bills, and — hopefully soon — electrical bills, the DLBA wants us to keep the house. They are helpful and flexible with their deadlines and checklists.

Now, for the work progress and updates!

WEEK 4: After a crazy week of demo, we turned our focus to repairing floor joists. Floor joists are the beams that rest perpendicularly on the foundation and top of the main supporting beam of the house. They support the floor and walls above.

DID YOU KNOW: Our home, like most abandoned homes in Detroit, was cleared of all of the homely necessities that we have come to take for granted — sinks, toilets, shower heads, stoves, fridges, ovens, copper pipes, plumbing, electrical boxes, water meters, windows, doors. These items are removed hastily by scrappers who leave the floor joists — and whole house — in disarray. Before the roof was patched up, you could look up in the basement and see the sky through the roof. We found multiple joists cut in half, making the first floor above dangerous to walk on and extremely bowed.

Photo taken from the basement of cut floor joists.

Some joists are easier to repair than others. We have to slowly and carefully jack up the house to fit a new joist. Since we are adding full length joists to the house, the overall structure of the house is greatly improving. Some joists go in quickly, others take all day. We were very lucky to have the help of Solomon, Grant B, Grant W, Reagan, and Marley with this process. We have thus far gotten 4 joists sistered, and will likely need 3 more joists to go up before the whole first floor is safe to walk on.

Our pals Solomon and Grant helping us. The joists will rest on the foundation wall (left) and main beam (right). The span is 13’ and we are using 2x8 pieces of lumber.

Week four also included our dear friend John Roos coming to help. John is a previous boss to both Julian and I: we cooked with him on a Lobster Wharf Deli in Maine and at his company, RoosRoast in Ann Arbor. He was the first to put power tools in our hands to fix up the Deli, and kick-started our own fearless pursuit of DIY construction. He gifted us this wood fire stove!!! It was once used to heat the entire coffee roastery and cafe on Rosewood!

Erin and John with the wood stove strapped to a trailer at Roos Roast.

WEEK FIVE: It’s Glass Block window installation week! We have installed 5 out of 10 windows. The process is messy and time-sensitive, but overall very rewarding. With every glass block window replacing a boarded up window, the house becomes safer, dryer, and lighter.

The process goes as follows: Take off old windows, scrape off old paint from window sill, header, and sides, sand window, prime window, paint window, trim out window to ensure proper sizing and level/plumb with shims, reprime newly added wood, paint again, mix mortar and add glass block windows, wait for mortar to dry before cleaning glass blocks and smoothing out mortar, waterproof caulk the outside of the window, use spray-foam to insulation around the window and under the sill, final mortar touch

We bought used architectural glass blocks (8”x8”x4”) on Facebook Marketplace for $2/block. That is about 1/5 of the current market price for glass blocks and they are beautiful! Four inch thick windows are safe, well-insulated, and water resistant.

Deceivingly happy Erin.

No more Erin. A glass block window before it is wiped clean, waterproof caulked, and repainted.

That’s all the progress so far! We have about 2 weeks before we head for the Thanksgiving holiday. Before then we hope to finish the glass block windows, install the wood furnace, finish fixing the joists, cut away rotten flooring, and board up all the windows securely.

Though not the purpose for this newsletter, anything helps.

Love,

Julian and Erin