ellebelle

Just caught the first show in Season 2 - gorgeous 1906 Arts and Crafts home. It came out beautifully. I have to say, Brett really has an amazing attention to detail. I was very pleased to see several Motawi Tileworks tiles on the wall in the kitchen and another in one of the hallways. That's beautiful tile, made here in my home town. The fireplaces were just stunning. This was one of the prettiest houses he's worked on, IMO. Very gracious living space, and not as dark on the inside as Arts and Crafts homes can sometimes look. I do enjoy this show - I'm glad it's back!

I caught this episode for the first time this morning, so I'm just a tad late to the party. I just couldn't resist posting that I now have definite proof, having seen it with my own eyes, that Tarek doesn't know what he's doing with the tile work. That penny round tile was from Lunada Bay Tile, it's actually gorgeous stuff in person, and I saw enough of the design board while they were at the store to see that it was the Tozen line. Anyway, there was one ribbon that had already been done, perfectly, and then Tarek was supposedly doing the recessed square area. He had the paper backing pressed against the wall. Um, NO. Although most mosaic tile has netting that holds the tile pieces together which gets pressed into the mud, the glass tile actually gets installed with the paper backing facing outward, and then after a period of time to let it partially set, you wet/dissolve the paper. I had some installed at my house, and had my doubts about how my contractor claimed it all worked, so I went online to double-check, and had to quickly get him to pull the glass tile off before it set because he had done the same thing.

Glad to see this topic open up - I recently found this show and really enjoy it! The 1955 mid-century house seemed like it wasn't exactly a quality house to start with. The paneling was really thin, no wood floors, just plywood - I'm not sure that one was worth restoring! Plus this might be the only episode where I felt like the homeowners weren't really interested truly restoring anyway - they just wanted their wood floors, and their new kitchen, dammit. One of the things I do enjoy about this show is being educated about hallmarks of various building styles. As I drive into work now, I find myself looking for leaded or stained glass windows, gingerbread details, etc. I especially enjoy it when Brett restores fireplaces - for some reason, I love it when they find original tile! I always wonder about these renovation budgets. I'm with you, msrachelj - we've done a couple of renovations on our home and to do what we wanted to do, well, the costs just escalate, and the idea that you can basically do an entire home remodel plus some landscaping for the budgets that are given just blows my mind. There has to be some behind-the-scenes help on the cost, though I do appreciate that on this show they admit when they've gone over budget.

I just read tonight that she will be back for Season 8. Not sure, but I think it will be on DIY. And of course, now I can't even remember where I saw this, so that's all I got for now.

aquabella, yes, that's the link that had the comments in it - sorry if I posted one that didn't have them! I enjoyed watching the series about the Ransom-Gillis House, mostly because that was one beautiful house! And I must reiterate that Ann Baxter is an amazingly talented artist, as well as being completely lovely in person, very modest and appreciative that people loved her work. I had mentioned in my previous post that I was bothered by the placement of the shower stall and tub directly in front of windows in the master bathroom and I noted that when the episode aired (not this week, maybe last?) the cameraman was very clever and, unless you knew to look for it, you wouldn't really notice. I wish they would have had Ann do a partial stained or leaded glass in those windows - would have made the bathroom more private while adding more of her beautiful work.

Boots on the ground report for all who might be interested in the new season of Rehab Addict: There was an open house this past Sunday at the Ransom-Gillis house that will be the subject of the new season of RA, which starts this week. A few of my friends and I decided we’d go check out Nicole’s latest project. It’s my understanding that she acted as more of a consultant/historian on this project and the money was contributed by Dan Gilbert, of Quicken Loans, who’s been investing a lot of money in downtown Detroit. I believe the house was built around 1875 but had fallen into complete disrepair. Judging from the photos that were displayed in the house, it was little more than a shell when the rehabilitation began. The house sits on a block that must have been something in its heyday, but now this very large house sits on the corner, there is a wreck of a house more or less next to it, a vacant lot and then two more wrecks. There is fencing around the other three houses, and it’s my understanding that they will be rehabilitated too, but probably not to the extent the R-G house has been. They all had some new roofing on them, probably because none of them had roofs to start with, that’s what bad shape they’re in. But you can see they have beautiful bones. Comerica Park (where the Detroit Tigers play) and Ford Field (where the Detroit Lions pretend to play) are very close by. There is an assisted living facility that looks well-kept at the far end of the block, but the neighborhood definitely is a mixed bag. We waited in line for about 3-1/2 hours (I know! Crazy!) so we had plenty of time to look around. There are some houses that have been renovated but plenty of boarded-up, old beautiful houses as well. I did get the impression that if Gilbert does work on several houses in the immediate area, the neighborhood could make a comeback; it feels like it’s poised to do so. It will be interesting to see where things stand in a year or two. There was a huge crowd – we entered around 1100 (they were keeping count) and I would guess that there were easily 2000 people total who toured the house. The house has been made into a duplex – one unit is about 1900 sf and the other about 2500 sf. We were told that nothing original of the flooring or glass or tiles were left when they started renovating. Anne Baxter has done a lot of beautiful glass work, including a large rosette stained glass window and then I kept noticing others as we went through. The glass looked old and so perfect for the house. I love Anne’s work! I believe there were a total of five bathrooms. Every one of them was completely familiar – white subway tile with dark grout, hexagonal tiles on the floor (at least one had a snowflake pattern, and I believe one was black and white), white marble countertops, shiny stainless steel fixtures. You know – Nicole bathrooms. (ETA that after looking at some of the photos in the Detroit Free Press, at least one bathroom had wood floors - there was a lot to take in!) The one thing that I just couldn’t get past was that in one bathroom, there were large windows, almost floor-to-ceiling, with absolutely no window treatments on them. Directly in front of one window was a claw foot tub, and directly in front of the other was a completely see-through shower stall. I mean, there was NO privacy – you would be there for the whole world to see, no way to avoid it! I hope that window treatments just weren’t ready or something, because honestly, that’s just ridiculous to place a tub and shower like that! Many of the walls were left with exposed brick, which looks cool, I guess, but certainly not historically accurate. Usually we only see a brick chimney in the kitchen or a bedroom, but there was a lot more exposed brick in this house. The floors looked really nice (they were new and professionally done), and the house is loaded with charm. Closets were surprisingly huge, though right now they are mostly like attached rooms, no clothes racks or shelving are in them – maybe that’s another detail that wasn’t quite completed yet. There’s a really cool turret on the front of the house too, where a little desk was placed. Beautiful stair railings. Jason the custom woodworking guy was there, and we saw a JD Engle Construction Truck there too, so obviously this project used a lot of Nicole’s cohorts from other projects. Nicole came out several times to work the crowd. We were told on FB that no photos would be allowed inside the house at all, and it was rumored that Nicole was more than a little unhappy when the Quicken Loans/Gilbert people allowed local media like MLive and The Detroit Free Press to take and publish photos. I don’t remember how to do fancy links or if I need a spoiler alert, but if anyone is interested to see some photos, they can be found at: http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2015/08/nicole_curtis_ransom_gillis_re.html If you go there, be sure to read the comments. Interesting stuff there. I was glad to have seen the house in person, and it will be fun to watch the process on the show after having seen the finished project!

I attended Nicole’s Grand Blvd open house today. It was a very hot and humid day with some on-and-off rain showers, but there were hundreds of people there. The open house was supposed to begin at noon, and we were in line by 11:40, with people all the way down the street and around the corner. I’ve never been to one of these events and wasn’t sure what to expect from Nicole herself, but I have to give her props – she was very gracious to everyone, and she (and Lucy) came by several times while we were waiting to thank us for coming, to reassure us that we’d all get in, to jokingly let us know that it was even hotter in the house, and to tell us that two of the spaces (one of the bathrooms and the butler’s pantry directly beneath it) had had a plumbing disaster and had to be ripped out. I didn’t hear exactly what happened, but the bathroom floor was completely gutted and the butler’s pantry floor was partially so. Such a shame to have put in all the work and have that happen. I was especially happy to meet Ann who did the custom stained/leaded glass windows for the house, and the windows are even prettier in person than they appeared on television. She did a wonderful job to blend her work to the existing windows in the room. The house is in a pretty good area; there was a Craftsman bungalow just three doors down that, from the outside, was an absolute stunner. Other houses were large and gracious; some looked a little better cared-for than others, but overall, the area was better than I expected from watching past seasons of the show. The trees are huge and provided some much-needed shade today, because when the sun came out between rain showers, it was beastly hot. There are several retirement homes/nursing homes very close by, and the house is also close to a hospital. I think she picked a good location from an investment standpoint. The house was very crowded so I’m sure I missed a lot of details, but overall I came away with a positive impression. The entry/foyer is beautiful (Nicole’s paint choices are very nice – I’d love to know the color she had in the entry!) and the built-ins are lovely. The wood floors in the entry and the living room were gorgeous; others weren’t as nice as those. The floors creaked, just like you’d expect them to do in a house of this age. There were a lot of cracked floor tiles in various locations and although I understand Nicole doesn’t want things to be perfect, I guess I don’t have the same appreciation for cracked floors. I also was not a fan of the wood island on rollers in the kitchen. It’s a pretty island on its own; it just looks a little odd with the rest of the décor, and the kitchen isn’t all that big, to accommodate or even need an island IMO. The stairs that led to what would have been the servants’ quarters were also a teensy bit scary to navigate – narrow, winding and no handrail for at least part of the staircase, but there’s really nothing you can do about that. Overall, it’s really a pretty house, in a good location, and I’m glad I had the chance to go and see the place in person.

First post here after lurking for a while, so please excuse any odd formatting. There was a little blurb about Nicole and Rehab Addict in The Detroit Free Press today, discussing her next project, an 1876 house in Detroit's Brush neighborhood. The article mentions that Nicole "considers Detroit her home base these days," so folks who thought she might be considering living in her Detroit Tudor project might not be off the mark. Sounds like this house is in a promising area too, close to Comerica Park (where the Detroit Tigers play) and will be close to the location of a new hockey arena that is in the planning stages, so Nicole may have picked a location where she'll be able to invest more with the idea of ultimately making more when the house is sold. The house is also little more than a shell at the moment, so I'm looking forward to watching the progress. Much as Nicole grates at times, I do enjoy watching the transformation of her houses (some more successful than others, of course).