NICK (24) & LAUREN (25)

Home: 1937 English Tudor

Layout: 3 Bedrooms, 1.5 Baths

Square Footage: 1,964 SQFT

Approximate Budget: $60K

RESTORATION NEEDS                   

1: Kitcehn

2: Main floor bathroom

3: Main suite bathroom

4: Refinishing wooden floors

Nick and Lauren are an ambitious young couple who know what they want and they go after it! They’ve been together for nearly five years (the originally met in college) and have been going steady ever since. Nick works a minimum sixty hours a week in mortgage lending and has dedicated himself to his work and career. It has always been his and Lauren’s dream to be homeowners and by the early age of 24 Nick had saved up enough money to make that dream a reality. Nick and Lauren have been consistently underestimated because of their age. Everyone, including Nick’s own mother, scoffed at the idea that the two young adults could seriously purchase and restore a historic home in Detroit. It’s too expensive. It’s too much work. They don’t know what they’re getting in to. Wouldn’t they rather wait until they’re older? The truth is, Nick and Lauren have worked extremely hard and made sacrifices that most people their age wouldn’t make in order to realize their dream and they aren’t giving up without a fight!

Now that they finally have bought a house and are ready to move in, restoring it is a much more daunting task than they had realized! Most every room in the house needs some kind of restoration or update. Although both Nick and Lauren aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, (they’ve already started to try to pull up old carpeting and linoleum and clear old brush in the overgrown backyard) they don’t have the time or the knowledge to do the work themselves. Nick was hoping that he would have more free time to dedicate to the house but the pandemic has only proved to increase his work load leaving little time for him to devote to the home. Being first-time and young homeowners Nick and Lauren don’t want to make costly mistakes that will put them even further from their goal. They are nervous enough about the nagging notion of, “did we just buy a money pit?” that they don’t want to misstep and put themselves into even further turmoil.

Nick and Lauren are incredibly overwhelmed when they think about what seems to be a never-ending list of “to-do’s.” Ultimately, what they don’t want to happen is to prove the naysayers right: that they shouldn’t have bought this home to begin with. This young couple is in desperate need of some professional guidance. This is the house that the young couple wants to build a life in. They’ve come so far to make their historic house dream a reality it would be a tragedy for them to fail at this point.

Kitchen: Nick and Lauren are concerned that there isn’t anything that is salvageable in the kitchen. They don’t know what’s trash and what’s treasure! It’s really that bad. The cabinets are old and falling apart. There is old linoleum flooring. They are holding out hope that at least the linoleum is hiding beautiful hardwood flooring underneath that matches the flooring in the rest of the home. They need help navigating what to keep, what to replace and how to be authentic to the historic nature of home in the process. Neither know enough about old homes to really know the correct answer, so they’re at a stale mate. The kitchen layout is also very “chopped up” there’s an archway that separates a strange and uncomfortable dining nook from the cooking area. The older kitchen has never been renovated and is still the incredibly small size that was the norm of the 1930’s.  

Main floor bathroom: It’s hard to describe the main floor bathroom without using the word, “disgusting.” Not only is the bathroom dirty, falling apart and wafts of a mysterious odor, it’s extremely small!  One can’t even sit down on the toilet without hitting their knees on the walls! According to Lauren she couldn’t be PAID to use the toilet. Last time they looked inside the toilet they were met by a family of insects! The tile is cracked. The walls are old and need a fresh coat of paint (and maybe even plaster work in some areas!) Everything about this bathroom says, “get out!” Nick and Lauren would love to eventually expand this bathroom into the kitchen to make a more serviceable and accommodating bathroom on the first floor.

Main-suite bathroom: This is the only bathroom in the entire house with a bath and shower. It’s also the last place that anyone would ever want to take a shower. The bath and the shower are old, dirty, rusty and cracked. The toilet used to have a leak that created water damage that went through the floor appearing on the ceiling of the first floor. Although Nick has had an inspector say that there is no permanent and serious damage it’s absolutely an eye sore that needs plaster work and painting. There is a massive, exposed hole in the tile wall of the shower where Nick and Lauren believe a plumber opened up in order to repair the toilet leak but never followed through on closing the hole. It’s not all doom and gloom though. There is an interesting and unique light-fixture that they believe is original to the home that they would love to preserve. Any way they look at it Nick and Lauren know that this bathroom needs a lot of work before they can ever use this space in comfort and peace.  

Wood floors: The hardwood floors found throughout the home are in very bad shape. Nick and Lauren are unsure if they are even able to be restored or if they need to be replaced altogether. There are massive track marks where it looks like the previous owners dragged heavy furniture across the floors making thick and unsightly scratches and marks. The floors are scuffed, dirty and badly beat-up. Although Nick and Lauren don’t mind the idea of “beautifully imperfect” these floors are beyond what’s what can be considered beautiful in any way.