624 Leonard Street NE, Grand Rapids, MI
So this house was our second project that we took on. It ended up being a ton more work than the house at Union Street! When you first got in the house you noticed a horrible smell..clearly nobody had taken care of it! After two weeks of cleaning out the house of trash and miscellaneous items and then cleaning the walls, ceilings, and floors, we got right to work. This house was in rough shape. Previous owners had tried to do all the work themselves and did not do anything up to code or just left things unfinished. This house needed a full electrical rewire and upgrade, all new plumbing to the whole house, and a full HVAC upgrade and new runs through the whole house. Normally you put a header in when you take out a load-bearing wall, and somebody did not do that so we actually jacked the ceiling up three or four inches and put a full engineered beam in to support the upstairs. The last major call was whether or not we would refinish the original wood floors or we would put new wood floors in. I won that battle with my dad and we ended up putting in new laminate wood floors in the kitchen and throughout the living space while I tiled the laundry and bathroom with Wesley. Things turned out great again and after seven months on the job, we were able to find another person who fell in love with a house and our work and now is happily living there. Here is the before and after pictures!
