Taylor home remodeling and outdoor living
Taylor gives you something most Downriver cities do not: a back yard with room to build in it. The houses are 1950s through 1970s ranches and bungalows, modest inside and generous outside, so a lot of the best money spent here goes toward the part of the property people actually use from May to October.
What is under a Taylor house changes what you can do inside it
Foundations vary block to block. Older sections carry full basements, plenty of streets sit on crawl spaces, and the newer pockets are slab-on-grade with the plumbing buried in concrete. That single fact decides whether a sink can move eight feet or whether moving it means a saw and a jackhammer, so it is the first thing we check on a walkthrough anywhere in our Wayne County work. Where there is a basement, basement finishing is often the cheapest room you will ever add.
Aluminum siding covers most of the original wood on these houses, and what is behind it is worth knowing before you cut a new opening for a slider or a wider window. Sometimes it is board sheathing with the original lap siding still on it. Sometimes it is studs, felt and nothing else. Either way the wall has to be reworked around the new header, and the siding patch has to be planned rather than improvised at the end.
Kitchens in this stock share one flaw: not enough counter. The runs are short, the range and the sink eat most of what exists, and the refrigerator sits in the only corner that could have held a landing zone. Where the plan allows it, a kitchen island doubles working surface without touching an exterior wall, which keeps a kitchen remodel inside a reasonable number.
Bathrooms are small and original in a lot of these houses, with a steel tub, a single sink and an exhaust fan that vents into the attic instead of through the roof. Ten completed jobs in the city, and that fan detail has been wrong more often than it has been right. Fixing it is cheap while the ceiling is open and expensive later.
More counter without moving the exterior walls
An island needs 42 inches of clear aisle on the working side and a plan for the electrical, since a modern island carries at least one receptacle. Running power to it in a slab house means a floor chase or a ceiling route from below. We size the island to the aisle, not to the picture, and the layout usually gains a seat or two in the bargain.
Trading a steel tub for a shower you can walk into
Most owners in this stock use the tub once a year and the shower daily. Walk-in shower installation gets the room back and makes the whole space feel wider, and a full bathroom renovation is the moment to move that vent to the roof, add a real fan and put in a proper waterproofing membrane under the tile.
Lower levels, crawl spaces and what each one allows
A full basement here finishes fast because the framing is simple and the ceiling is high enough. A crawl space is a different project entirely: sealing it, insulating the rim and conditioning the air under the floor pays back in comfort upstairs, and it stops the musty smell that returns every August no matter how often the floor gets cleaned.
Adding a room that works past October
A four-season room is the request we hear most, and the word four-season is the whole point. Insulated walls, a real foundation, heat tied into the house and glass with a low enough U-factor to sit near in January. Built that way it counts as living space. Built cheap it becomes a room you close off after Thanksgiving.
Yards big enough to plan properly
Lot depth is the local advantage, so outdoor living spaces here can hold a dining area, a grill run and a fire feature without crowding the property line. Drainage comes first, since flat Downriver lots move water slowly. We set grades and downspout runs before the first post hole gets dug.
Decks built in the nineties have reached the end of their framing life
Thirty years is a long run for pressure-treated pine, and the decks built across this city during that boom are failing in the same order. Boards cup and split first, which is what owners notice. The structure goes quietly underneath. Before you spend money resurfacing, someone should get under it with a flashlight and an awl, because a new surface on a bad frame is money set on fire.
- The ledger is the first check. Nails instead of structural screws or through-bolts, and no flashing behind the board, means water has been sitting against the rim joist for years.
- Posts should land on footings below the frost line, roughly 42 inches down here. Plenty of nineties decks sit on patio blocks that have been heaving every winter since.
- Guard height and baluster spacing changed. A rail that was legal then may not pass now, and that is the detail an inspector looks at first.
- Hangers and fasteners corrode where treated lumber changed chemistry in the mid-2000s. Galvanized hardware from a repair done in 2008 may already be rusting out.
- Sometimes the frame is sound and only the surface goes. When that is the case we say so, and staining and maintenance can buy several more seasons.
Once two of those five checks come back bad, replacement is the better value. A new frame set on proper footings, with hidden fasteners and cedar or composite decking over it, will outlast the mortgage. Permitting a rebuild is also simpler than owners expect, since the footprint and the setbacks are already established and the review is about structure rather than placement.
Outdoor living on a Downriver lot, start to finish
The cedar post and beam wrap deck on our homepage is a Taylor build, and it shows what the extra yard depth buys you: a structure that turns a corner, holds a table and a seating group, and reads as part of the house instead of a platform bolted to the back of it. New deck construction gets designed to the door heights and the sight lines you already have.
From there the additions are easy to picture. An outdoor kitchen needs gas, power and a water plan, all of which are cheaper to run while the ground is already open. A covered outdoor living room extends the season on both ends. If the goal is year-round, a home addition under a real roof is the honest answer.
Design and construction stay under one design-build contract, so the drawing you approve is the drawing our carpenters build from. Crews running to Romulus renovations and to work in Garden City cover Taylor on the same rotation, and material comes off the same shop shelves in Ypsilanti.
Send us photos of the back of the house and we will tell you what the yard can hold.
