Better Than New

by Nicole Curtis

  The downstairs bathroom was destroyed (left). The rooms have to be spotless before we shoot “afters” (center). I noticed that the sink legs were upside down while checking my shot (right).

  Even worse, as I was tearing off the shingles and throwing them to the ground, one of them hit the wires going into the main electrical head for the house. Before modern codes, electrical wires were unsheathed, with no protective covering. I watched as the asphalt tile hit both lines at once, causing an arc that started a blue flame traveling up the lines, into the electrical head, and into the house. I jumped down and sprinted inside, shouting, “Everyone out! Everyone out!” Thank goodness it was a false alarm. I narrowly missed burning the house down once and for all.

  There were lots of other fun surprises as well. When we stripped out the still-wet wall insulation, we discovered an ant infestation. As if that weren’t bad enough, they turned out to be flying ants. There was never a dull moment on the Campbell Street project.

  Working on the bathroom with Logan (left). All hands on deck: Jose sewing on the sidewalk (right).

  But piece by piece, the house began to take shape. And just as I was seeing the beauty and personality in it come back to life, I also was falling in love with the neighborhood. It was like nothing I had ever seen, and certainly like nothing I had ever experienced in Minneapolis. It was like the Wild, Wild West. Feral dogs ran around looking for scraps. Guys held drag races: Starting at 9 p.m., they’d drive their cars eighty miles an hour down the empty streets. At dinnertime every night a couple of kids would steer a supercharged go-kart around the block, skidding into the turns. I walked out into the street one time and they thought I was going to yell at them. Instead, I said, “Let me drive that thing.” If you’re going to be in a neighborhood like Campbell Street, you have to be part of the neighborhood.

  The people up and down the street had seen a city government not only give up on the local community, but also actively rob them of their tax dollars. They didn’t trust outsiders. You can go into an area like that trying to be the missionary and martyr, or you can go in there and be like a neighbor. Embrace the people, show them what you’re doing, and include them. That’s a part of all the houses I rehab, a part that usually doesn’t make it on camera. Most of the people on Campbell Street didn’t know who I was. They had never seen Rehab Addict. They saw the cameras and the bulldozers and the work trucks and the tiny blond chick, and they wanted to know what was going on.

  The Campbell Street house yard before (left) resembled a jungle. We took a machete to it to clear it for the backyard (right).

  So I told them. “We’re rebuilding.” Everyone working on the house became part of the neighborhood. And the best part of the neighborhood was its kids. There were a lot of them, as young as eight and as old as twenty. Joey and Logan. Ali and Zeke. These guys came by the work site almost every day. Jose and I became surrogate parents to all these kids. I would mother them, asking them, “Are you hungry?” “Did you guys eat lunch today?” “Did you get enough sleep?” and the dreaded question, “Have you been smoking?” While Jose, on the other hand, was the person they went to when they got in trouble with me.

  The kids would always say they wanted to work, but usually, kids being kids, they would paint for forty-five minutes and then want to be paid. I’d say, “What? Put in seventeen hours like we are and then we can talk payment.” We taught Logan, a small, stocky nine-year-old with a sweet round face and mile-a-minute chatter, how to mow the lawn (after we bought machetes and hacked down the backyard overgrowth that had reached epic proportions). He ended up mowing lawns all summer and making a tidy sum.

  Gramps and Ethan.

  For the few hours we left the job site each day, we put our trust in the neighborhood. We didn’t have security guards or even security fencing. Nothing was stopping somebody from going into the house and taking tools, equipment, supplies, and materials or vandalizing it.

  The scorching weather of August came in and the house still wasn’t finished. My grandparents stopped by for a visit; my Gramps refused to go inside, while my Gram was super excited and had to check out every last bit of the house. As much as I had hoped to have the house finished as we headed back to Minneapolis at the end of August, there were a thousand and one details that still needed to be finished. This was the start of my learning how to manage projects from afar; I was in Minneapolis during the week and in Detroit on the weekends, leaving Jose to hold down the Campbell Street project while I was away.

  One weekend, a tremendous storm tore through the area and brought down a large oak tree at the curb in front of the house. I called Justin all excited and said, “Justin, we should carve the tree.” And again with his signature noise, he said, “Nicole there’s a lot more to tree carving than your hundred pounds wielding a chain saw. Why don’t you do a little research and get back to me?” So, while waiting for a flight at the airport, I went online and searched “tree carving” and found the website of chain-saw artist Scott Kuefler. A week later, Scott called me and confessed, “I had no idea who you were, and I’m super busy, but when I mentioned you to my wife, she said, ‘You’re going to go carve this tree.’ So when do you want to do this?”

  Scott Kuefler turned a tree stump into a beautiful piece of art.

  When I saw Scott show up with not just one chain saw but a trailer-load of chain saws, I felt pretty silly for having thought I could’ve carved the tree myself. Now when people come to check out the Campbell Street house, the first thing they do is take a picture of that tree carving.

  We were closing in on the finish line, and as always, I was obsessed with staging the home, raiding every retail shop, estate sale, Craigslist ad, and garbage pile to make it work. At one point, I even had Jose out on the curb taking turns sewing curtains with my mom. (Oh, did I forget to mention that Jose also knows how to sew? One more reason never to judge a book by its cover.)

  Ethan and me home in Minneapolis for his homecoming before heading back to Detroit to finish the house.

  While I was working away on staging the inside, the landscaping had been transformed. That mud pit had become a wonderful green side yard with a cute picket fence around it, and Logan and his classmates had helped me create a community garden. Thanks to the efforts of dozens of volunteers and Rosie and her late-night appearances to paint the baseboards in the back bedroom or to just clean up, the punch list was finally nearing completion.

  The open house was a testament to all their efforts, and it was a huge success. It was my second charity open house and my first in Detroit. The line was insane. And who was standing by my side? Chad. Somewhere in those ashes, I had rebuilt not only that house, but also our relationship. The money raised during the open house was in honor of Brian Thomas and to help offset costs for his cancer treatments. I’ve known Brian most of my life—raising money for him was the perfect end to a very challenging project.

  I still own the Campbell Street house, and I go back there often. People always think I’m kidding when I say I mow my lawns and weed my flower beds, until they drive by to see one of my projects and there I am covered in dirt. With Campbell Street, I go back not only for maintenance, but because of my Campbell Street kids. When I drive down the street, I have to slow to five miles an hour because there are kids everywhere. To them, I’m not “as seen on TV” Nicole. I’m Nicole the mom. The little ones wave and smile and the older ones look worried as they stand up straight and hide their cigarettes. I love that they look at me as someone they can count on. It makes me feel like a million bucks. When you’re a mom, you’re a mom. It doesn’t matter that they’re not my biological children; I consider them my own and apparently they feel the same way, as I get phone calls, pleading, “Mom, I need shoes.” “Mom, I need money.” I love every minute of it. I have hopes and dreams for them just like I do for my own children.

  The Campbell Street project is one of the houses that best defines my work. I
feel like it was pure passion that resurrected that house from the ashes of a fire. After Campbell Street, when somebody tells me something can’t be done, I’m like, “Really? Have you seen my Campbell Street house? Give me a break.” I planted my flag in Detroit, and proved that passion means ashes aren’t necessarily an end; they also can be a beginning.

  The Campbell Street open house attracted hundreds of supporters and raised money for my friend Brian.

  Chapter 7

  Live Your Normal, Because There Is No “Normal”

  grand boulevard house and akron house

  Out of the ashes of the Campbell Street project came the greatest professional success I had ever seen: The show was a hit on prime-time HGTV, and overnight I lost the ability to walk around unrecognized. Everywhere I went, people would shout, “Nicole, we love the [fill-in-the-blank] house.”

  Returning to Minneapolis, I knew that after I wrapped my remaining projects there, including the Summit mansion, I was done. Detroit was where I wanted to be. I was sitting on the sidelines of Ethan’s soccer game in the fall when a realtor sent me the listing for a 1904 cottage on a lake in Michigan. It looked fabulous, but it also looked like a lot of work. I simply said, “Keep me posted.” A few months later, Ethan and I went to Detroit for the holidays, and I decided to take a peek. The cottage was enchanting, even without heat and covered with snow. I still hesitated to buy it as it meant giving up some of that cold, hard cash that now made up the nest egg I was so proud of. But all this changed after I got a call from Leif: The pipes had burst in my house in Minneapolis. So much for taking time off; I was on the next plane there.

  My dining room with painted murals circa 1904.

  When I got to Minneapolis, what I found was a homeowner’s worst nightmare: Everything was frozen. This wasn’t a “project”—this was my home, my sanctuary, the safe place for Ethan, Max, and our latest rescue dog, Lucy. I cried my eyes out and thought of all the work that I had put into it. The house was ruined, but as I walked through the dining room and noticed that my beloved original murals had somehow escaped destruction, I caught my breath and told myself, This isn’t the end of the world. After spending the past few years watching so many people suffer through real problems, I knew this was fixable. I was fine, Ethan was fine; we just had one big mess on our hands. I called my crew and decided that if I was going to be working, I might as well be filming. I stayed in the house, with no heat, swaddled in a sleeping bag in front of the roaring fire with the two dogs. I was determined to get the house finished by the time Ethan arrived home, because if there’s one thing I knew for certain, he was not going to be happy to go through any more construction (in fact, I didn’t even tell him the flood had happened because I had just bragged at Christmas dinner that we were finally living in a construction-free zone for the first time since Ethan was born). The house was repaired, I got an episode out of it, and I made the decision to move ahead with buying the cottage.

  The rest of the winter, I filmed at Summit and by summer, we were off to the cottage. Most people would have just demolished the cottage and built a bigger, gaudy home. After all, it was prime lakefront property. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone by saving the house while creating a vacation spot for the family. It only made sense that I should renovate it on camera for the next season of Rehab Addict. Of course, in life, what makes sense isn’t always what happens.

  I was completely unrealistic about the actual rehab process. I expected to be able to blow into this small town in Michigan, get the work done, and be out in a heartbeat. But as soon as I tried to get going, reality sank in. Normally, I can walk into a city building department and have a permit in an hour. But my first visit to the small-town building department was an education. The woman behind the counter told me, with a big smile, “Well, it might be three or four weeks before you get your permit.” I was on a tight schedule. I wanted to be finished before the summer was over because I had to be back in Minneapolis to take Ethan to school and get back to our normal routine. Three weeks waiting for building permits was just not going to cut it.

  The town was suburban bliss for everyone else, but it was quickly making me claustrophobic. Even though I grew up on seventy acres, I was a city girl. After one torturous morning realizing that I was officially at a standstill, I called the people I knew in Detroit mayor Mike Duggan’s office and said I wanted to meet right away.

  Two hours later, I was with the mayor’s staff and representatives from the Detroit Land Bank, the organization that administers the sale of the abandoned properties in the city. They sell the homes with the stipulation that any buyer has to make the home habitable in a predetermined time frame.

  They had just developed an app that let you bid on houses in real time right from your phone. One of the organization’s representatives installed the app on my phone. She showed me how it worked. “Look, you can bid right now.”

  It was a shrewd move. Anyone who knows me knows I am intensely competitive and wasn’t going to lose a bidding war if I got into one. As we sat and discussed all the different opportunities, I played around with the app. The staff pointed out an impressive 1913 Tudor that was up for auction. It was on East Grand Boulevard and had hints of Minnehaha, big with spectacular style and flair. Some women—what I used to think of as “normal” women—color their hair when they need a change. Some get a manicure, or buy new clothes. I buy a house.

  My winning bid.

  All of a sudden I was in a bidding war with an investor who I would later find out had been buying up beautiful old houses and converting them into commercial buildings. I looked at his counterbid on my phone. Okay, I thought, it’s on. As we bid back and forth, I said good-bye to everyone and decided to head over and check out the house. The auctions wrap at 5:30 p.m. every day, unless there is a bidding war. It was closing in on the final bid when I pulled into the driveway and thought, Uh-oh, it’s in really bad shape. I saw what I knew was the ultimate budget killer: a seen-better-days Spanish tile roof. Just as the words “Oh, shit” left my mouth, my phone dinged. It said, “Congratulations, you placed the winning bid!” Be careful what you wish for.

  The Grand Boulevard house exterior.

  The Grand Boulevard house was right in the middle of nursing home alley, a sleepy corner of the city. What was once a very prestigious area had been left behind. Odd breezeways connected huge mansions in the area, essentially taking two properties and making them one. For whatever reason, they were all turned into convalescent homes. It might sound dreamy to spend your final years in a beautiful old mansion, but sadly, these houses were anything but the things that dreams are made of. They looked sad and distorted with the strange bridges between them. The house I had just won at auction had not been spared; it had been used as a boardinghouse, then a halfway house, and was eventually just abandoned. It was a mix of good and bad. Beautiful white oak floors were a plus, and the holes in the roof were a minus. The plumbing and electrical systems were going to take a lot of work. It was the poster child for money pits, and I didn’t care. I felt alive in the city.

  While I waited for things to get rolling on the cottage, we got started on Grand. I had taken on a monster, but I loved it. The house had multiple fireplaces, each of which needed work. I wanted to create a master bedroom suite and a cool basement family room. And the roof—oh, that roof. Red clay tile roofs are gorgeous and distinctive. But when they need fixing, they are expensive. I could have trashed the whole thing for a less-expensive shingle roof, but that wouldn’t have been true to the house. Instead, I found the original tile manufacturer, Ludowici Roof Tile, and ordered replacement tiles to match the existing roof. I’d end up sinking more than fifty thousand dollars into that roof; everyone would ooh and aah over it.

  The Grand Boulevard dining room, before (left) and after (right) renovations.

  The house-building was on track, but Ethan was miserable. His dad was supposed to take him
for the summer. Instead, he let us know at the last minute that a work issue had come up and he wasn’t going to be able to. Ethan had spent most of the summer with me. We were together every single day. While I loved it, Ethan liked having the guy time with his dad, and I had to work. My job sites may have been intriguing for an eight-year-old, but they weren’t exactly a sixteen-year-old’s dream. And what happens in these situations, with most single parents I know, is that the child gets angry at the parent who let them down and takes it out on the one they’re with. I couldn’t blame E. He eventually spent a few days with his dad, but only after putting me through the wringer for even just breathing. I’ll tell you one thing: As a parent, you can never assume that you have this “parenting” thing down pat. The moment you do, you fall flat on your face. As I learned the hard way, you just have to smile and get through it. In August, with things cranking away on Grand, we started a project that I had originally begun planning the previous March, and most important, one that Ethan was all for.

  The bathroom, before (left) and after (right).

  I was sitting in the drop-off line at Ethan’s school one morning when my agent called and said, “LeBron James’s office wants to speak with you.” Even if you aren’t a sports person, the mom of a teenage son can’t not know who LeBron James is. I repeated his name aloud. Ethan lit up. “Mom! Whatever it is, yes!” He jumped out of the car, but not without the much-dreaded kiss on the head from me. (I was fully aware that I had limited chances to kiss this precious boy on the head, and I took full advantage.) Teenage years are painful for moms like me; watching your best buddy pull away while he tries to find independence is without a doubt one of the biggest challenges of parenting. If getting a call from LeBron James made Ethan happy, I was going to follow up.