The FINAL Tour (ep. 50) ... Abandoned Building to Dream Home

in 2020 I quit a cushy corporate job as a patent attorney and bought an abandoned building what I had big plans of converting this commercial building into my dream home and workshop okay the renovation took way longer than I ever expected but 4 years later I'm finally ready to reveal it to all you yeah so let's head inside [Music] a quick refresher on the stats of the building when I bought it the building had been abandoned for about 6 years and had quite a few previous lives in the 80s it was a Porsche Auto Body Shop the last legal business in the front was a flower shop and apparently that flower shop was converted into a legal nightclub for a few years until the cop shut it down this all brick building is approximately 6,000 square ft split evenly into two Flor floors the downstairs in my workshop where I get to play and build all kinds of cool things to share with you guys and I've converted the entire upstairs almost 3,000 square ft into my dream home and that's where we're going to be focusing the tour so with that background let's get started on the tour so when I walked in this place four years ago it was quite different there was piles of trash all over the floor this was all one big open space in order to separate the upstairs living space from the workshop over there there we had to add in this hallway here we also had to replace the door entryway here the old entryway was just rusted the glass was cracked it was a total disaster and on top of that there was some really interesting ornate metal work on the front of the door I don't want this video to get flagged so I'm not going to say what it looked like but well you know take a look for yourself so we got this whole new facade we built out this brand new feature wall with this modustrial HQ LED sign we got the floating Rock Shelf we'll get to the shop over there in a minute but coming through this door we got the hallway leading up to the living area we put a new vinyl plank flooring here and well you can see the stairs with the motion sensor that is probably my favorite part of this entryway it just makes me smile every time I see the lights go so onward upstairs let's go now before we reveal the new open concept living dining kitchen area let's flash back and look at the state we found this in this room was actually already a wide openen concept and it was probably the nicest part of the building but that isn't saying much there was this makeshift kitchen area in the corner which was a total hacked DIY job the neighbors have told me stories and it sounds like that kitchen area was actually being used as a bar for an illegal nightclub that the Serbian Mafia was running out of this joint there was some hardwood floor in here but because the roof had so many leaks it had had years of rainwater coming through the floorboards were rotted out there was mushrooms or fungus growing out of the floor they hadn't left proper gaps against the sidewalls so the floor was buckling and popping all over the place and then then the staircase leading up to the roof there were actually pigeons nesting in the ceiling so four years later and I couldn't be more happy how this open concept living space turned out over here we got the kitchen that I entirely built from scratch myself I made the concrete countertops built all the cabinets I also made this really cool modern pendant light above the island few people have commented that it looks like a Westworld inspired light I don't think I was directly taking inspiration but hey I like that futuristic look of Westworld so maybe that crept into my brain somehow the kitchen has a bunch of really cool features for starters I'm standing in front of an induction cooktop which I absolutely love for those that don't know induction is not an electric cooktop it is all the best parts of a gas cooktop and an electric cooktop but that's not what this video is about the induction cooktop is in a 10t island here 8ft concrete run and then a 2T X 4T Butcher Block countertop which I buil myself out of hard maple over here one of my favorite features is this cool flip up door with a pull out coffee bar of course we got the double oven the microwave which also doubles as a convection oven is below the Butcher Block here then we're moving over to the pantries on either side of the fridge and these are one of my favorite things in the kitchen you get to pull out storage which I absolutely love because it turns your depth into width you don't have any wasted space because you can see everything and it's really Compact and width and we've got one of those on both sides of the fridge I highly recommend these to anyone whether you have a large or small kitchen because they just make so much more efficient use of space than a typical Pantry where things get in the back of the shelves and just go there for years you only end up using the front of the shelves these you can use every square inch now I feel like on MTV Cribs they always used to want to see what's in the fridge CH Leto myo but I'm kind of scared to see yeah mine looks like a lived in fridge lots of stuff we'll just say lots of stuff's in the fridge there check boox we know it's in my fridge moving on from the kitchen to the open concept living dining area but we have the floor that was rotted out in spots so what I decided to do was cut out the rotted sections and Patch them up with plywood but you actually use the parts of the old wood floor as the subfloor for a new wood floor how many times can I say floor in a single sentence but there was one constraint because of that the old floorboards ran vertically the length of the room that meant either laying them horizontally which we didn't want to do because you always want flooring to go the direction of the long side of the room so I went with 5-in Maple flooring ran it diagonally and after living with it for a couple years now I love this diagonal flooring it took a little bit more work to install but totally worth it so other than the flooring I didn't do a whole lot structurally in this living space We just cleaned up the brick but mostly left the brick as is to get that really cool Loft feeling in the ceiling we had Timber Framing and these 16-in steel IE beams running across which just gives a really cool industrial look to the space I just finished kind of styling this living area with new rugs we got this cool little indoor solo fireplace which doesn't have to be plumbed it just uses gel fuel really digging that as for the couch it's a sign of one of the things that happened during the renovation and that was getting a dog text as all you may know white couches and dogs are a terrible idea so I'm currently searching for a new couch but till then we just got blankets over the couch to make do behind the living area we have the dining area over here we've got this beautiful single Live Edge slab Maple table with the concrete pendant light that I built a few months ago and just added some cool leather chairs to go with it I'm really digging how this space is styled now over there we have Texas Nook I don't know where he is now but he loves to sit up on the couch and just watch the people in the cars go by on the street if you see any furniture that you like as we're walking around like the Arctic erosion table or the half and half concrete wall table in front of the couch chances are I've built it and there's a video for it on my channel and of course we've got the natat Geo collection which goes all the way back to 1923 this was my great-grandfather's and my grandfather's so it's something I really treasure and I built this bookshelf to just kind of show them off and make them a focal point in the living area moving over this way we've got the staircase leading up to the roof and this is actually something that I don't think any of you guys have seen one of the very last things we did in the last couple weeks was redoing the stairs here they just thrown down some plywood boards here they looked awful I built out new Landings here from leftover Maple flooring added new treads running up to the roof and it looks way better if you're wondering where's the video showing these stairs being made over it hasn't come out yet but don't worry it's going to be included as bonus footage in the video we're currently editing which Chronicles the entire renovation process all four years of it start to finish in one video and these stairs lead up to the roof deck and yard which we built out last summer we'll come back and check that out later but first I want to walk you guys all the way to the back of the building and show you the studio because there are some huge updates there that a lot of you haven't seen yet there's Mr Tex right here hey buddy want to say hi to everyone it's really his house more than anyone's so moving up this way into the hallway actually one thing is kind of cool kind of wanted to share I've actually spent a lot of time the last couple weeks actually making I don't know if it call it art but wall decor maybe art I don't know this one I made on the CNC carved this pattern out of foam covered it in epoxy painted it framed it I think it came out pretty cool I don't know let me know what you guys think there's some others I'll show you later on the tour as well so for now we're going to go all the way back to the studio space so before we reveal everything we've done in here over the last month or so I want to flash back and look at what the space was originally the holes in the roof were probably the worst in the whole building over here there were spots in this back area that you could literally put your foot right through the floor because it was so rotted due to rain coming through the roof when I acquired the building there was just piles of trash strewn everywhere all kinds of fun stuff ranging from a old Porsche headlight to 10-year-old bullan sauce and even some stuff that ended being useful this kind of like a workbench it's not the most stable thing ever but it's not falling apart we're actually using that table in the room next door and I'll show you guys that later on the tour but now check out what we've done in the studio here so this is a space where cameraman Cam and I spend a lot of time editing planning projects basically doing everything for modustrial maker because we spent a lot of time here we got a little Lounge section over here by the window with the parametric Bean table that I made in my last video so then over here here Cam and I installed built-ins and believe it or not this is just an Ikea Hack but I think it came out really cool and I do have a hot tip here for people who want to do something like this a built-in look super easy in their home so I've seen a lot of Ikea hacks where people take the bookshelves and they paint them they do a lot of trim and so on so we were trying to get this done quick so the hack I came up with was literally just to paint the wall the exact same color as I was painting the Ikea bookshelves and cabinets with the wall and furniture all painted the same color it looks as if it's all sort of one structure and gives you that built-in look without having to do all the trim and edging and stuff like that that you normally do to get yourself a built-in look we installed a television here Cam and I can use this to preview all the videos as we're editing that's super nice on display if you guys didn't know I was a cover boy did you you might think this is from Six Flags or something where you make a magazine cover but no this is real I was actually on the cover up here we got a picture of college Mike don't want to admit how long ago that was with Dave Matthews God the things I wore in college over here we of course have the uh obligatory silver play button for when I passed 100,000 subscribers we're still working on that gold one for a million Subs if you haven't subbed there's 50 episodes chronicling this whole renovation it would mean a lot to me if you hit that sub and Bell so you can check out all those episodes and let's push this channel to a million Subs in 2024 one other noal thing here the shadow box my mom actually put this together for me thank you Mom it actually has some old woodworking tools from my grandfather we got a level a plane a couple hand drills pretty cool oh and over here you guys might be wondering about Mr Gerard the giraffe this was actually a dumpster diving find in the alley and he's kind of a little mascot we've also made this space so it doubles as a photography video Studio we got green screen and backdrops up there so we can do fun green screen shots and now he photographs of things we make like we did in the last video that's going to be super fun and open up some cool possibilities for future videos moving over here we got the trio of guitars that I made including the people's favorite the Lego epoxy guitar made entirely of Legos and epoxy even includes Lego tuners and of course we have the parametric stair rail that we built in that is honestly one of my favorite feature I just love the parametric wave you got it here you got that similar thing going on in this table one of my favorite design element so as we're walking into the third bedroom here you'll notice actually another sort of wall decor splatter paint thing that I just threw together using some scrap plywood just to get something interesting on the walls and then you got this third bedroom here which is not even being used as a bedroom it's a 3D printer SL Electronics slash camera room and yeah that basically sums it up this is a a functional room for modustrial maker more than it is something that's styled let's get out of here head down the hall to the second bedroom moving into the second bedroom we're not going to spend a lot of time here because really the star of the show is the master that we're going to get soon but as anyone who runs a business out of their home knows lots of your Home Spaces get converted into spaces for your business right now this is storing the swampwood table that I made a couple videos ago one of my favorite things I've ever built and that's going to be going up for sale in the web shop that I'll be opening shortly another thing for you guys to stay tuned for there's a Murphy bed over against this wall that I can pull out when I have guests I've also got my workout equipment here cam likes to joke that this treadmill is the most expensive expensive dust collector I own and he's not entirely wrong about that speaking of cameraman cam check this out I gave him these Live Edge Burl slabs for Christmas and he made this little table from resin which is pretty cool first ever epoxy woodworking project uh we're just storing it here for now if your name is Cam and you're on YouTube well I guess you got to make some River tables I think that's just just the rule honestly second and third bedrooms are probably the least cool places in the building but wanted to give you guys a feel for everything I want to be complete so moving across the hall Al though we have the guest bath which I love this space so this bathroom was the first one I built out when I moved into the building we had a two-phase renovation plan I finished a couple of the bedrooms the studio in the back and this bathroom so that I could move in and live in this space while I finished renovating the front of the building in retrospect I would never wish this on my worst enemy living in a building that's heavily under construction no fun at all but we got through it and I am happy with the result we got the concrete floating sink that I fabricated myself now after I revealed the full bathroom here I did get some comments that it was a little bit cold somebody even called it a prison cell bathroom personally I like a clean white modern look in certain spaces but I did see the point that maybe we could use a pop of color so I decided to make a little bit of street art wall decor to add that color in we got a little bit of bonus footage you so let's cue the Montage making some cool painted resin covered wall art [Music] [Music] [Music] you you all [Music] [Music] I guess I'm pretty happy how this came out it definitely does the job of adding some color to this bathroom now before we get down to the master bedroom and the roof which are probably my two favorite spots I want to head down to the workshop to look at the work that's been done down there and talk to you guys about something that I am very excited to share a little bit about all right so I'm walking through a door for starters that wasn't here before we added this whole wall in which to be honest I didn't want to do but we had to have a fire rated separation between the garage space and the stairs leading up to the upstairs there had to be two entrances to the residential space in order for it to be considered a separate Space by codee from the commercial space that's down here so this is the garage area and we haven't done a whole lot of renovation work in this space but there's a good reason why we're treating the commercial space as separate from the residential space so we pulled permits to do all the work upstairs and I just made the workshop and garage functional for the time being and that's where the thing I'm excited to share comes in and I wasn't sure whether to share at this point or not but I think I'm just going to go ahead this is exciting cuz it relates to the next phase for me for this channel so last November I put in an application for Chicago's small business Improvement fund Grant this grant would basically give me money to build out this commercial space and I got news a couple months ago that I was selected to be part of the program so that means I should be getting a grant from the city in order to build out the space down here now the reason I say it might be a little bit early to share this news is because because it's the city and I never believe anything is 100% until the money's in the bank obviously there's lots of loopholes to jump through with the city but at this point I have the general approval to get a grant from the city to renovate this entire space downstairs program can give me up to $150,000 for the renovation so obviously I don't want to put a bunch of money into that if I can get a grant from the city to renovate the building this building is in an area that's I guess considered a developing area of Chicago so so that's why the program is trying to incentivize people to build business in this community improve the area around the building also something that I'm super excited about there will be more details on that in a future video when I reveal the specific plans for the space down here it's something big it's a workshop but something more stay tuned for that because that announcement should be coming in the next month or so as for the work that has been done well there's some cool stuff you guys know I love streetheart and obviously behind me we have this huge mural that was painted by my fellow YouTubers 10 100 kyto they came here collaborated to do that mural it was super fun I'm getting like real Tey right now bro so happy that's cool man and I absolutely love this thing every time I walk by it we also have over by the big CNC machine another mural by Sasha tiger he's a guy I just met through these videos awesome guy came we hung out had a great time while he painted this mural oh man hug it out hug it out that is unbelievable man and I absolutely love this thing as backdrop for the CNC in general I just love street art so having this downstairs every day I walk through here and it just makes me happy and one other thing down here also a dumpster diving find was this super cool Apothecary Library cabinet found this in the alley and just had to bring it inside it's solid oak and I see these things selling for quite a bit of money online obviously this needs to be refinished but I'm pretty excited to get it worked into the decor some somewhere so while you guys are watching the tour if you have any ideas about how to work a restyled refinished version of this Apothecary cabinet into my Decor leave a comment let me know so moving out of the garage space over into the workshop it's actually starting to look a little bit more like a woodworking shop now we had a new HVAC added the wall to separate the workshop from the hallway leading upstairs we still got the uh the old part of the front door here I don't know what I'm going to do with this but there's got to be something fun I can do with this I don't know if you have any ideas what to do with this let me know while we're in the workshop I want to take a second to talk to you guys about something else that's very important one of the questions I get a lot is would you do it again and the answer is yes absolutely there have definitely been a lot of challenges to doing YouTube full-time renovating this building keeping content flowing while also dealing with the city definitely has been challenging but also really rewarding to do something I'm passionate about to build a community of people who are following along with the project I'll meet people randomly out in public who watch the videos and tell me about their renovation projects and it's just super exciting to have that little effect on people's lives and hopefully through these videos give everyone a little bit of entertainment once or twice a month when I put the videos out I also have to thank all of the sponsors that have supported me because at the end of the day I would not be able to do this channel without the support of sponsors and throughout this whole renovation process one of my largest supporters has been AR at work Lord knows through all the dirt and filth I have put areat Works Clothing to the test so I can tell you the area Works Clothing is second to none for those of you that want to support the channel one of the things you can do is support the sponsors that make the videos possible and while areic work gear is amazing for those who are doing the work they also make really cool stylish clothing for anyone regardless of whether you're on the jobsite or not one thing everyone loves is a good comfy sweatshirt I'm showing you here a couple examples of my personal favorite ariot sweatshirts if you want to support the channel and get a comfy sweatshirt for yourself Cam and I have also been rocking these arot work vests and the springtime as we're transitioning weather and the weather is kind of all over the place these vests have been awesome and I can wear these on the job site or out on the town hanging out with friends and if you got a dog area at work even makes some super stylish dog jackets so they can tag along with you when you're enjoying the outdoors and a bit chilly weather and again there'll be links in the description below to all my area favorites when you buy something from area at work you're not only getting great clothes but it's also a way that you can support the work that I'm doing here on this channel so I thank you in advance for checking out those links thanks area work for being a huge supporter of the channel consistently over the last four years and now let's head back upstairs to check out the master bedroom oh as we're aheading here there's two other things to note so first up we have the uh the half bath we renovated this thing in basically 24 hours and I think under $11,000 we did the whole thing I think it came out pretty cool but definitely if there is an area to upgrade I might see myself doing a really cool vanity in sync so moving out of the half bath right next to it we have this little Nook which I I basically have converted into a storage Nook just threw some some drapes up to make it look stylish and then I've got extra storage behind me is the top of that elevator for those of you that remember there's actually a little lift or elevator that was in the building it actually still works we just couldn't have an elevator here for code cuz the commercial and residential areas up and downstairs needed to be separate but we left the elevator in so I don't know maybe in the future maybe I'll figure out something but for now it's just a cool little storage Nook closed off so it looks nice you can always use more storage so now for the master bedroom when I moved in here there actually was sort of like a bedroom space here I don't know what it had been used for but the roof was caving in leaking there was like hideous mold growing in the floors there was mold on all the walls it was awful we tore down and replaced all the walls we built dual walk-in closets but the space was kind of cold it was just white it was missing a lot of styling over the last two weeks we spent a lot of time trying to turn the master bedroom into something really special so we've got a quick Montage it's all new footage you guys haven't seen before going from the plain white walled somewhat boring bedroom to what we have now so the first order of business was painting an accent wall behind the bed and I decided to go with a very dark blue color I don't know what the fancy paint brand name for it was but we'll just say dark blue by adding that dark color on one wall I'm hoping the bedroom will feel a lot Cozier with the wall painted it was time to use a French CLE to hang that beautiful big leaf maple slab that a lot of you had seen behind the bed been using it as a headboard and embarrassingly it had just been sitting on the floor behind the bed so it was time to hang it up and I also added some LEDs behind the slab to backlight it to really make it pop from the wall next I headed down to the workshop to make a TV wall panel and I'm not sure what the exact technical name for this is but basically it's a panel that sets the TV off the wall allows you to add a pop of color allows you to add some cool LED lighting around it and overall I think this is going to turn the TV into a focal point instead of having it be an eyes sore on the wall after priming the plywood panel I painted it the same dark blue color as I used on the feature wall behind the bed to tie the TV panel into the rest of the space I also decided to add a floating shelf at the bottom of the TV panel for this I'm just using a piece of maple Lumber that I ripped down on the table saw I then use my router to add a champer on the underside and a round over on top and pro tip here for any of you DIY spiring Woodworkers if you want to take any project up to the next level and just use a router add a roundover add a chamfer it really does make things look a lot more refined and it's super easy to do to finish the floating shelf I used total boats wood honey this is my favorite finish for when I need to get something done quick I then used wood glue and screws to attach the floating shelf to the panel I also added a fringe cleat gave the back of the panel one coat of paint and added some plywood pieces that would give me a place to attach LEDs behind the panel and with that and I took the TV panel up to the bedroom to hang it on the wall and with it hung I did a bit of styling off camera eded a rug Decor Etc to get the bedroom ready to show you guys right now this is a bedroom that I like to hang out in and so does Mr Tex oh he's a sleepy doggy he likes his space there was a challenge here because while the room felt plain I spent a ton of money and time building these showstopper doors and I wanted the design to complement those without fighting them I also had really cool barn doors leading to the his and hers walk-in closets and all that needed to work together we got a simple slab on the wall big leaf maple that we've got in the doors then we've just got a very simple platform bed so you don't have anything fighting against all the cool live edged wood we've also got a maple and black dresser and then we painted the wall blue and it is amazing what a difference paint can make we built the TV backdrop with floating shelf and painted that the same color as the accent wall behind the bed to kind of tie it all together we also use maple wood there so there's a theme with the maple wood throughout the maple flooring I think it all comes together ties into a space that that all of a sudden I like really look forward to lounging in this and tex what do you think he he certainly improves before we reveal the on Suite master bath we got a flash back to 2020 and see the state this space was in when I bought the building the small onsweet bathroom attached to the space it was a total wreck the stuff in the toilet had been left to marinate for years until I found it there was also another bathroom which was everyone's favorite from the initial building to a video with the Dual facing toilets and you actually walked up some stairs from the living room into the Dual facing toilet bathroom so we gutted everything knocked down the wall between the onsuite bathroom and the bizarre dual facing toilet bathroom I combined the space of both those bathrooms to make my dream master onite bathroom we have the Live Edge doors opening up to the Live Edge mirror right here clean simple modern we got a curbless shower that's huge I think it's 5 ft by 6t roughly with the super clear low iron Starfire glass we got another piece of wall decor that I threw together over there to spice it up and then over here we got this really cool wood slat wall with the built-in LED lighting to really just give it a cool modern twist and then over here we got the live edged mirror that I made myself with a slab from my buddy B Comer's yard we we got a custom concrete vanity that I fabricated I built all the cabinets we have the the linen closet with the really cool doors that slide away so you get full access there and I also got to talk about one of the things that was most commented on when I put out the video for the bathroom and that was the placement of the sink so while you can turn it on and it doesn't splash I do think people made a fair point that the faucets were a little bit close to the edge of the sink now I had to pick the locations for the faucets 18 months before I actually even started fabricating the sink I didn't even know what the sink was going to look like so it was kind of a guessing game it's something I can live with it's not a huge pain in the butt but it is something that if I were designing again I'd shift him over a little towards the middle so thank you audience for pointing out my Stakes I always appreciate that and on that note though this bathroom has been functional for almost 2 years now and on a day-to-day basis it makes me happy when I use this bathroom and I think that's what is okay if we go show everyone the roof it's his yard up there so okay okay all right cool he says it's okay so let's go check out the last spot one of the coolest spaces here the rooftop deck and yard all right so this rooftop has seen dramatic dramatic Improvement since when I bought the building for those of you that have been following you remember that the roof was a total disaster F there was holes everywhere it was leaking we had to rip the entire roof out it cost me $55,000 to repair all the framing in the roof get new everything laid down for almost 3,000 square ft of flat roof here about a year after I bought the building Johnny builds and I came up here and made a small rooftop deck so that I could have a little outdoor space while I was living here and the rest of the building was under renovation then in 2023 I got text and that changed everything but P up the urgency of getting a real cool rooftop area basically I wanted to create an actual yard on my rooftop so I could just let the dog out that meant we had to fence in this entire front area of the roof which is about 1,000 square ft and the key feature here which actually was pretty tricky to pull off was having the grass be at the same level as the deck itself and that really gives you the feeling that you're in a yard moving from the grass to the deck seamlessly then of course the last part was adding Texas Penthouse his cool dogghouse and dog pool up here a lot of you been asking has he been using it well it's been pretty cold here in Chicago so he really hasn't got much use of it today is probably the first nice day this spring that we're up here with the Sun out so the pool will be open for disy soon you guys will have to follow along I'll make sure to get some shots of him playing in the pool once the weather is nice and warm on a consistent basis so for those of you who are just finding this channel I would argue that this is the most documented renovation on all of you YouTube there's over 50 videos Jo in the whole process start to finish and for those of you who want to just see the whole renovation don't want to watch 50 videos we're going to be releasing a start to finish renovation video heck you could even call it the abandoned building movie it's probably going to be 2 or 3 hours long condensing all 50 videos into one single video make sure you're sub and Bell so you can get notified about that and as for the future of the channel now that the renovation is done I'm of course doing some of those crazy Furniture Design and Build videos but also have another big renovation announcement something in the works we'll be explaining all that in its own video in about a month so there is plenty to be excited for in the future for this channel I have to thank all you guys for coming with me on this journey renovating the abandoned building and it really wouldn't have been possible without all of you watching the videos supporting me supporting the sponsors who are making these possible thank you thank you thank you I love all you guys that's it for this time and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: Modustrial Maker

Views: 537,029

Keywords: DIY, modern, home renovation, home inspiration, reveal tour, home tour, abandoned building, abandoned warehouse, abandoned building renovation, renovation, design inspiration, interior design, abandoned mansion, home restoration, kitchen renovation, home renovation before and after, home renovation diy, home renovation ideas, abandoned buildings, abandoned building exploration

Id: DCdWgw5TsV0

Length: 32min 20sec (1940 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024