Old West Side home’s ‘unfolding’ process adds key improvements to right-sized house

Ann Arbor’s Old West Side neighborhood is showing off one of its newest renovations.Excerpt:Sara Tucker whipped out her cell phone and dialed her husband, Bruce Curtis, saying, “You’ve got to come and see this place!”They weren’t even shopping for new digs in the summer of 2007, but Tucker liked old houses and couldn’t resist looking one Sunday afternoon. When Curtis joined her inside the blue-gray bungalow with discreet white trim at 220 Kenwood Ave. in Ann Arbor’s Old West Side neighborhood, he immediately understood the appeal. “The tile in the kitchen is what drew us,” he says.Indeed, black-and-white tiles engulf the kitchen floor and protect strategic sections of the room’s wainscoting. “You don’t see a house with this much tile in the kitchen,” Curtis says. The upstairs bathroom is copiously tiled as well. By Halloween, the bungalow belonged to Tucker and Curtis. In the months before move-in, which occurred on Aug. 8, 2008, they undertook strategic top-to-bottom renovations that will be apparent Sep. 27, when the house is offered as one of six attractions on the 37th annual Old West Side Homes Tour. “A lot of the things we did seemed to us like an unfolding,” said Curtis, who is president of Washtenaw Woodwrights and brought his own hard-won expertise to bringing out the house’s full character and potential. He also brought some of his own carpenters to the job, along with familiar faces in the plumbing, electrical, painting and plastering trades. Read the rest of the story here.