A soon-to-premiere cable TV series will spotlight the arc of Detroit’s history and its hoped-for resurgence through Christopher Lee’s rescue and renovation of a 111-year-old house, once owned by Lee’s great-grandfather and lost in the Great Depression.
“American Rehab: Detroit,” which premiered Thursday on the DIY Nework, came about through an April 2013 Detroit Free Press article that showcased how Lee bought the ancestral family abode in a foreclosure sale for $8,100. With his wife, Amy Feigley-Lee, he slowly restored the 3,500-square-foot house from its dilapidated state.
The Lees’ journey to reality TV started when Shawn Visco, a producer with a Minneapolis-based production company which creates many home-based shows, spotted the Free Press story and emailed Lee.
She asked him to film a selfie-video guided tour of the sorry state of affairs in many of the rooms. Sure, said Lee, who then did nothing.
“We didn’t think anything of it,” said Lee, an artist and art instructor, who dawdled until a second call and plea. “She really needed it to make the pitch for a show. She needed the video for what they call the ‘sizzle.’ “
The sizzle became the series. The six-part show will depict the sweat and grit of restoring the Detroit home. It culminates in a family reunion for about 60 relatives from across the country. They are all descendants of Lee’s maternal great-grandparents, Daniel and Patrice Foley, and they all gathered at the renovated house to connect with a turning point in the family’s past and to celebrate its renewal.
By signing on to the TV project, the couple received tens of thousands of dollars of professional help, design and construction services to make the house family-friendly for their baby daughter, Ruby, just 5 months old when the TV and remodeling crews arrived for nearly a four-month stay.
No easy task
“Ohmigosh. It’s an unbelievable story. It just pulls at your heart. The whole family is so sincere,” said Steven Lerner, senior vice president for the HGTV and DIY channels at Scripps Networks Interactive.
“I think a lot of us in our minds would like to buy a fixer-upper like that and fix it up. But a lot of us don’t have the guts,” said Lerner. “It’s incredible what this guy got the house for. Obviously, he put a ton of work into it and it’s just inspiring to see what they were able to do.”
Lerner said Detroit is a natural place to illustrate such homeowner dreams and transformations. He cited another DIY network show that often focuses on Detroit houses. “Rehab Addict,” features Lake Orion-bred Nicole Curtis.
“There’s a bit of a good rebound. I think more and more shows are coming from there,” said Lerner. “The whole Made in America is becoming more important to people, and where best to exemplify that but in Detroit?”
Lee, 34, bought the house for $8,100 in a county tax foreclosure sale in 2007. It’s in a neighborhood now dubbed Woodward Village that is south of Highland Park and north of Detroit’s Boston-Edison historic district. The house had been empty for at least five years. Lee’s great-grandparents raised 10 out of 11 children at the house before Daniel, a 1920s-era high-rolling investor, lost the family fortune and his home in the Great Depression.
Chris and Amy, who consider themselves low-key and reserved, aren’t given to boisterous, emotional or highly animated conversation. Their first inclination, as evidenced by Chris’ nonchalant response to the producer’s initial pitch, was not to participate in the show. But the invitation arrived just as baby Ruby, born in May 2013, was poised to go mobile and finances were tight.
“I think Ruby was the real impetus,” said Amy, 35, an artist and art instructor. “There was so much to do and so hard to find the time to make it safe for Ruby.”
Network executive Lerner said the network helps pay for the cost of such filmed renovations because “we want to do it in a certain time frame. We may help them in ways to expedite it for TV.”
So for most of four months, the couple spent most of their daytime hours working with contractors and a television crew. At one point, they moved out for three weeks, as crews did heavy-duty demolition and removed layers of dangerous lead-based paint.
To renovate three bathrooms in the house, contractors banned the Lees from using them and instead installed a toilet in the basement and temporary shower — “a dark, spider web-filled Michigan basement,” noted Amy. While the kitchen was being expanded, the couple used a microwave and hot plate in their bedroom to prepare meals.
“We are very undramatic people. They had to sort of force it out of us,” said Chris.
A family surprise
Lee’s mother, Cathy Lee, said the January 2014 “reveal” of the house was cause for a family reunion. It drew extended cousins from Texas and Florida and Minnesota back to Detroit. Cathy Lee’s mother was the late Eileen Foley, who lived in the house as a youngster.
“Nobody in my generation had seen that house except after Chris bought it. And that was just a handful of cousins. Many lived far away or had never seen it,” said Cathy Lee. “It was their chance to envision where our parents and grandparents had grown up.”
