Demo day
Every time I watch one of those home improvement shows, they always start with demo day. I love how they make it all look like a fun and sometimes silly event. Because when you buy a house that is the most disgusting thing you've ever seen, demo day is anything but fun or silly. It's awful. It stinks, it's tiring, it's a huge mess, and it's really really nasty. We got one of the biggest dumpsters they have brought to the house. And we filled that bad boy with EVERYTHING! From the poop filled carpet, to the rust covered shower, and every single wall. Not to mention the 3 or 4 runs we had to make to the dump with just using the truck. I really didn't love driving down the street looking like a junk hauler. That thing was filled to the rim, and it was a pretty long and daunting task. Not the fun and exciting adventure they make it look like on TV. So we eventually got the place down to the studs. But just because inside demo was done, doesn't mean we were done with cleaning out the mess that this particular house was. After the first dumpster was filled and taken away, we eventually had to get another one. This one was a little bit smaller, but the amount of trash we had to throw in from just the outside yard seemed like just as big a project as inside the house. Either way having huge bonfires, and filling two decent sized dumpsters in order to clean out a flip house is not a fun process. Trust me.
Windows, doors, siding, roof
Next comes the decision making. Pretty much everything about the lay out of the house has to be decided in the first couple steps of the flip. So where your rooms will begin and end, and where you choose to put cabinets and appliances, all depend on where you place the doors, and windows. And that has to be decided before you can get siding done, because they all depend on each other. So even though there are a million different ways you can decide to put things, you must commit to one idea in the end, and there is no turning back once it is all decided on. When all the plans are drawn up, and decisions are made, now comes the hard work. Most of the really big projects we hired out. Starting with the roof, siding and windows. Which immediately changes the house drastically. Especially when it started out as a decrepit, nasty, old brown mess. It's pretty amazing what a new roof and some pretty siding will do for a house. And that's not even including the nice new deck with clean white railing that goes all the way around.
showers, drywall, Paint, and floors
The showers were pretty much the first things to be installed with the start of the plumbing. We got a nice stand up surround for the master bathroom, and a shower tub surround for the main bathroom. Pretty much perfect for a little family! After those were installed, it was time for drywall. Drywall is the real game changer of the house. Once you can no longer see from one end of the house to the other, it really starts to take shape. Drywall was a little tricky with this house. We were trying to not cheap out on things, but also knew there were ways we could save some money by working with what we already had. So even though pretty much the whole house we nasty garbage...the ceiling wasn't bad at all. We were lucky enough so save quite a bit of money by leaving the original ceiling besides a few areas that needed to be replaced and then just re-textured the whole thing. It wasn't the most amazing looking ceiling I've ever seen, but it worked and looked decent. On to the next. With the drywall done it was time to put in the floor. We got the floating floor kind that easily snapped together and is supposed to be waterproof, so we were able to put it in the bathrooms and kitchen. So it was one floor throughout the whole house. Except for the basement floor, which is of course concrete. The floors took quite some time to finish. Even though it's not a very big house, it still is alot of work laying down a floor, especially when there was only 3 or 4 of us working on it. Once the floors were done, we were ready to paint. The floors all needed to first be covered, along with the counter tops and cabinets that were recently installed, and all the glass of the windows and doors. We mostly used a sprayer for the painting. Ceiling went first with a bright white. That took about 3 coats of paint. Then the interior doors and trim all got sprayed that same white color. The fresh drywall get a couple coats of primer next, so that it would better hold the color we then rolled and brushed on the walls. Once that was all dry taking the coverings off of everything was my favorite part. It was like unwrapping a present. SO satisfying!!
Finishing Touches
Just when you think your soooo close to being done, you realize there is still so many finishing touches to take care of. All of the doors needed door knobs. The bathrooms needed their toilets, cabinets, and sinks installed, along with the faucets and mirrors. All the windows needed cleaned, and the floors vacuumed to be cleared of left over drywall dust that doesn't ever seem to go away. The tubs that have been in since the beginning were pretty nasty, so those both needed cleaned really good. And then there was the kitchen. All of the kitchen cabinets got swept and vacuumed out. And then we had the appliances delivered! Now THAT was fun! I was and still am very jealous that we put these new beautiful clean appliances in this house that we were just going to sell, and I'm still stuck with old ones from when we flipped our own house. Now that is a different story that I will have to tell some day! I have to admit of all the things we did do to flip this particular house, there is one thing that I learned that we should have done for sure to make the biggest difference, which was we didn't put in any concrete. Whether we would have put in a concrete patio, a concrete front porch, a concrete sidewalk, or the best would have been a concrete driveway, we made a mistake by not doing that over something else. Once all of that was cleaned up and taken care of, it was time to list that baby!!
Update: It's been a couple months and we finally have the house under contract. We really look forward to the day that is officially sold and we can get the hard earned money we have been so patiently waiting for.
Until next time!! Happy House Flipping : )
Update: It's been a couple months and we finally have the house under contract. We really look forward to the day that is officially sold and we can get the hard earned money we have been so patiently waiting for.
Until next time!! Happy House Flipping : )
Working on the outside
Of course most of the house flipping TV shows focus mostly on the inside of the house. And it is the most important part of where you live. Especially if you live where I live and spend a lot of time inside during the winter months. But the point is they don't put too much focus on the outside, which is actually almost as important, because the outside is the first thing people see when they come to look at the house, and see if it is where they want to live. So if you're flipping a house with a nightmare of a yard, there is plenty of work to be done outside to help with the actual flipping part! You know, the whole reason for doing it in the first place, to make some money! You can't make money if you can't sell the house. And it'll be pretty hard to sell a house with a nasty yard. Okay where was I?? Oh yes, you gotta clean up that yard and make it pretty. Our latest flipping project had one of those said "nightmare yards." Just absolutely disgusting. Garbage everywhere, two separate decks that were both rotting and falling apart, and completely neglected when it came to regular yard maintenance. We had our work cut out for us. We started with getting rid of the rotting decks, which one of them actually included a very unsafe wheelchair ramp. I still to this day don't understand how anybody was seriously using that thing. Nonetheless, it needed to go. We tried to salvage some of the wood and we worked with what we had to rebuild a new deck on the existing footers, which worked well. But for the rest of it, it was mostly taken apart and thrown in the dumpster, and the leftovers were made into a rather large bonfire. Once those ugly things were out of the way, things started to take shape. A new set of stairs were built on for the back door, and a pretty new deck took the place of the rotting one for the front door. Both made such a big difference. Next we needed to work on the huge and overgrown trees. Dead limbs were falling off onto the brand new roof, and totally killing the vibe of the newness. So tree trimming needed to take place! Once the two large trees had their branches trimmed, we took care of the view blocking pine tree limbs that were closer to the ground and easier to reach. As well as the overgrown side yard bushes and other randoms plants and weeds that we just took out all together. There was also an old junker car in the yard....we got a couple bucks out of that thing too. After the trees were taken care of by the pros, it was my turn to take care of the years worth of neglected leaves, twigs, and weeds. Using the leaf blower is one of my favorite things to do. I just put my earbuds in put that bad boy on my back and go to town. I may have a slight case of OCD since I always feel the need to get every single leaf cleared away. But man let me tell you what a difference it makes to put in that little extra effort. Now if only I could put that same love into my own yard. When the trees were good and the yard was clean, there was still time to be able to do a little extra. We painted the trim white on the little backyard shed, that just brought it right back to life. And added a few landscape timbers to separate the driveway and walkway to the back door from the rest of the back yard. We for sure though about putting at least a concrete walkway, or driveway, but it just really wasn't in the budget. Laid down a cute Pinterest worthy wood plant walkway to take you from the side driveway to the back door, and filled in around them with pea stone. All of which just really helped make the yard like a place somebody could see themselves using regularly. It may not have been perfect or super expensive, but it did look pretty darn good. Compared to what it was....it was a dream! : )
I guess the point is, it really didn't take too much extra time or money to at least make the yard presentable. We didn't even get the chance to do any special landscaping around the house, because of the weather change. But just those few small things were better than doing nothing at all.
I guess the point is, it really didn't take too much extra time or money to at least make the yard presentable. We didn't even get the chance to do any special landscaping around the house, because of the weather change. But just those few small things were better than doing nothing at all.
A small flip vs a large flip
The last time we flipped a house it was a really big project. So big that we knew we needed to take a long break before we wanted to do it again. Now that time has passed and we have gotten over the workload it took to flip a house from start to finish, we think we’re ready for the next one. This time is going to be different. The house is in much better shape than the last one. We won’t have to gut it out, there won’t be rooms with dog poop everywhere…(yes, that actually happened), and we won’t be doing large updates like the roof, the siding, or the windows. So with just that stuff alone, it won’t take nearly as long, and won’t be nearly as expensive. So far, just by looking at the house from the outside, it’s going to be really easy to make the house look a whole lot better just by cleaning up. The gutters will need to be cleaned out, since there are trees growing in them. The flower beds and landscaping will need some freshening up. Trim the bushes, rake out all of the dead leaves and weeds, and lay down some fresh mulch. Power Washing the outside of the house always makes a big difference with little work, and it doesn’t cost anything since we have our own power washer. We will make sure the backyard is cleaned up, I’m sure there will be plenty of junk and garbage to take care of. The driveway will need to be assessed, if it’s got any concrete at all, I will power wash that as well, and if it is mostly dirt, then we might consider bringing in some extra stone to fill it in and make it nice and level and smooth. The outside is probably where we will focus alot of our attention and time, but since we haven’t been able to really get inside yet, you never know what might come up. Not only with cleaning up, but with big things that have to be working properly like the heater and A/C, the hot water, the plumbing, and the electricity. In fact those are the things we will take care of first if there are any issues, to make sure our budget is well spent on the most important things and then with whatever is left over we will use to make things prettier. I’m really hoping that this house isn’t going to be super stinky, or nasty, because we might be hiring professional cleaners on this one. It will be very interesting to see what the difference in profit will be between spending 100k to do a very large flip, and spending only a few thousand on a smaller flip. I know it always depends on the price of the house to begin with and what shape it’s in, but with a smaller flip and a bigger profit, I might now want to go back to large flips ever again.