For Sale!

That’s a wrap people! The show is over. The work is done. Let’s pack it up and put this baby on the market!

Well…I guess it is not completely over. The house has to sell first before we are all completely done. However, the house is 98% ready to be handed over to a new owner. The house was staged today by Rita Lopez with Tarragona Design. It looks gorgeous! I could not be happier with the work Rita and her team have done.

My parents have done a beautiful job with the landscaping and my dad with his unbelievably cool mailbox!

Ready for a new owner to love and cherish this home.

Reminder of the house before we started the work.

Living room staged and ready for the professional photographer.

The dining room, light and bright, ready to entertain.

The dining space closed off before the work had begun.

A tired kitchen looking for a face lift.

Comfy office space in the kitchen with a tranquil view of the backyard.

Back deck ready for a cookout or enjoying a quiet morning’s coffee.

Sweet hall bathroom ready to impress the guests.

Closed in cave-like bathroom before the remodel.

Reminder of the master bathroom that once was but is no more.

Jack thinks this room is perfect for a nursery.

One more final picture of the beautiful home.

So the next chapter is selling. We will list the property for $395,900. We have checked the comps in the area and we are not the highest priced house and not the lowest. Other houses in the area that were remodeled and staged similar to ours sold for a similar price. Our fingers are crossed that this beautiful home will find a new loving family.

Coming Soon!

We are in the home stretch people! This past weekend Mom, Dad, my husband and I have been at the flip house nonstop (except for trips to Home Depot). We stained the back deck, installed transitions pieces for the flooring, touched up painted in every room, swept, mopped, hung doors, weeded flower beds, hauled gravel, mowed, power washed, dug holes, filled holes, and more. The house is looking so fresh and new. The old ugly concrete in the front is gone and replaced with beautiful gravel and limestone steps.

The backyard has gotten some updates with a fresh new deck stain and some gravel along the back of the house as well.

Two of the bedrooms are completely done. That feels so good to say!

The master bedroom is very close to completion. The doors have all been installed. The master bathroom is getting very close to being complete. The only thing we have left is to hang the towel hooks and reconfigure the drawer to the sink vanity. But take a look at the beautiful new shower and sink.

We added sliding doors for the master bedroom closet and bathroom. The hope is to give the house a little charm and character.

On Wednesday we are hosting a preview open house for friends and family. We want to show off our work and begin to spread the word about this beautiful home for sale in the hot South Austin market. This house is in a great location and is turn-key ready!

We hope to have a for sale sign in the front yard by the end of the week! Fingers crossed we get asking price in the first week on the market!

Painting and Tile Work

The house is really coming together! This is the exciting and fun work where we get to see the design take shape and the house become beautiful once again. Mom, my aunt, and I have been painting the interior ourselves (mostly Mom). She has been working at the house almost everyday painting each room, closet, wall, and ceiling by hand. She has been rolling, brushing, and spraying paint in the bathrooms, bedrooms, hallway, living and dining room. She is amazing!

Last Friday my aunt and I helped her finish the walls in every room. The house is now a clean, modern grey/white color. The bathrooms are a calming, reflective blue/green and the kitchen has a modern distinct black ore accent wall.

Master bathroom with Reflecting Pool paint job.

Kitchen with Iron Ore accent wall and new recess lighting!

Besides getting painting done in the house, the tile was installed in both bathrooms. The crew worked very hard and did a beautiful job.

We are very pleased with our tile section and the subtle tile design in the master shower. It is hard to see in the photos but along the back wall of the shower, the subway tile is vertical in rows instead of horizontal brick pattern. Along the side walls and in the niche it is horizontal brick pattern.

Also this week, the new windows were installed by Travis Roofing company. They did beautiful work as well and we are so pleased with the investment.

This weekend on our list of things to do is to finish painting the ceilings and then begin to lay the flooring! Big changes are coming soon.

The cabinets will also be delivered this week and installed next week along with the painting of the exterior of the house (done by professionals, of course).

We are so pleased with how the project is coming along. We still have a long list of little jobs to get done but so far we are still on our timeline for completion by early August.

I still have some shopping to do. I need to purchase the vanity sinks for the bathrooms and a barn door for the master bathroom.

After the interior is shaping up, we do plan to move outside to clean up the yard and add landscaping for more curb appeal. Stay tuned!

Making Real Progress

I am shocked at how much progress as been made at the flip house this month. After the foundation work was complete the projects have just been coming along at a great rate.

The foundation need minor adjustments because the house had already undergone major foundation repair years earlier. Olshan Foundation was the company we went with because they had done the initial work on the house and was the best price for the additional work that needed to be done.

Next the bathroom conversion started to pick up pace. My contractor hired the plumbers to come out and move the toilet and shower over in the hall bathroom in order to add a standing shower in the master bathroom.

The bathroom on the left is the master, while on the right is the hall bathroom. The sheet rock was finished today along with new texture to the walls. We will be able to begin painting the bathrooms this week and then tile will go in next weekend.

The kitchen area is also coming along nicely. The garage door has been relocated to the side wall, opening to the dinning/living room instead of opening to the small kitchen. This now gives us space to relocate the frig to where the door used to be and add a peninsula off of that wall to give more counter and cabinet space. Cabinets will hopefully be coming the week after next. We hope to paint the kitchen next week so that we don’t have to paint around the cabinets.

The hallway ceiling was raised to the regular 8 foot height. The ceiling in the hallway had been dropped to accommodate the duct work for the HVAC unit. We have relocated the HVAC to the attic and rerouted the duct work through the entire house.

The electrician has also been at the house adding recessed lighting in the hallway, living room, kitchen, and bathrooms. He also up-dated switches and plugs throughout the house. We will also have to up-date the breaker boxes to the house as well, a not so glamorous expense.

Living room before
Living room now

You can see in the photo on the left the wall between the living and dining room. The wall is now gone and the house has a much bigger, open, and brighter feel to it. The sheet rock needed to be repaired in every room. The crew finished re-texturing the walls and ceiling today. I can’t wait to get in there and start painting!

Mom, daughter, and I worked hard today refinishing the doors to the house. To save a few dollars, we have spray painted the handles black and cleaned up the hinges which will also be sprayed black. We repainted the doors a nice bright white to make everything look fresh and new again.

The house is really coming along and things are looking great! I am excited to start to see paint and tile happen. Then windows and cabinets will be next!

It’s a numbers game

You are possibly wondering what we paid for the house. Maybe you are wondering what is our reno budget. Or you are wondering how much do you think we can get for the house when we sell it. So here are the numbers so far for this project.

List price: $274,000

Purchase price: $276,960

After closing costs: $285,507

Reno budget: $75,000

Resale price: $380,000

Possible profit: $19,493

The estimate for work on the house is currently over our $75,000 budget. I am working to find ways to trim the reno cost at every turn, but it is going to be a real challenge. We are going to have to cut some things off of our work list. The big projects to be done are to add a shower to the 1/2 bath, rearrange the kitchen to create a peninsula for more counter space, repair the foundation, move the A/C unit into the attic and replace the unit, replace all windows, lay all new flooring, repair the walls throughout the house and in the garage, paint the whole house, replace the back sliding door, and landscape to add curb appeal.

All of these projects seem very necessary, but all of the projects do not fit into our budget. We have looked at comps in the neighborhood and creating two full bathrooms seems like a must. Also moving the A/C into the attic to raise the ceiling in the hall and bathroom also seems like a must. We know kitchens sell but, I am rethinking the need to rearrange the layout. In order to stay within our budget, we may need to keep the layout the same and just update the cabinets, counters, and backsplash.

New windows, flooring, and paint is a must but to help save money we have already pulled up all the flooring ourselves. That saved us around $2,600 in demo labor costs. Another way to save money was to hire a separate window company than my general contractor. I found someone who was just a few hundred dollars cheaper but every little penny counts in this business. I have also hired a separate house painter as well to save some money. We will do the interior painting ourselves and possibly install the flooring ourselves to save money as well.

This weekend I plan to do some shopping around for materials. I will also be purchasing all the materials myself to save money. My contractor could purchase all the materials for me, but this cost would be added to his bill which would increase his total cost. Anything I can do myself will help me not have to pay him to do it. I am very lucky to have found a great general contractor who is willing to work with me on my budget and let me do some of these things on my own. He also has experience flipping houses and has been providing me with very helpful advice along the way.

Finally, I thought after all this money talk I would leave you with some design ideas. Here are two pictures I am using for inspiration for the two bathrooms. Let me know your thoughts.

Demo is done man!

That is it! I can’t scrap any more floors, pull up any more tile, sweep up any more debris. I am done and so is my husband and my mom. We have worked like champions this past week. We were over at the house almost every night after our normal 9 to 5 jobs. Then over there again all day Saturday to finish the demo job. My husband chipped away at the tile and the filler with the jack hammer like a boss! Mom pulled down plastic shower wall liner, chiseled out mortar from the base of the wall, and hauled out trash to the dumpster like Wonder Women! I can’t tell you how many wheelbarrow loads of busted up tile I carted out to the dumpster. It feels like a thousand! Or how many scraps with a heavy duty razor blade I made across the concrete floor to get every spec of glue and filler off of the floor.

I realize HGTV does movie magic and those home owners really do not do the demo work themselves. It is one thing to break apart a cabinet or two, bust a wall with a sledge, it is a whole other thing to clear a whole house that was tiled wall to wall of every spec of tile fragment there is. And honestly, we could not even remove all of the tile in the house. The master bathroom’s sink is busted, we can’t shut the water off below the sink so we can’t remove it at this time or finish removing the tile under the sink. But really, that is okay. I removed enough tile for one house and if I have to pay our contractor to finish removing the last 10 tiles in that bathroom, I can live with that.

We have saved around $2,600 of demo costs by doing the job ourselves. Of course we paid that money and then some in sweat and muscle ache but that is all part of the job. If you are not willing to get dirty, and I mean really dirty, then this is not the endeavor for you.

The house after demo work has been wrapped up. You can see the one bathroom with leftover tile and sink.

This week I will meet with more contractors to continue to collect bids on the work. I am continuing to try to get the cost of the remodel down to a lower price. I am meeting with a plumber, cabinet salesperson, and foundation repair company this week. All of these will be second or third bids for each of these projects. Fingers crossed someone will have good news for us.

My next blog I promise to begin to share costs and budget. You may be wondering now how much did we purchase the house for, how much is our remodeling budget, what other costs have sneaked into the equation. Trust me there has been plenty of extra costs so far and I happy to share that with you in my next post. Stayed tuned!

Before pix! Demo starts this weekend!

We closed on the house and the loan is funded! Alleluia! I was not sure this day would come. I am relieved and overanxious all at the same time. I picked up the keys this afternoon and mom and I met there to plan and measure. Here is a current picture of the kitchen.

My plan for the kitchen is to remove the fur downs from above the cabinets, remove all cabinets and countertops, and add recessed lighting. We also plan to move the door to the adjacent wall and relocate the frig to where the garage door is currently. Then we will extend the counter to the back wall as well as extend it out 4 feet into the dinning space to make a peninsula for seating and extra storage.

The little nook under the window is awkward space I am trying to figure out what to do with. Right now my best option is to remove the overhead light, add recessed lighting and stage it like a small office area.

Great thing about this kitchen is that the appliances are all relatively new and in good condition so that will save us a ton of cash. Thank you sellers!

For the redesign, I have started to plan vintage marries modern design. It seems many designers are going this route so hopefully it will bring lots of buyers and a great price point at resale. I am thinking shaker style cabinets, keeping the straight door pulls, adding subway tile backsplash with dark grout behind the stove. For the floor we plan to do some type of wood-like flooring with a light grey tint. I will keep the farmhouse sink and do shiplap with open shelves on the side with the sink.

Let me know your thoughts by leaving comment. I will add more before photos next time as well as share demo pictures when we start slinging sledge hammers!

Closing today (we hope)

So after the drama of Rocket Mortgage dropping us like a lead balloon we scrambled to find a new lender and continue on with the purchase of the house. We went with a local lender our realtor suggested and now we are all set to close today (hopefully!). I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed because so many things have already fallen in on us regarding this investment that I just can’t assume anything will fall right into place.

However, I am getting excited and already have purchased a few items to go in the house. I am looking to marry vintage feel with modern design as many designers are doing these days. I would like to make the house look very appealing to many people but at the same time add charm and character. As a buyer, that is what I would want.

I am also needing to keep a very close eye on the budget and try to save money every where I can on this project. Our contractor’s bid come back much higher than I was hoping and it did not even include all the “fixes” I had in mind for the house. I plan to do some more shopping around for some of the work to help cut some of the costs. For example, my general contractor has included paint and windows in his bid but maybe I could find someone to do it for less. I also plan to get started on the demo work ourselves to help save money. We may end up painting the interior ourselves to save on the budget.

We had the final walk-through the house two days ago and all looks to be in order. I will take pictures of the interior next time I visit the house, hopefully today, so I can share some before shots.

Denied

Yep, that is right, our loan has been denied. Four days before we close, early on a Saturday morning, Rocket Mortgage (Quicken Loans) decided to screw us. They have denied our loan because they have decided they don’t do short term mortgages. In other words, they decided not to loan to someone who is going to flip a house.
I was honest and up front with them the entire loan application process that this was our intention. I did not hide the fact that we were looking to flip a house. They knew this was an investment property for us and I told them we would not be renting it out but instead turning around and selling it again.

So why did they wait till four days before we closed to inform us that they did not do this type of loan? No one will truly never know. What I do know is that I will never apply for another loan with them ever again and I will be telling anyone who will listen to never apply for a loan through them either.

What is next for us you ask? Well, this is not the end of the line for us. I am not ready to give up on this crazy endeavor. I have reached out to another lender who is local and my realtor suggested. Of course, it is a Saturday so no one is jumping to return my call but as I see it the fat lady has not sung yet, we still could some how pull this off.

I do feel very bad for the seller, I know they will be very frustrated and disappointed with us, which I completely understand. They actually asked us to not use Rocket Mortgage (Quicken Loans) and I did not listen. I need to make sure I listen to all advice that comes my way, even the unsolicited advice.

We will not be closing on Tuesday. Hopefully, I will soon have a new closing date and a path for moving forward with our first flipping project. Until then, I will continue to watch HGTV and look up design ideas on Pinterest.

The search

It all starts with a search. I had been on a house hunt before. Actually twice and both times I ended up very pleased with the outcome. However, those searches were very different from this search. Those searches were for a family home. A house to live in and actually call home. This new search was for a project. A money maker. A challenge. A new endeavor.

Amazingly enough it was not hard to like a house because it was just that. I just needed to like it. I did not need to fall in love with it and see it as a home for myself and my loved ones. I just needed to see if I could improve upon it. And lucky for me, I am an optimist and a strategist and I think that I can help just about anything. So I made an offer on the first house I saw. Yep, the very first house I stepped foot into, I made an offer. And it was not accepted. So I looked at more houses and put in more offers. Guess what, those were not accepted either. Yes, some offers were less than asking price because let’s face it, some people are asking way too much. Some offers were exactly asking and some where even over asking price. One house I put an offer on was on the market for one day, I offered $22,000 over asking and I did not get the house. That is crazy, right! That house received 24 offers. In one day!

But my search as hopefully come to an end for the time being because someone finally accepted my offer! Well, at first they did not but their first offer fell through so we said our offer still stands and then they accepted it. Kinda crazy but that is how the market works in my home town. Oh, I guess I should tell you that my home town is Austin, Texas.

So currently, I have two more days in my option period. The inspector was at the house yesterday and wrote up a 37 page report about the house. These reports can be very scary but I am an optimist and refuse to be scared off from a project. The inspector suggested we have the pipes looked at and the HVAC looked at as well. So tomorrow two more inspections along with a visit from my contractor to start the estimations for all the work.

I think I failed to mention that my mother is my silent, not so silent, business partner in all of this. So when I say, “I bought a house.” what I mean is we bought a house. However, my mom is great and I think trusts me with the project. Which I am not sure why because honestly I have never done this before. But really what could go wrong? With a hot market like Austin, we are bound to come out ahead! Right?

So besides starting a new endeavor of trying to flip a house, I thought why not start a blog at the same time. This will be a great way to chronicle my adventures, my ups and downs with the project. Then when this first house flip is done, I can read back over this and decided if I really want to try it again or if this crazy hair brained idea as passed.