I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses. This flip, Millie is the most challenging and most exciting yet! You can find more about this house and about my 3 previous flip houses here. I've waited 17 weeks to get here, but I'm finally at the place where things are falling into line and I'm getting re-energized to Git-r-done!
I spent a large part of my week in the smallest room of the house, but its been totally worth it.
So, admittedly, the contractors did the walls, and I did the floor. I didn't want to take the time to do both (if I did everything myself here, the job would never be done) and the floor was more time consuming (aka saving me more money) so I opted to do that myself. Plus it's fun staring at marble hexagon tiles for a week. Seriously, they're pretty. I should also mention on the back wall- since the angled wall was so unlevel, it's actually going to look better if we level the wall to match the tile line as opposed to cut all those tiles at crazy angles. It's worse in person.
So, back to those floors
Every single tile is cut and laid (that's simultaneously the benefit and downfall of installing mosaics- lots and lots of tiny cuts). I was planning to grout last night, but after a last minute trip to The Tile Shop to get a better grout color, I decided I probably should slow down and take the time to seal the tiles first and do this floor properly, not just fast. As my first time working with marble tiles, I had forgotten the recommendations that if you seal them before you grout it helps prevent the tiles from getting hazy from the grout. Now I'm glad my first grout try was too brown.
The walls got grouted with a light gray and will be getting a decorative trim piece on the top edge once I get the window trims back in. The floor will also be getting a light gray grout. It's my personal philosophy that while white floor grout looks super nice at first, you're ultimately setting yourself up for staining or endless bleaching. Light gray looks super sexy with the tile AND hides more dirt.
I cannot wait to grout this puppy today!!
While my contractor was working on the walls, I tried to stay out of his way and work on patching some plaster in the bedrooms.
When last we visited the pink room there were 2 gaping holes in the walls from where the plaster was too far gone which I apparently never caught both on film. Here's one. Multiply that by 2.
Now, in addition to being wallpaperless, the pink room is also free of gaping holes and has had all of it's plaster repaired. Just a little more skim-coating to go, then lots of sanding. If you look closely, you can see the rectangle patch in the middle of the wall since it was still drying when I took this pic.
But clearly patching walls isn't as pretty as the bathroom, so.....
bathroom.
I was very focused this week, can you tell? With the bathroom now crossing the 75% done mark, the upstairs is starting to feel like it could be done soon. Putting things in perspective for me a bit- the upstairs alone is right around the size of the previous houses that I've done. Crazy, right?
Although next week will be a short week work-wise due to some strange holiday, I'm anticipating having some pretty pictures to show next week as well. Now's when my progress pictures start getting more exciting than "look, I demoed some plaster."
Have a wonderful weekend!