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. Another snow day this week and it looks like Mother Nature is not planning to be kind this coming week either. While all I want to do is whine, rage quit on winter and hibernate until the crocuses start popping out, Hubby won't let me. Meanie.
Despite the annoyances of New England this week, I was feeling surprisingly good about the progress at the flip. I hired grunt labor to clear out the remaining demo debris in the basement and to start sanding the skim-coated bedroom walls. I need to hire grunt labor more often. It allowed me to actually focus for a change.
My contractor was also finally over the flu and started to bang out the items that I have on his list. The prettiest of those items:
Why yes, that is a fully built and functioning pocket door with salvaged leaded glass windows. It just needs stain and a lock to get checked off the list.
The least prettiest of my contractors to do list was the basement laundry room. There was something seriously wrong with the raised floor- bouncy, squishy, and felt like you were about to fall through. No me gusta. Here's its gorgeous before:
I had my fingers crossed that it was just a matter of replacing some old plywood but not so much
They had to completely rip it up to reveal the dirt floor below. It was a dangerous collage of rotten floor joists sistered up with new joists that were not attached to anything. Throw in a few random cinder blocks for structural support.... Because of this lovely flooring "construction", the adjacent (creepy) bathroom is also being sacrificed. Bye bye "bathroom"
The realities of the basement are a bit frustrating. Because we need a new structural floor, the plumber needs to move some drain pipes. Because the plumber needs to move some drain pipes, he needs to bring the pipes in this area up to code. This means more money. We're still in decent shape with the budget, so this shouldn't send me over, it'll just make for some creative penny pinching at the end.
But back to the pretty things. For the past 2 weeks, the kitchen and I have been bonding hard. Aside from some organization elsewhere in the house, my week was spent repairing patchwork-ed trim around the kitchen window and sanding, caulking, patching, and priming all the kitchen cabinets and trim.
Next time I decide to save, repair, and repaint 100+ year old cabinets that aren't in the best shape, can someone please remind me how time consuming that is? It'll be totally worth it in the end, but it sucked up much more time than I anticipated. "I can get the kitchen mostly set in a week" OK, Karen, how's that working out for you?
BUT all the repair and prep is finally done and every painted surface in here is primed. That might be a bit of overkill, but since it's the kitchen, I wanted to make sure any past stains stayed in the past and that the paint job would hold up to the daily abuse a kitchen is exposed to. I don't want my buyers cursing a half-a$$ed flipper fix.
The walls that still have wallpaper are going to be covered with backer board then tiled. Beautiful marble herringbone tile. That tile will be my pièce de résistance. I DARE any future buyers to not want this kitchen!!! (kidding! I don't dare them to not want anything.... please love this house.... you know you want to buy it!)
You may have noticed in the first pic that one of the the radiators got a new door too. I could take credit, but that was on my contractor's list too.
It'll need to come off to get painted with all the rest of the doors, but now it'll blend nicely with all my repaired antique cabinets.
I MAY have also started procuring staging furniture to add to the pile of no room in this house. I just can't resist a good deal when I know it'll be perfect for staging this house!
An upholstered headboard for the new master ($50)
A sweet antique twin bed and mattress set ($100)
And next week, fingers crossed, I'll be picking up 2 of these guys for $50 (total!)
and these for $100
Keeping my eyes peeled for deals like these are how I'm going to be able to stage this 4 bedroom house for my self-imposed budget of $2500.
I'm super excited to see this coming week's progress! All the framework is laid for progress in leaps and bounds. I'm so eager for all of you to see the rooms that have been hiding in my head for the past 24 weeks!