Millie: Week 29

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. If you're here visiting from Cuckoo 4 Design, WELCOME!  It's a bit messy over here right now but I'm mere weeks away from my latest flip reveal so I hope you join in on this crazy ride.

This is one of those weeks that it was tough to see the forest through the trees.  After last week's leaps and bounds, this week was spent focusing on minutia to prepare for next week's leaps and bounds (hopefully!!)

I finally conquered removing paint from the damaged canvas ceiling and now I just need to scrub it down and patch a few small tears before I can prime and paint.  This is one of those time consuming projects that no one will notice once the house is done.  If I hadn't done it, however, a water stained, bubbling ceiling would have been one of the house's first impressions.

millie-w29-canvas

I suffered a few setbacks this week, though.  The biggest being that I still need to have the first floor walls skim coated.  Did I mention I plan to list in about 3 weeks?

millie-w29-plaster

Yeah.... The plasterer who had originally committed went MIA on me and finally told me he was booked up for the next several weeks.  No me gusta.  I had another guy quote, so hopefully, the first floor walls will be ready for paint early next week.  Otherwise my head might explode.

The other major setback this week was plumbing.  The gift that keeps on giving.  Aside from a brand new faucet that I have to replace because it leaks, the basement was where the action was...

millie-w29-basement

After the high of getting working plumbing fixture last week, I got a crushing reality this week when we discovered that every time the toilet flushed, it came rushing out of a giant hole in the old cast iron sewage pipe and directly into the basement floor.  yum.  Luckily it's 100% fixed now and I can boast that the house has all new plumbing #silverlining.  I'm trying not to think about how long the house's sewage has been dumping into the basement for....

Like I said, this week was minutia.  But it all needed to happen.  Like my sister and I spending hours scraping baked on window film from the upper sash of these two living room windows.  Why just the upper sash and just these 2 windows, I do not know.

millie-w29-windows

BUT, I'm trying to see the forest through the trees.  When I was feeling down this week, I would just pick up my trowel and get tiling.  Instant gratification always makes me feel better.  And so does this tile.

millie-w29-tile

I'm at a point with the backsplash tile, however that I can no longer avoid my wet saw.  The cuts are such a process, but I'm hoping that I can bang them out today.  Once all tiled, this large expanse of wall will be getting 2 long open shelves.

My other pick-me up this week was starting to really delve into staging.  With 2 bedrooms on the second floor essentially all set with polished floors (thanks to my helpful mom) I started putting some of my staging furniture in there so I could devise a plan.  I had forgotten how big this room was!

millie-w29-bedroom

I'm hoping that I can spend as little as possible on the staging furniture itself so that I can focus my staging budget on textiles and details that will make this house feel super cozy and welcoming.

In other not-as-pretty news, this house finally got it's new electrical panel and about half of the snow melted!  There's still several feet to go, but now I can see over the piles #littlewins.

Let's all keep our fingers crossed that I've passed all the speed bumps on this house and I can spend the next 3 weeks happily painting, staging, and doing finishing touches.

Have a great weekend!