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. As each week here ticks past, a nagging little voice in the back of my head reminds me that I flipped Clark in only 12 weeks and we're already 7 weeks through this one. In order to shut the little nagging voice, I usually have to feed it chocolate and remind myself that Clark was a good baby step into flipping and Millie is a giant leap into the historic flips I hope to continue with. You can't compare a mid-century <1,000 sf home with a 100 year old 2,500+ sf home. Different beasts altogether. You hear that, nagging voice?? Have some chocolate and leave me to work in peace!
Once again, the most noticeable changes happened outside, but things are chugging along inside too. After COMPLETELY filling one dumpster, the kitchen is showing it's true size once again.
That's quite a decent size kitchen! Big enough for a small island or table or dance floor.... oh the floor.....Yeah, that floor might end up driving me over the edge. It's like a parfait of bad flooring- linoleum on top of plywood on top of peel and stick tiles on top of VCT tiles all trying to distract me from the original hard wood floor below. The kicker here is that I got the results of my flooring asbestos test in- the tile? perfectly fine. The adhesive sticking the VCT to the coveted wood floors? asbestos. BOOOO Let's get those remediation quotes rolling in!
In order to continue on with demo in the existing bathroom, my plumber pulled out the leaky, rocking toilet to reveal delightful, squishy, lovely smelling (shudders) original hard wood flooring.
Yeah, not salvageable in any way shape or form, so backer board and tile it is!
And speaking of salvage, I've successfully stripped all of the 3+ layers of chipping paint from both the claw feet and the tub itself! It still needs a scrub down with some mineral spirits, but it's just about ready for it's new paint job.
I even have tub #2 lined up but it won't be in my possession for over a week. For the right deal, I can be patient (sometimes).
Heading back outside, I think I moved about 5 tons of dirt around this yard in an effort to level it out. This is what the yard looked like just a few short weeks ago. Under the brush pile on the right were 10 stumps.
After pulling out a forest of weeds and grinding down the stumps, I was left with a very unlevel disaster of a side yard. Now level and open, even I'm surprised with the transformation. It also lead to an epiphany, but I'll reveal that in a minute. The back of the yard also got leveled and more grass was planted, but it doesn't look like much yet.
At long last, the painters have gotten started scraping the chipping paint and I've started holding my breath in anticipation. Aside from the kitchen and bathrooms, the paint will have the most impact. Technically, this is the view of the front of the house, going by it's street address, but it's kind of unremarkable.
My epiphany this week was that the front of the house was originally intended to be on the sidewalk/terrace side. BAM!
Let's just flash back to this side of the house a few weeks ago. Do me a favor? Every time I lament that progress seems to be going at snails pace, just show me these pictures. I've already forgotten the 'before's
And now?
With the deck added on many many decades ago, the pseudo-front of the house lost a little of it's impact. My new fence, however, will extend along only the back half of the yard and return into the house where the sunroom and the deck meet. This will give the yard privacy and keep the spectacular view from the terrace. Hello gorgeous.
My new fence location does make a little more work for me in pulling out this arbitrary patio smack dab in the middle of the side yard, but here's where I need to make the curb appeal work for me. Chances are pretty high that we'll be selling this house from under snow, so anything I can do to give it presence should pay off.
Before I leave you for the weekend, I want to give a shoutout to Handy Dad who decided to solve the puzzle of a cool old door with a cat door previously butchered into it. Once the painters paint it, do one will ever know!... except you all since I told you, but shhhh...... this will be our little secret.
And we chug into week 8. Slow and steady wins the race, right? The prize at the end will be an amazing antique bungalow and knowing that I was able to bring it back to life.
Have a wonderful weekend!