Dori the Flip House: week 3

I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses.  My latest flip house, Dori sports the 3 L’s in real estate, but will need more than a bit of creativity to make the house sellable. You can find more about this house and about my 4 previous flip houses here. Week 3 is here, more smashing happened, and now I wait.  Dori's little town is getting a new building inspector, but he's taking a vacation naturally.  What does that mean for me?  It means that we need to wait at least another week before we have a building permit.  No permit, no windows or touching anything structural.  Boo.

I can confidently say, though, that my part of demo is complete.  As is paying for some brute labor to take down the eyesore sheds.  Arrivederci!

A dirty, smelly (oh goodness the smell) task that would have taken me weeks and probably multiple injuries, took 2 20-something guys just over half a day.

Meanwhile inside, I took down all the old paper wall-board in the bathroom, since paper+water is not an ideal combination.... you can use your imagination...  And the tub should be getting replaced early next week!

I have determined that the previous owners must have been sunlight hating vampires, which I guess is why the house felt like a cave when I got it.  Once I peeled back layers, I discovered that not only was there originally a window in the shower (where I plan to put a new one anyway), but the living room window was once significantly larer.  In an ideal world, I'd make the living room window larger again, but windows have already been ordered.

The kitchen is also now fully removed and the room will never look bigger.  It will look better though.  Just picture the new kitchen- a breakfast bar/peninsula taking the placed of the studs on the left and nice white, shaker style cabinets on either side leading into the dining room where there will soon be a slider on the back wall.  I will get light into this house any way I possibly can.

Proper electrical will help with that problem too.  Because apparently it's not 'normal' to have a ceiling fan in one room controlled by a switch in another room.  Who knew?  Lucky I have my trusty electrician on the task.

I have a feeling next week will be a bit torturous for me since progress will be at a near stop until the permit comes in.  I can probably scrounge up a few projects to work on, but I'll have to wait for the progress leaps and bounds that I was hoping for.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Dori the Flip House: week 2

I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses.  My latest flip house, Dori sports the 3 L’s in real estate, but will need more than a bit of creativity to make the house sellable. You can find more about this house and about my 4 previous flip houses here. I didn't get the demo finished this week like I hoped, however things are moving along nicely.  I'm really not in too much of a rush currently, because not much can happen in the next 2 weeks as we wait for the building permit to come through and the windows that were ordered to come in.  I'm crossing my fingers that we'll have the permit in hand when the windows come in and we can jump on that.  Once windows happen, everything else can and the line of dominos can start falling.

So until then, I smashed more,

and opened up the kitchen to the living room a bit,

and loaded about a kagillion loads of demo debris into the dumpster,

and mowed the large lawn (just the front pictured), all the while thankful that my own lawn is essentially a postage stamp,

and figured out a MUCH needed plan for some curb appeal (hint: it includes stained shutters and a blue door- image via Young House Love),

and got multiple landscaping quotes, and planned out the kitchen, and ordered appliances with the holiday sales, and ordered light fixtures for almost the entire house.

(1- Hyannis Wall Lantern for outside, 2- Nimbo Flushmount for the kitchen,3- Octagon Flushmount for the bedrooms)

My plan is to have everything purchased in the next few weeks so when install begins it can go full force.  If this flip house goes according to plan (fingers crossed) once stuff starts happening, everything will start happening.  Windows will lead to drywall which will lead to painting and tiling which will lead to kitchen and bath install and then flooring, staging, and selling.  That's the plan at least!

Dori the Flip House w1

I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses.  My latest flip house, Dori sports the 3 L's in real estate, but will need more than a bit of creativity to make the house sellable. You can find more about this house and about my 4 previous flip houses here. So this week I deconstructed. A lot.  And by deconstructed I do mean smashed.  And made a big mess.

It turns out that the previous owners were masters at covering up issues.  If you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right?  Like termite damage.  It doesn't exist if you put paneling over in and a new toe kick on the cabinet they completely feasted through....  Luckily for me, it's not active and they dined on one cabinet and paper wallboard only, leaving the studs completely alone, but I'm treating it anyway. No bandaid fixes for this flipper.

Tell me this wasn't a bit creepy to find behind paneling:

But on a less creepy note- the kitchen has bid us adieu and my new plans are coming together nicely.

I'm going for a completely different feel here than the other houses.  My goal here is funky condo alternative.  I won't even be using my go to subway tiles.

The most tedious thing so far has been getting rid of the darn brick veneer wall.  They used some good adhesive because I had to tear that sucker down brick by flippin brick.

I'm hoping that by the end of next week, all the interior deconstruction can be DONE.  2 weeks of demo would far surpass Millie's 2+ months of demo.  I'm eager for this house to be a blank slate (and stop being an assault on my olfactory senses) so I can start rebuilding!