Millie: Week 21

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 can't believe it's week 21.  I definitely took on a much larger project here than I realized (considering no flip before this has gone past week 18), but we're still mainly on track for the list date we've been planning all along.  We've been shooting for early March since day 1, so thankfully despite the fact that I took 2 months (!) doing the exterior and several weeks demoing a basement ceiling, I'm not too far behind.  It definitely helps that in the past few weeks I've been putting my nose to the grindstone and working on the rooms that need the most.

Last week was the upstairs bathroom, this week was a little bit more that, but a whole lotta master bathroom.

Before we check out the master bath, hey look, a grouted floor!

The bench also has a working top, although the 2 built-in door fronts (the bottom 2 cubbies) need a little bit more finagling.  I have some grout touch up and clean up to do today, but I am pleased to say that fixtures are scheduled to be installed early next week!

Now venturing back downstairs to the new master bathroom, it almost has a door!  Well, it has a door, but it's not finished and not fully functional yet, but it's there.  My contractor has some tweaking to do and still needs to install the leaded glass.  That glass is going to take this room up about 10,000 notches.

So now, a room that use to have a very wide opening and was just kind of an odd paneled reading nook.....

is well on it's way to bathroom status.  I've been shiplapping my heart out

(and playing with the panorama on my phone to try and get a more complete pic of this small space)

I only have 3 walls shiplapped and I still have a few boards left to prime, as you can see- then on to paint.  Nice crisp white paneling.

Wall #4 is waiting for the new door and trim to be complete before getting installed.

The windows will be frosted so the neighbors don't get a show and stained crown molding will top off the room to make it uber fancy.  (anyone else just start singing "Fancy" in their heads?)  I know this sounds cliche, but this looks so much better in person.  The shiplap a nice texture without being in your face and once it all caulked and fully painted, it'll be dreamy.

Another area that started getting some attention this week also, was the master closet (the door to the right of the bathroom in the second pic of this post).  Originally this area was a pass through to the kitchen and had 2 small closets back to back.  Oh yeah, and it had the same linoleum floor parfait as the kitchen.

Now, not only is it closed off from the kitchen, but it's going to be a pretty decent master closet for the new buyers.  Not a huge closet, mind you, but it'll have about 10 feet of hanging rods, shelves, an original built-in, and hardwood floors, so I don't think that's too shabby.

With a little bit more attention needed in both bathrooms next week, I'm hoping to move on to the next big ticket item- the kitchen.  Cabinets are supposed arrive in a week and a half and I intend to have the rest of the room ready for them!  That means updating and repairing some existing cabinets, repairing and patching the wainscoting around the room, and lots and lots of paint.  Let's do this!!!

Millie: Week 20

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 feel like a broken record on this flip- Things are happening, but not as fast as I want!  I'll admit, right now it's tough to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I know it's there and I know it's gorgeous.

I spent another week in the bathroom. Before I show you where we are today, I like taking a little jaunt down memory lane.

As of today, still sans fixtures, but a breath of fresh air.

I can just picture this space with the wall-hung sink and army green claw foot tub.  It's a dreamy bathroom, I promise.  Soon enough, you'll see what I see in my head.

At least I can always rely on a side-by-side before and after to remind me how far this house has come.

Last week the built-in was looking pretty rough:

But thankfully this week, rough is not a word that even crosses the tongue

Quite a bit of time went into that bench.  The original bench was a hack job built from an old door.  I ripped that out in the original bathroom demo as you saw in last week's image above.

You know you're glutton for a never ending flip, when you decide to replace the bench you just demolished.  It just makes sense here in the dead space.... but, ya know, a working, non broken, non hideous one.  Like this:

Clearly it still needs a top- that's getting painted in the other room currently.  Once the doors are finished with paint, the built-in will look something like this:

I also started polishing up my sink legs in anticipation of having installed plumbing in the near future (wishful thinking probably).  I'm under the firm belief that all sinks should have legs.  Just you wait until you see how sexy these are going to look and you'll start craving sinks with legs too.

Still left to do in this bathroom:

• Install built-in doors
• Touch up paint
• Touch up wall grout (at the top rail)
• Grout floors
• Install fixtures & lights
• Repair/replace window privacy film
• Happy dance

Having this one space almost done make's me able to better ignore the sheer construction explosion mess of the rest of the house.  At least one room is pretty!  Well, one and a half pretty rooms- the kitchen floor is mid-refinish and has one coat of seal on it.

Worlds better than the laminate flooring parfait that used to adorn the kitchen, no?

I have quite the plans for next week's progress.  I'm crossing my fingers that I can get to even half of it.  The end is near... it's just buried in piles of construction supplies at the moment.

Millie: Week 19

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. Ah, another weirdly short week and a house flipper in serious need of getting back into a routine!

My contractor popped by for a day and got started replacing the trim on the new, smaller, opening to the soon to be master bath.  Once he patches in a few more pieces, you'll never know it wasn't like this originally.  He'll be building the pocket door over the weekend... kind of a little excited for that.

I think I also may have him thinking that I'm a mad scientist or something because he was a little concerned with what I was cooking in the thrift store crock pot.  Cabinet hardware naturally.

These particular pieces are for the bathroom built-in and were caked with layer upon layer upon layer of badly slathered on paint.  Luckily, with a little soap and water in a crock pot over night, the paint comes off with ease (and steel wool or a wire brush).  The top pieces have been stripped, the bottom had just been removed from the pot.

Meanwhile upstairs....

I finally finished the last of the plaster repair and patching on the second floor and after just a bit of sanding, there will be paint!!!  Side note for the new year- I need to slow down and take some better pics for these updates.  I know the house is still a mess, but there's no excuse for the pics to be too.

Again, I spent the majority of the short week locking myself in the bathroom.  I've put trim back up , patched walls, and started repairing the sad sad built-in.

While this may look like just another mess to most, I see paint in the VERY near future.  A bit of sanding left, and a little caulk and this puppy'll be painted!  One of the fun things about painting bathrooms is the fact that there's so little to paint that it should go pretty fast and by next week's update I'll have a pretty shiny bathroom to show off.  I'm practically bouncing off my seat in eagerness for this.

I need to start HUSSLING on this house... not that I haven't been already, but it's time to see some BIG changes!  I'll admit, it is a little disconcerting when my contractor looks around and tells me "you still have a lot of work to do, huh?"  Yes, yes I do.  Gotta put the blinders back on and focus.  I'm not going to finish this house any time soon if I'm overwhelmed.  It's like eating an elephant- one bite at a time.