Millie: Week 8

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. 8 Weeks in and I'm finally shifting my full focus inside.  The only outside work that I did this week was finish pulling up the patio that I showed you last week.

I still have to move all those pavers, mix up the soil, level it out a bit and plant more grass.  But check out how the grass is coming in at the top of the pic on the top of the sidewalk!  It was dormant most of the week and I was starting to get crabby that I'm unable to grow grass, but 2 wet days in a row have reinvigorated the growing.

Other than that patio, I sequestered myself inside this week so I wouldn't be in the painters ways.  I'm pleased to say that this house is starting to get a bit of contrast!  Only on the upper trim and eaves so far, but it's a huge step in the right direction.

They still have quite a bit to do before the body paint goes on, but it's going to be along the line of the greenish they were testing out here:

Inwards, I put my blinders on and only dealt with one area at a time.  First up was the future master closet.  Formerly, it was 2 smaller closets back to back just behind the kitchen.  Because it's the narrow area under the stairs, it's tough to photograph, but it took lots of smashy smashy to get to this

Once I'm done, it'll be a generous master closet.  My apologies for the wonky lighting.  All the windows are covered for painting, it's been a dreary few days, and all the overhead lighting has been pulled to rewire, leaving me with only one lamp as my light source.  While demoing this room, my demo extended into the area by the back door.  I realized that at some point in history (whoever painted the murals in the basement) they had made the doorway to the back door smaller and put a door and frame in to the basement that prevented the back door from opening all the way.  So I peeled back the layers of renovations to find the original opening.  I don't have any before pics of this area, but it's much less claustrophobic now.  Isn't that yellow delightful?

For reference, the future master closet is right there on the left and I'll be closing it off with a wall just about where the sledge hammer sits.

The kitchen got even more selective demo.  Much like I had to peel back the layers in the back stairwell, in the kitchen I need to peel back the layers of years of renovation to get to something that I can work with.  I feel that's my mission with this house.  Peel back the 100 years of mini renovations to really allow the house to shine again.

I started to get choppy with the cabinets too.  Can't have a stove just hanging out in the middle of a wall like it was previously.  After a bit more careful cabinet demo, the stove will find a new home here:

I also discovered wallpaper pattern #14 behind some paneling.  I was actually quite relieved to realize that the paneling that I was so viciously ripping out wasn't original.  One original thing that I did mess with more was the future home of the fridge.  I do wish that I could have left this cabinet be, but there was no other logical place for the fridge.

I'm still trying to decide if I can leave it as is or if I'll need to box the fridge out more since any fridge will stick out of the opening by at least 10 inches.  I'll figure it out when the time comes.

Mr. Craigslist is also being a great help with this house.  Meet the future vanity for the master bedroom

It'll be getting a nice gray/blue paint, marble top with wall-mounted faucet, and it's feet chopped down by about 4".  I probably spent a little more on this piece than I could have, but I made up for it with another deal.  The ReStore is getting in on the action.  Yesterday I purchased from there a perfect, unused undermount porcelain sink complete with original template for the paltry sum of $20.  Now I just need to work on getting my counterop guys down on the price for the marble top.  I think I should coerce them into a deal like buy 3 houses of granite kitchen counters, get the 4th house free.  Plausible, don't you think?

I'm just about to the part of being able to start some rebuilding.  Almost.  Gotta finish filling the latest dumpster first.

On next week's agenda?

Hopefully plumbing the new master bath will start, fences will be repaired/rebuilt, more grass will be planted, the majority of the house exterior will be painted, and I'll get cranking on spackling and skim coating these walls.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

Millie: Week 7

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!

Millie: Week 6

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. At some point the mess in Millie will start getting less and start to look like a functional house again.  That point was not this week.

A dumpster for trash/demo debris was delivered yesterday, so in the days leading up, I used that as a reason to get all smashy and messy inside.  So much so that I've run out of smashy room until I totally load up the dumpster.  I've only loaded it with stuff from the yard and it's more full than anticipated.  Looks like I'll be playing dumpster tetris again.

One of the larger items that I've been waiting for in the yard also happened this week- stump grinding!  I can just feel your excitement!

Once upon a time, the yard was lined with large evergreens that got damaged in an epic ice storm.  Instead of dealing with the entire tree, stumps and all, they chopped the trees down and landscaped around them, leaving me to deal with the stumps.  All 22 of them.  The pic below from last weeks progress highlights 12 of the 22.

Well, the stumps are no more!

The enthralling exodus of the stumps means that I can now finish landscaping as necessary.  I need to plant grass, do minor weeding (of the little guys that I ignored the first time around), and mulch.... a lot.

Inside the house is all about selective demolition.  Well, every room except the blue bathroom.  That is exclusive demolition.

I find it amusing that once I demo-ed the tile-covered drywall, I discovered that this bathroom did in fact originally have a wall hung sink.  Prior to this discovery, I also purchased a wall hung sink for in here (that I showed you in last weeks update).  What's old is new again, right?

Selective demo was the kitchen.  With plans to reuse the cabinet boxes, I had to carefully remove all the doors, and not so carefully remove a few 100 year old cabinet shelves to create an alcove that I'll be able to eventually tuck the fridge into.  It hurt me a little to mess with one of the original cabinets, but it's what needed to happen logically to the kitchen.  I'd rather have a layout that functions for a modern kitchen than a few old shelves.

And if anyone is counting, I believe I'm up to 13 different wallpapers discovered so far in the house.  4 of which were in here..... and all were pink.  Apparently this room has been pink since its creation.  This pic was taken after 2 layers were peeled off.

You may have seen 3 of the 4 on my instagram this week.  The 4th was a pink gingham that I found only a few scraps of.

My head was definitely in bathroom-mode this week, though.  More selective demo happened in the future master bath, as well as some layout planning.

I removed the plate rail from in there which will be used to patch on the bedroom side once we close in the wall for the new pocket door.  Yes, there are 4 windows in the bathroom, and yes, I plan to frost them so the neighbors don't get a free show.  In addition to the layout planning, lots of plumbing fixtures were ordered for both baths.  2 claw foot shower rods and hardware were ordered which means that the new master will be getting a claw foot shower as well.  The visual side of me screams NONONO, but the functional side of me concedes to the fact that people want to take a shower in their bathroom.  Silly people.

1/2/3/4/5

Other exciting stuff like rotten exterior trim repair and stripping paint from a claw foot tub also happened this week.  Not as pretty as shiny faucets, though.  Plans for the coming week include more exterior paint prep (yay!), more dumpster filling, more demo, more paint stripping, and more planning.  This house will be a stunner eventually!