Office Glitz

IKEA's pretty devious if you ask me.  Every time I end up there to buy a flip house kitchen or such, I end up spending money on my own house as well. After drooling over this lamp for 6 months,

my resistance wore down.

It fit's perfectly in my office.  Not too big, not too small, and just enough glitz.  Check out that cord and gold accents!  Well done, IKEA!  (it's also available in silver, but the white just called to me)

I also purchased drawer inserts for my office's expedit cubbies.  I've tried to keep flip reciepts and paperwork organized with just open shelving, but it hasn't been pretty (read: looks like a bomb went off).  Once I got 4 sets of drawers home and assembled one set, I noticed an issue...

As you may know, IKEA's expedit line has now been replaced with Kallax.  Same product, but a little sleeker.  And, apparently, slightly whiter.

Not kosher.  It wasn't close enough to be the same and not different enough to be different, if you know what I mean.  The way I saw it, I had 2 options.  Go back to IKEA and pick up the drawers in the wood tone...

... and IKEA's 35 minutes away and at this point was a weekend.  I don't do IKEA on weekends...... I like myself too much to do that to me....  so where does that leave me?

Paint them, naturally.

I went with a light gray- just gray enough to add a bit of contrast to the white and get away from the clashing white tones.

Some fancier brass pulls are in these drawers future, but until then, I also sprayed the knobs gold.  Can you tell how excited I am for the weather finally to be nice enough to start painting outside again?

Once I get the office organized once again and tweak a few more small things, I'll give you a full office update.  Until then, I'm totally excited to have a little bit more style in this tiny room.

Well, I'm off to meet the contractor at Grover!  Happy Monday!!

Frankie: Week 11

I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses.  Check out other posts about Frankie the Fliphouse HERE. I have good news and bad news about this week at Frankie.  The good news is that the bedrooms are nearly 100% painted and will be completed today!  The bad news is that means I was painting aaaallllll week and have no fun exciting pictures.  Well, not NO fun exciting pictures, but not many fun exciting pictures.... the tub did get it's make-over this week.

All shiny and white.  I won't tell the next owners that it used to be pink if you wont!  This makes the bathroom near done!!

Still left on the bathroom list is a new window sill (which broke in demo), rehanging the closet and bathroom door, and cleaning.  lots of cleaning.  Also, you'll notice- old ugly windows throughout the house... I'm waiting on those too.  With factory closures over the holidays, I'm still impatiently waiting to hear when new windows can be installed.  The windows'll most likely be pushing our completion date off by a week or 2 (hopefully not more!), unfortunately.

But 2 out of 3 bedrooms are all painted, and all 3 bedrooms have new bright light fixtures!

All 3 bedrooms and the living room are getting painted with Re-Color paint in "Canvas" which I used in the last flip's living room.  This it totally my go to neutral for flips- creamy and neutral without being a snoozer.

The ceiling in the 3rd bedroom started giving me the same troubles that the kitchen ceiling had been giving me and started peeling when it got painted.  Choice words were said.  But I'm following the same method that I did in the kitchen, so hopefully today all I'll have to do is sand it, prime it, and touch up the paint (fingers crossed!!!)

If the ceiling behaves, the last bedroom will be totally painted by the end of today.  That would make for a very happy weekend.  I still have to paint the living room and finish painting ALL of the doors from upstairs which are politely waiting in line for paint in the basement.

Because I was getting impatient to see transformations, I did move the ReStore dresser up from the basement to the kitchen.  I figure that I'll prime, paint, and assemble it in place.

It's like it was meant to become a kitchen island!  Now to decide on a color.  I've always had green in my head.  Even though this is a flip, this piece isn't fixed, so I think I can afford to go a little brighter.  I plan to put this as a negotiable item for the sale, so the buyer will only get it if they want it (and have a decent offer).  It would hurt me to just leave it with the house and see it get tossed once the house sold!

Anyway.... greens!  I'm debating between a brighter and a softer green.  They're both Ben Moore (color matched to Home Depot samples).  On the left is Everglades and the right is Medici Malachite.

Mom thinks Medici's too bright, while Hubby says to go for the brighter to (and I quote) "make it pop <makes popping noise with mouth>."  I keep flip-flopping, so I'd love to hear your opinion!

I have a really good feeling about next week.  With the painting winding down, I have a feeling the last pieces will start falling into place!

Frankie: Week 10

I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses.  Check out other posts about Frankie the Fliphouse HERE. One very big, very exciting thing happened this week at Frankie:

The kitchen cabinets were installed!  I had totally forgotten how big this kitchen is!  It'll look even better with a backsplash and a dresser island- I can't wait!!   The view above is my favorite view in the whole house- you can see the cabinets and the totally done hallway.  Yay progress!  If you don't look at the rest of the house, this view looks almost done.

Now I'm just impatient for the countertops to be installed (they got templated this week) so that I can get to the backsplash.  Oh the backslash.  It's gonna be sexy.  mad sexy.  and I can't wait to install it!  Especially since I'm 100% over painting at this point.  I got a ton of painting done this week, but there's still a lot to go.  Painting stained wood trim white in an entire house takes lots and lots of coats... who knew??

Paint roundup:

Kitchen: 95% painted (walls, trim, ceiling, closet: done, but the back door needs a second coat)

Bathroom: 95% painted (ceilings still need touching up)

Hall: 100% painted!! (including the hall closet!)

Back bedroom: 75% painted (all trim is done and there's a first coat on both the walls and ceiling)- this should be 100% by the end of today

Other 2 bedrooms: 20% painted (I haven't touched these rooms in weeks)

Living room: 5% painted (now that it's not taken over by kitchen boxes anymore, I can dig in here next week)

Basement: 0% painted.... I'll deal with this area once the more important upstairs is all done

I'm especially tired from painting closets.  Among all the other painting, I've painted 3 closets in the past 3 days.  It's a great workout, though, doing multiple layers way up high and way down low... stair stepper and squats all in one.  My legs are thanking cursing me.

In a few much needed painting breaks, I also replaced a few more lights in the house.  Slowly, but surely, they'll all get replaced and be bright and beautiful.

Whilst I was covering my hands and clothes (and maybe a few walls) in paint, the electrician was plugging away (I didn't notice the pun until I started proof-reading, ha).  As you may have seen on instagram, he replaced all of the old, dingy, yellow light switches and outlets for fresh, clean, white ones.  What a difference!  Even in the unpainted rooms, it looks refreshed!

In addition, he also fixed the broken doorbell, updated the wiring and added outlets in the kitchen, and started on a box for the sconce above the sink.

With holidays and a last minute vacation in the midst of this flip, it won't be done in 12 weeks like Clark was, but I hopefully won't be too far behind.  I feel so behind when I look at Clark's week 10 update.  Our goal is still to list at the end of January, though.  Weather and window install are the only 2 items that might push it back a couple weeks, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

With the kitchen cabinets in, though, this house is finally starting to feel livable again and completion doesn't seem so far away.