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!

On the Rail

With my house finally coming back together after the floor/stair/railing reno, I have TONS of awesome DIYs planned for you guys.  For some strange reason, however, Hubby's pretty insistent that I install baseboards and door trim and finish painting before I start decorating.  Silly boy.  So basically, big, exciting things are coming, but my house needs to look like a house first.  Sad Trombone. I thought I'd pop in quickly today and show you that we are no longer at high risk for falling down the stairs- we have a railing!!!  I coerced my contractor (since we're still awaiting permit on the flip) to come and install this beaut.

With 2 super sexy newel posts that used to not be super sexy.

After all my crazy patching, I ended up painting it with a base of solid stain, then countless coats of Polyshades to give it a multi-dimensional, stained look.  I have some touch-ups to do now that they're installed, but I humbly think my paint treatment worked!

It's weird that we never realized how low our old railings were until we got one of the proper height.  Don't get me wrong, we knew the height was off, especially at the top, but check out the hole where the old railing hit the wall- a good 9 inches lower!

The entire old railing wasn't 9" lower, just the return at the top, but man was it awkward.  As you can see, 2 spindles are missing and replacements have been ordered.  For some reason, my count was 1 less than was actually needed since we changed the configuration a bit (the top newel post moved up a step) and one snapped during install.  No sweat, I've been assured by my contractor that I can install them myself without issue.

Now we just need to get used to not only using and seeing a railing again, but one that is the proper height!

Next step for these stairs? A runner!  These buggers are slippery now that they're refinished.  Slippery + already steep stairs = runner as necessity.

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!