The kitchen cabinets have been delivered and I'm super excited to see how that all pulls together. I also got notice from our realtor that someone wants to look at the house. ACK! It's not ready. But if they have a good eye, and can see the possibilities, maybe we will have a buyer before we even finish. But I'm not going to get my hopes up, that's for sure.
We are going to finish the downstairs bedroom this weekend, so there will be ONE room ready to look at.
I sure wish the weather would perk up a bit because I am so ready to get outside and start digging in the dirt.
Patience isn't one of my many virtues.
I bought the pulls for the kitchen cupboards, $2.49 a piece with a $2.49 rebate... so FREE!! Gotta love that!
I just wanted to show you the FILTH I have to deal with every weekend. The previous owners apparently NEVER washed their hands, wiped off a door or light switch or dusted. ICK. And I haven't even started on the kitchen yet. I'm scared, very scared.
New light fixture in bedroom... I know I know, odd place for a light, but that's where they had one and we don't want to rip up the ceiling... so there ya go. And remember, the plan is to sell this place.. if I were going to live here the light fixtures would be A-Maz-iNg. I love lights! But Michael won't let me spend money on them. Party pooper!
FREE cabinet pulls, countertop sample...
Ahhhhh, we got a tub. No bubbles (jacuzzi) but I guess it'll be ok. I sure wish I could fill it with hot water and soak. Long day....
Why a long day you ask?? Well, part of it is that after painting the entire living room and dining room 2 weeks ago.. I changed my mind on the paint color. It just didn't look right. Michael was right, toooo blue. So I spent most of yesterday and today repainting it. What color you ask? A different version of blue! Haha!
If you want to get notification of a new post, photo, video etc, just join below and it'll be delivered to your inbox. I promise not to bombard you with posts. Just the super duper important things that are happening at the Flip House. Of course it's ALL important to me..
For instance, today the cabinets are being delivered. WE are still a couple of weeks away from getting the kitchen gutted, but it's sure a lot of fun to see progress, even if it's just a delivery.
This weekend, weather permitting I'm going to start cleaning out flower beds. I'm no master gardener, so I may need your help in identifying "weeds" from perennials. It looks like there are a lot of them sprouting up in the garden. WE also have some rhubarb. Yum. It's been at least 15 years since I've had fresh rhubarb. It's one of Michael's favorite desserts. If any of you have a good rhubarb recipe, ie, SIMPLE, post a comment here. I don't have a ton of time to slave over the stove... frozen pizza being a staple in our house lately, but would love to surprise him with a tasty rhubarb dessert.
I also need some leads on old doorknobs. If you have a box of them in your basement or attic, let me know. I'll pick them up. Remember, an uncluttered life is a happy life! Speaking of... I do some projects with old windows. I love the old barn style windows the best. They don't have to be in good shape.. in fact the more dinged up, the better. So drop me a line.....
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Michael says, For the love of God will you quit filming me!? Haha
For an update on the "jacuzzi" project, see the comments from last weeks post. Blah!
Another weekend, another project...
I will post some video here later, much to Michael's chagrin. He HATES to be filmed. But I love to film him. You never know when you are going to get something "news" worthy.
We don't have a lot we can do right now because we need a new well. That's right! $4500 worth of new well. Ick. But without water it's tough to clean, and it's tough to use the toilet. I'm not against finding a solitary bush, but last week I found a woodtick stuck to my, um... so no more bushes for this girl!
Here's the doorknob I mentioned. It needs more cleaning, but you can see that it has some beautiful detail and is surely a keeper!!
I forgot my camera. Damn! We put up a new light fixture in the sun room today. We were both up on ladders, balancing precariously, trying to hoist the big fixture up while delicately wiring it. Ack! Bad words were spoken and I could just envision both of us falling off the ladder, no phone, no visitors.. we would be screwed. But it didn't happen, we got it hung.. although we have no idea if it works because I forgot to buy light bulbs. Next weekend.
I finished painting the living room and also found a great door knob. It was always on the door going up to the master suite, but I cleaned it and it's some type of silver metal with a beautifully etched flower pattern. It was so dirty that it just looked like a smooth dirty doorknob. But I think it's a keeper. I'm going to head to the second hand store to see if I can find some old door knobs for the other bedroom doors.
We decided that instead of putting a tub/shower combo in the bathroom we will put a jacuzzi tub. This is partly with the hope that we sell our lake place and end up moving into the flip for a while. I love my bubbles. Can't live without them. So this house will have a nice inexpensive little bubble machine. Woo Hoo!
This week or weekend the plan is to really get busy on the bathroom downstairs. Michael has everything ripped out, so we need to build walls, select a vanity and toilet and oh yeah!! the bubble machine. It's going to be a sweeet bathroom when we are done.
We have to incorporate the washer/dryer in the bathroom. It was in a bedroom closet and that's just not going to work. So while it's not optimal to have it in the bathroom, it's better. And if you saw the basement, you'd know why it's not going down there.
We sold number two in December and took a 3 month break. March 20th we purchased our 3rd house. This one is the largest yet. It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath farm house on 8 acres. There's an old barn, a new pole building and a garage on the property. There are ponds and trees and some scary looking lizards there. And the wildlife isn't only outdoors... our first day in the house we were dive bombed by a starling who really didn't want to share the space with us.... It leaves me wondering what other critters we may encounter along the way.
I wish you had smellivision.... there is no way to explain the nasty smell of this house. We've already pulled up all the carpet in the house and let me tell you. People are gross. People need Depends. There was not one single area in the bedroom below that the floor wasn't stained. And let me tell you, the stench could curl your toes. We painted all the subfloors in the house in preparation for new flooring. In hot and humid weather the odors of the past CAN come back to haunt you...
Today we are heading over there to do some demo and also some painting
Our first flip house was on the market for about 3 days when we got an offer. Holy Moly! That was easy. Well, it was and it wasn't. The offer was for a Contract for Deed. Not the optimal way to sell. WE needed cash NOW in order to do the next flip. Turns out the young man that bought it was willing to put down a substantial amount of cash and also pay two years of payments up front. So we took the offer and started looking for number two. We decided to look in Brainerd. Our son was living there with his girlfriend and we thought it would be a nice way for them to live for free, while helping us with some of the more mundane tasks. While nice in theory, it didn't work out very well. I won't go into all the details as to why the kids didn't do much on the house... but they didn't. And having them their not only impeded OUR progress and made US lazy, it also cost us a great deal more. Not only did the electricty have to be on, but cable and internet as well. Garbage pickup. Air conditioning. Heat. And the list goes on. But, we learned much along the way...
As you can clearly see, there was some work involved here. The walls are plaster, so the back entry, bedroom and bathroom were completely gutted and sheet rocked. It was messy, backbreaking work, but the results were great! I learned to tape and mud walls (with just a little teeny mistake of using adhesive on the tape the first time, gulp!) and also put a beautiful glass mosiac backsplash in the kitchen.
What was the hardest part of this flip? Probably parting with it. We lived here on weekends all summer long and it was definitely our second home. But 22 days on the market and we got a full price offer. On to the next one...
The first house we bought to flip was a log home that had been foreclosed on. The previous owners in an attempt to "pay back the bank" stripped it bare. No furnace, appliances, fixtures.. nothing. It really didn't need much to bring it back to glory. Or so we thought.
I won't go into great detail about what we did with this one. It was a practice house. Let me just say... people who glue parquet wood floors should be imprisoned or tortured. It took us about 5 days of back breaking, brow sweating labor to remove the parquet floor from the living area. They must have had a thing with glue, because the downstairs bedrooms had carpet glued to the floor as well. They didn't used carpet glue though. I think they used something much much worse. Again, 5 days of labor.
We put stunning hardwood floors in the living, dining and kitchen areas, new carpet in the bedrooms and some beautiful tile in the bathroom. Here are some after photo's.
