The second one was harder than the first...

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...