A Lesson In Renovation

Nov 22

In the spring of 2017, shortly after Matt and I began the process of designing our new home (#OurFloridaFishHouse), we sold our red brick home (see prior blog post on how I owner built this). We anticipated the planning stage to be short (wrong!) and to quickly start building our coastal home (wrong again!) so we moved into the family lake house which was nearly an hour drive from town. This got old real quick-like and when my parents’ old fixer-upper, recently foreclosed investment property (much closer to town) became vacant, we made the decision to move in. My parents were planning to just sell the property as it was (run down, twice-foreclosed, and badly abused) but instead we worked up a financial agreement that involved us living in the home and bringing it back to life in preparation to sell it. This allowed us to live rent-free as long as we desired and to learn some house flipping skills. At the time it sounded fun……. LOL.

This home was so stinky that we hired a professional deep cleaning crew to come in and clean before we would even put our stuff inside. The property included a 3 bdrm/2 ba all brick home with a large gunite pool on two acres of land. The interior of the home had no proper flooring, it had been ripped down to the concrete foundation with a concrete stain that was put on years prior. The concrete floor had a million cracks throughout that trapped dirt and was extremely difficult to keep clean (and clearly no one had bothered for years). The walls were dark and since the home was older with low ceilings and an underwhelming window quantity, it felt very dungeon-y. In addition, both bathrooms needed complete overhauls.

So, here’s what our game plan was: (1) we ran comps (comparable sells) of the area right around the home to determine what we thought a fair market price would be once it was move-in ready (2) we made a list of all repairs/upgrades to be completed (we wanted nice but not exuberant or overdone for the area) (3) we prioritized that list keeping in mind that we were living there during this process. Now it’s important to note that we kept the renovation on par with what we felt made sense for the neighborhood. We didn’t make any structural changes to the home as this would have put the home’s final sale price over the fair market price for the area.

Guys, I cannot believe now that we actually stuck it out and lived in this cruddy renovation zone like we did. There were several times that we actually discussed just giving up and we even put in offers on two other new homes after a few weeks living there in hopes that we could just get away from the mess of this rehab. I think we had some family and friends that betted against us. But, I am so glad we persevered. The payoff (both educationally and monetarily) was so worth it. And a very humbling experience.

The renovations we completed include: repainted all walls and trim to neutral tones, added shiplapped ceiling to foyer, repainted the brick wall fireplace, upgraded to all new light fixtures and ceiling fans, installed fresh new vanities, refinished the cast iron tub insert, installed all new flooring in main living areas with LVP, gave new carpet to all bedrooms and hallway, provided electrical rewiring, updated the plumbing, repaired wood rot, painted the concrete floor of the back patio, screened in the patio, replaced both commodes, repaired many holes in walls and doors, repaired HVAC system, cleaned and rejuvenated the pool, and we replaced/upgraded all kitchen appliances.

Although we did hire professionals for the pool, carpeting, electrical, and plumbing work (required a decent amount of the latter two to get this house back to code) most of the work done here was performed by my husband and myself. We worked for roughly ten months part time and had gotten just about a week away from being ready to list when category five Hurricane Michael hit our area. Unfortunately for us, this home was right in the center of the path. This was the point at which we first thought to ask my parents if the home was insured—— major oversight. No, it was not insured against wind/hurricane damage and that was a big lesson learned for us. Thankfully, the home didn’t flood or have any major interior damage, but the property itself did suffer substantially and it took an additional six weeks of nearly full time work to get everything cleaned up and ready. Hurricane damage forced us to replace all pool equipment, get a new roof, all new pool fencing, and new screen on the back patio. Also, we had a wood framed shed blow away in the hurricane that we never did locate.

We realize this was certainly no television-worthy home even after it’s rehabilitation but it was a real-life nasty foreclosed house flipped into a move-in ready, clean home with fresh and new everything. It stretched us and humbled us and we won’t ever forget the year that we spent living this huge transformation.