Our 5th flip house is well underway! We are at the one-month mark. Phew! We made it!
Having to do the duplex makeover and the flip house at the same time, slowing the progress down at the flip house, but I think we have recovered very well. The COVID-19 pandemic has also slowed us down for different reasons. We have been able to keep busy though.
I am sharing what we have been doing in the first month since buying the flip. To see the before photos and video tour of this flip, head to my post HERE.
As soon as we had a couple of hours to work in the flip, we started cleaning it out. The previous owner left a lot of things in the house, so we needed to order s dumpster and clean the house out before we could start doing any work. Along with the items we were cleaning out, we pulled up the old carpet and demoed some other areas in the house.
Before we started painting, I had our floor guy come in and tell me if he could salvage all the hardwood floors.
I wanted to keep the hardwood floors if we could. I was really excited to see if the real wood parquet floors in the kitchen were salvageable. THEY WERE! I didn’t want to cover up any of the hardwood or the kitchen floor if we didn’t have to. I am so happy with the way they turned out. They are BEAUTIFUL!
The floors took at least a week and since we were doing so many of the floors, we couldn’t really be in there to do other things. The smell is also pretty bad and not good to breathe in for a few days. It was a blessing in disguise because we were able to focus all of that time on the duplex to get it done.
Once we were able to get back in the house to work, we cleaned and prepped. This process took forever because the previous homeowner didn’t really do a lot of cleaning and he put so many holes in the walls to hang things. We were scrubbing and patching holes for days!
We started in the basement because we couldn’t smell the coat from the hardwood floors down there.
In the first month, we were able to get the entire “finished” part of the basement painted and it is all ready for carpet. We are going to wait until we are done with the “storage” side of the basement before putting the carpet in.
We have also been able to paint everything upstairs (minus the bathroom). I chose the color “Cable Knit”. It is such a pretty, creamy white. I used it in our bedroom makeover (which has come to a halt with the pandemic) as well. As soon as we rolled the color on the walls at the flip house, the house looked happier. It made everything so bright and welcoming.
The fireplace also got painted. This took me a few days to get done because brick takes FOREVER to paint. It was well worth it though. We will be adding a mantel to the top to finish it.
We cleaned the pocket lights in the living room and put them back in.
The new door to the purple bedroom has been hung and most of the outlets and switches have been changed to white on the main level.
We have replaced the vents that needed it and painted the other vents that didn’t need to be replaced, but just freshened up.
I have put the first coat of primer on the kitchen cabinets. I wrote a post all about how to paint kitchen cabinets.
The weather has been cooperative, so we have been able to get some work done outside.
All of the gutters have been cleaned out, washed, and repaired where needed. We took off all the gutter guards that were clogging the gutters and making the roof look horrible. Then, we scraped the outside of the windows that need to be repainted and took up all the bricks that were once used at landscaping. After that, we pulled off the carpet from the front porch and cleaned the screen door that hasn’t been cleaned in years. We also scraped the side door, so it is all ready for new paint. The kids raked the yard and cleaned out the plant beds which were in desperate need of some cleaning out.
We have had many contractors at the flip to give us estimates for different things and to check out things we had questions about. The good news out of all of those consultations is that the only thing we have to replace is the water heater. That will be put in this weekend.
We have a concrete company scheduled to come to check the patio and the sidewalk on the side of the house soon.
The garage needed some love as well.
The previous owner put in all new electrical, which is great, but there were a lot of nails and pieces of drywall left on the walls that didn’t look good at all. We took an afternoon to pull all the nails and remove the pieces of drywall. There were also sheets of insulation fabric falling from the ceiling that Matt tacked back up. The homeowner left a bunch of insulation in the garage, so we were able to use that on one entire wall in the garage. We bought more insulation to do the other wall as well. We cleaned out the storage closet in the garage (we don’t know if that has ever been cleaned out), and we need to replace some boards in the garage. After that, the garage will be done.
I feel like we have been cleaning and painting this entire month. I know we have done other things, but that has been the gist of the work so far. This house doesn’t need a lot of big things, but it did need a lot of TLC from not being cleaned or loved on for some time.
The best thing that has happened in the first month of having this flip was a note left on the door.
Our last flip house was going to be hard to beat.
I loved that house. I was wrong. Matt and I have said over and over that this house might win. The natural light that comes through this house and the layout are so good. I always get asked if we would ever move into one of our flips. If it was the right house…. DEFINITELY. We haven’t come across one yet that fits our needs. This, our 5th flip house would have been perfect for our first house when we got married.
I am excited to move on to other projects now that most of the painting is done. I am NOT looking forward to painting the kitchen cabinets. UGH! It is my least favorite painting job. I haven’t decided on a color yet. The pandemic means I am not able to walk into the paint store and browse through the colors right now. I will focus on other things and get to that when I can. Month one into our 5th flip house has made a huge difference in the house. I can’t wait to see what we get done in the second month.
I am sharing all of the “behind the scenes” looks as we work on the flip house on my Instagram and Facebook page, so make sure you are following along there.
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If you liked this progress report of our 5th Flip House, you will like these posts:
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