This is the Saturday Morning Home Repair Blog where the Dailykos community gets together to talk about all things construction and repair. Our genial and expert staff stand ready to aid you on your every problem.
This is my first SMHRB diary, so I'm going to start by introducing myself.
Hi! I'm Elsa. My user name reflects the fact that my surname starts with an "F." My expertise comes from my efforts over the last seven years to rehab run-down houses and turn them into rentals. I'm decidedly over 60, and most of what I know about home repair I've learned recently.
I didn't start out to be a rehabber. I had a desk job for most of my adult life. I was a copy editor at a daily newspaper for the last 23 years as a wage slave. I got into rehabbing when my parents died (Dad in late 2007 and Mom in early 2008) and I came into a modest inheritance.
The date of my inheritance is significant. Think back to what was happening in late 2007 and early 2008 -- the great financial apocalypse. I was watching my 401k turning into guano; real estate prices were cratering; my own home equity evaporated overnight. In 2008 I was starting to shift my thinking from "what's happening now" to "retirement time is coming." In short, my financial prospects were terrifying.
Having a bit of cash on hand inspired me. Real estate prices were insanely low. Houses that were valued at $120k in mid 2007 were now selling for less than $20k. The stock market looked dodgy at best. So, I invested my inheritance in houses. Not all at once, mind you. One at a time. The houses I bought cost between $11K and $17k. In each case, I put $20k-30k into them and rented them out.
Fast forward to spring 2013. My employer laid off my entire department (the copy desk) and I was out of a job for the first time since I was 17. As soon as the initial shock wore off, and my abject terror at the prospect of never having a regular job again subsided, I was filled with the most exhilarating optimism I have ever experienced.
For the first time since becoming an adult my life was entirely my own.
I decided to invest a big chunk of my 401k in rehabbing another house. I hadn't bought a house for several years at that point. I started going on regular outings with my real estate agent in search of my next project.
At that point, the real estate market in my area had started a gradual recovery. In fact, existing home sales were booming in my community. I put in offers on no less than five houses -- only to lose in a bidding war each time.
Yeah, that's me.
Then, one fine late-July day, I was out riding my bicycle. I cruised past a sad-looking brick bungalow with a for sale sign and my fate was sealed.
I whipped out my cell phone and called my agent, who, as it turned out, was in the area finishing up a showing. He arrived 10 minutes later. The asking price was just $10k -- a clue that this wasn't going to be a minor rehab job. I had recently bid on several houses of similar size and construction that ended up going for more than $50k. My agent called for the lock-box code, but we ended up having to wait for about a half hour before the listing agent got back to us. In that time, several other interested buyer groups showed up. A house that cheap generates a lot of interest.
We went through the house as part of the crowd of potential buyers. Apparently, the place had just gone on the market -- less than an hour before I cycled by.
The day I first laid eyes on the house. Yes, that's
my bicycle in the driveway.
The inside was horrifying. Several people went in and shuddered, then left immediately. I mean... it was nasty. There was a hole in the roof. You could stand in the living room and look up to see the sky. There were four inches of standing water in the basement. The place stank and there was exposed insulation handing down from the ruined ceilings. That tree you see at the left of the picture was actually a weed bush grown over 30-feet tall. It had caused the hole in the roof.
The house had been sitting empty, unheated, for five years, I found out by chatting up neighbors.
A couple of pictures:
A nasty little kitchen.
The living room of doom.
To move the story along, I put in an offer and I got the house, though I paid quite a bit more than the asking price. It was still very, very cheap.
I closed in the first week of August and started demo the very next day.
The first thing that happened is we took down the overgrown bush that ruined the roof.
The guy with the chainsaw is my handyman/general contractor. I'm going to call him "M." M and I have been working together since the second house I rehabbed. I couldn't do what I do without him. But we are decidedly an odd couple. M is of the Tea Party persuasion. We tend to have hilarious political arguments when we're working together. I'm not sure he thinks it's as funny as I do, but it does keep things entertaining. M taught me to use power tools without hurting myself. At the end of the day, he's my employee and friend -- the kind of friend you can't resist setting off on another rant about Obama's evil plot to outlaw light bulbs.
When I rehab, I do what I can and what I can't I generally farm out to M. I've learned to respect my limitations. I'm not going to work on the roof. I'm not going to drywall a ceiling. If it's a big paint job, I'll hire M because it would take me four times as long to do it myself. Time is money.
The second day of the project was interior demo. I hired my sometimes helper "B." B is a musician who picks up extra cash doing odd jobs. When I can get him, I enjoy working with him. He's the anti-M -- liberal to the core. But I can't get him regularly. His health is iffy and if I say, "Come on over and give me a hand tomorrow," chances are about 50/50 that he'll actually show up. He's cheaper than M. I pay him $15 an hour when he's working. (That's my minimum wage. I even pay that to neighborhood children when I occasionally hire them.)
B helped me tear out the cabinets in the kitchen, and I tore out the disgusting carpet and pad in the living room. The hardwood underneath was unsurprisingly ruined. Five years of water falling on it from the hole in the roof was the culprit. I pulled down the ruined ceiling dry wall and called it a day. I was exhausted. (And so was B.)
For the next week, I entertained estimates and bids from a variety of specialty contractors. You could walk around the place now and actually see the problems that had to be fixed. My regular plumber gave me a "I'll do right by you," bid, and I couldn't tie him down any farther than that. Sadly, it was my last time hiring him because by the end when he finally presented his bill, I didn't think he'd done right by me.
M took on the roof. I got estimates from four companies, but M's price was the best -- by several thousand dollars.
The kitchen stripped down.
The scope of work was as follows:
New roof
Full re-pipe
New furnace
New hot water heater
Take out wall between kitchen and living room and install beam across opening
Repair plaster and drywall
New flooring in kitchen, living room and hall
Do "something" with the upstairs room
Refurbish stairs to upstairs
New cabinets and appliances in kitchen
New windows
New garage door
Paint throughout
New toilet in bathroom
New doors and storm doors front and side
Miscellaneous rewiring to bring it to code
New cement driveway from house to sidewalk
I wanted to keep my rehab cost under $50k and get it done in 30-45 days. From the list above, you're probably saying, "Right... and I can build the Taj Mahal on my lunch hour with pocket change." You're right. I was being wildly optimistic. It went over budget and WAY over time.
This is way too much story to tell in one diary. It was an adventure like none other I've had in my life. It went on for three months. So, I'll be continuing the saga in coming diaries. But here's a spoiler. The result was spectacular.
Here's a taste:
You might want to scroll back up and look at how the kitchen started.
Until next time...