Property #1 – Rehab Update 1
It’s been a few weeks since we closed on our first investment property. Rehab started a little slow. We closed the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, and being big fans of the Jersey shore, we both shot down to the beach within hours of leaving the signing table.
The following week, we met with subcontractors and received estimates, but for the most part, zero work happened that week. During the second weekend of home ownership, The Troop and I both left on separate vacations. He went to Montreal for a bachelor party while I celebrated with the bachelorette in Montauk. It was while we were away that the first rehab project began. We coordinated with our subcontractor to demo and re-pour a part of our sidewalk. It was a big item on our failed Certificate of Occupancy inspection and it needed to be fixed quickly. We felt like real investors getting things down while we were out of town.
We’re now in the fourth full week of rehab and things are really moving. Our original plan was to hire a crew to handle the first floor unit while we worked on our second floor unit. But we had trouble securing a contractor who was able to start so soon. So we subbed out what we could and started doing the rest ourselves. Our unit can wait for now.
Project Status
Sidewalk
Like I said before, we had five slabs of the sidewalk re-poured. Here are the before, during, and after photos of that.
First floor bathroom
With the help of friends and family, we demo’d the first floor bathroom to the studs and it’s now ready for the new tub to be set and for the walls to be sheet-rocked. We originally planned to do a tub/shower insert, but after reading all of the horrible reviews on the lower priced options, we decided to do a tub with a full tile surround. We also picked out the tile and materials for the renovation.
Plaster walls & Front porch
We had the same guy who fixed the sidewalk, skim coat the cracks in the plaster walls, re-support our front porch and skim coat the porch and front steps.
HVAC
The HVAC company sent a scrap crew out and removed all of the old radiant heat lines, radiators, and old appliances. We’re now set for the new HVAC system to be installed next week.
Popcorn ceiling
We removed the popcorn ceiling from the living room and dining room and took down the old chandelier and ceiling fan. The Troop came up with what he thought was a great idea to remove the popcorn ceiling. I, at first, was not too confident in this plan.
After spraying the ceiling to loosen the popcorn texture, he duct taped a scraper to the end of a shop vac hose and then scraped the ceiling while the shop vac sucked up almost all of the popcorn texture as it came off.
Of course I miss out on all of the fun stuff since I was at work but I was amazed when the below video was sent to me. It actually worked!
Exterior Painting
On the same day as the popcorn ceiling escapades, a crew came and started painting the exterior of the house. I was so excited that this was finally happening, I could barely focus while I was at work. A few rain days have delayed finishing this project but hoping to wrap it up this week. While the two-tone green and white was popular at some point in time, I’m glad that it’s now going to be one solid color and no longer an eyesore to the neighborhood.
I have to give a shout out to Behr Paint. The Troop and I went to Home Depot to look for exterior paint colors and were lost in a sea of blue color swatches. This one is too gray. This one is too green. As we made our way down the wall of options, we noticed this Color Smart kiosk. It was so cool!
You can either search colors by their color code or browse their entire selection. You then add them to your project giving you an awesome rendering of what your home would look like in the selected color scheme. We must have played around on this thing for at least 20 minutes.
We tried every color combination and when we finally found one we liked, we simply saved the project and emailed it to ourselves. The email had the above image and the color codes for all of the shades we selected. (This is not a sponsored shout out. We genuinely loved this feature as it was super helpful envisioning what an entire house would look like one color.)
Parents came to visit
My parents came down and saw the house for the first time this week as well. Considering the condition of the house mid-rehab, they had a pretty positive reaction. They understood that first you have to make a mess and then you can put everything back together.
On the docket for the coming weeks
- HVAC installation- We are having two new forced heat and central air systems installed.
- Window replacements
- Sheet-rocking, tiling, and installing fixtures in the first floor bathroom
- Separating the gas lines for the hot water heaters. Installing two new hot-water heaters
- Possibly painting the interior of the first floor unit
- Taking down the closet in the sun room and installing new flooring
So that’s it. It’s been a pretty productive past week. Hopefully we keep up this momentum!
