Red Bedroom Goes Away!!

In flipping houses and repairing rent houses, the main thing you are doing is trying to make a room or a house most livable, look good at the same time and do it economically.  I'm Judy, and my flipping is not done like Chip and JoJo.  I don't have a customer about to pay me big bucks to make their dreams come true.  I don't flip like Tarek and Christina.  I do NOT go in and take out walls, take out perfectly good cabinets just because they are dated.  Why?  Because this is NOT California.  There is no neighborhood that I know of as a realtor in either Amarillo or San Antonio that you could pay $200,000 for a house, get a dump, and go in and make it new and turn around and make $110,000 profit.  The problem would be that you improved the house above the norm in the neighborhood and you would NOT get an appraiser to put that kind of value on a house.  Recently I've even heard Tarek say that about one of their houses; that he doubted they could get an appraisal for a value someone else wanted to ask; however, they did it, and they got their appraiser's value to match.


One thing you must understand.  If you sell a house to someone getting a loan, the appraiser's value has to be more than what the bank is loaning.  The bank wants to be sure if they take the house back, their loan is covered by the sale of the property.  Here in Texas I don't know of any house that you can buy, spend $100,000 on the repairs and turn around and sell it for double what you have invested.


What I do on a flip is buy repossessed houses that are way below market value.  Usually these are houses built in the 60's and 70's and are dated but still good houses ( maybe some plumbing or foundation issues.)which had small loans on them at the time of the repossession so the new owner can sell it dirt cheap.  I pay cash for my houses and use my own cash to fix them up.  I expect to make in profit hopefully twice what I pay on repairs.  My last one that I sold I spent $23,000 on repairs approximately, but with closing costs when I bought and when I sold the properties, paying realtors fees on the sale and giving the buyer assistance on his closing, I ended up make a profit less than what I spent on the repairs, but for 3 months work, it was way more than I would have made as a realtor if I sold one house each of those months.  After paying myself back for the cost of the house and the repairs from the proceeds, I was able to live 5 months on that profit.  That's good enough if I can flip 2 1/2 houses a year.  This year my flip repairs took longer so I won't be able to flip two houses. 


As a landlord, you want to have a livable house, clean and attractive, using the least money you can because you know that even if you make it the best you can, a renter can tear up your work in 3 months time.  Recently a dog in one of our houses actually did $110 damage to walls and doors in one month.  So you do not go into a rent house and make it sellable, but livable. 


When my business partner and I bought a small rent house in a little town outside Amarillo, it was an estate home.  This means someone had died and his family owned it.  The man had evidently hired a fireman to work on the house at his own pace and he had put in new texture and paint, and had redone the wood floors in the 2 bedrooms and living room.  The kitchen was ok, except for lose tiles, and the bathroom need a new sink and new flooring.  When the man died, his family didn't have the money to continue the repairs, so we were able to get the house at a very good price.

Exterior.  We have since painted the trim. 

Living room, beautiful wood floors.  Bad drapes, lol

Kitchen, with loose vinyl tiles over by stove.

Bath, needed new tile, which business partner did.
 

One of the two bedrooms downstairs

Front bedroom downstairs.

Before we rented it and after inspecting it, I realized that the upstairs bedroom, an add-on above the garage, had to have some work done on it.  First of all it was dark red walls, awful floor, but worst of all the ceilings was cracked and peeling.

 

 

1.  I decided rather than paint a million coats of paint, I'd cover the red faster with texture.  I took my texture machine over to put a coat on the walls and covered the floors (although I knew they would be changed out later, texture is messy) covered the window, and plugged in the machine - NOT, the plug would not work upstairs as it was 3 pronged.  I ran to car and got extension.  It didn't have a 3 prong either.  What to do?     

 I decided to apply the texture by hand with a trowel.  It would give the room a very Tuscany feel.  What?  In a rental.  Oh, well. 

You just put texture on your trowel and wipe it on.  You can sand it down after it dries if lumpy or needs smoothing.  I use mud rather than texture, unless using a machine.  They are both made out of mud, but texture comes in powder that you mix or  you can get it premixed and wet.  My son swears that a machine does a better job with the dry that you mix, but boy is it slow mixing it all the time, because you can't mix in advance as it sets up. So I used the premixed mud.   But I just swiped the texture on.  You could still see some red underneath. See ugly ceiling.

Notice ugly ceiling and floor.  UGH.

Yep ceiling still ugly as is all the trim and door.

 

 2.  While the texture was drying, I fixed the ceiling. I sanded the rough areas and pulled down hanging paper;  textured and covered the cracks after had I sanded the ceiling very good - which is messy!  Then I re-sanded the ceiling after it dried and painted it a nice crisp white satin.

3.   After the texture dried I painted the walls a very, very pale lavender.  Almost white.  It was satin Sherwin Williams that business partner and I had picked out together.  I did two coats.

First coat of paint, you can still see red underneath.  Ceiling looks better but trim still ugly.

Final coat. and doesn't the desk and stair rail look good in white as does the ceiling.

4.  Painted  the trim white.  Under that desk was hard.  I must say the most challenging of the paint was getting under the tiny built in desk by the closet.   I also painted most of the staircase trim, and painted the red walls of the staircase to match the bedroom. 

5.      My business partner returned to town and we went to Lowes and bought in stock carpet at a very ridiculously low price, something like 69c a ft.  My partner took on the challenge of getting the carpet installed neatly, just as she was the one that did the backsplash on the ac man's house, as she is a very detail minded person because she use to be the maker of picture frames at Michael's.  She's the one that can see how to solve problems and how to lay tiles so they work out.  I work fast and on the fly.  She is the one that makes sure the job is done well.  

My business partner laying carpet upstairs. 

 

 

Room with painted walls and white trim.I accidentally left that one half wall red, but later went back and painted it.

Carpet, white trim and clean wall look NICE.

I actually took my nail gun and nailed the edges of the carpet, since there were no nail strips.

 
6.   Next day I painted the stairs the brown we used for the outside of the house, Sherwin Williams exterior paint.  I also cut a section of the carpet for the stairs and the next day I laid it on the stairs, wrapping each step and putting  nails from my gun on the walls of the steps just below the tread step to hold the carpet down and along the sides of the carpet on the treads.  I really think it gave the finishing touch to the project. 

Stairs before I laid carpet, but after painting them fresh brown, same exterior paint we used outside, Sherwin Williams.

So that wraps up the remodel of the upstairs bedroom.  I think it looked like a totally new space.  It's amazing to me what white trim can do to a room, plus fresh wall paint, a non crumbling ceiling, and fresh painted and carpeted stairs.