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. 

 

Garage Sale Bargain Becomes a Profit Getter.

Judy here.  Today I want to tell you about a very recent project and a very recent success story. 


My daughter's family went to Corpus Christi one weekend while I was in San Antonio working on staging the house I am trying to flip.  I needed something for the sun porch to show what a neat place it is.  I saw a garage sale down the street from her house, so I walked down, and the first thing I saw was a pale yellow coat tree.  Now I've wanted one of those for a long time, mostly for my laundry/mudroom.  I asked the price and the lady said $10, and I said sold.  Then I spotted a patio set, (3 chairs, a lounger and a table).  I asked the price on that and they said $35.  Again I said sold and I ran to the bank to get $45 cash to pay for my purchases, and the gentleman at the garage sale helped me deliver everything to Tera's house.  I put the patio set on her front porch and the yellow coat tree inside her front door. 

 

Patio set

The first thing I did, was leave it sitting in Tera's room for a few days and looked at coat trees on pinterest and online for several days as I continued working on the house.  I brought my semi gloss Walmart white paint (right off the shelf, not custom mixed) home from the flip house.  I started painting the sides first with a 2 inch brush.  I did two coats on the sides.  The next morning I sanded a large scratch that was on the front of the tree about 12 inches down from the hooks.  It sanded off really easily using sand paper.  I then started painting the front below the mirror and figured out quickly that the trim would have to wait until I had a smaller brush.  After I got two coats on the front, I added another coat to the sides, and then I got blue tape and covered the mirrors on the edges and the hooks.  I started painting the top area around the mirrors and hooks with a tiny art brush and soon realized I needed the hooks off.  So I removed them and put the screws in my pocket.  Later when I bought material I took the screws out of my pocket at Walmart (yes I wear the same shorts every time I paint) and bought silver ones the same size.  I left the hooks on the wood cover of the bench portion.  I then got two coats of paint on the top part of the front where the mirrors were. 


Next I painted  the bottom of the bench with two coats of paint, and another on the sides.  I put extra on the sides because that is where there will be a ton of wear from people bumping into it. 


After the bench dried, a couple days later I took a drop cloth outside and Tera helped me move the tree to the yard.  I bought two cans of Rustoleum 2x white gloss paint.  I then painted the bench where it was wood colored and the top of the hutch that was wood colored.  Then I put a coat of white spray all over the tree to seal my semi gloss.   After it dried I sprayed the bottom of the cover too. 
After it dried I moved it back into the house.


  Tera then gathered all the hooks and sprayed painted them silver (she already had the paint from our flip house last year that we used on all the hardware. That's why I bought silver screws at Walmart).   Later I sprayed a clear coat of gloss on them to seal that silver paint from coats being hung on the tree. 

The next day Tera and I moved the tree to the garage.  I covered the mirrors with brown paper and I then sprayed the whole coat tree with Rustoleum 2x with  two coats of Rustoleum 2x Clear Gloss. 

Then  I went to Walmart and bought a yard and a third (48 inches) of a gray geometic print material, some pillow stuffing, some fabric glue, screws  and some tacks and upholstery pins.   I delayed over the weekend thinking about how I was going to do this pillow.  I have to admit I did NOT do as professional a job as I wanted to, because I was pushed for time, as I was leaving town the next day to return to Amarillo where I live.  So I traced the bench top off on a piece of brown paper and transferred that to some cardboard.  Cut it out and started folding the stuffing over and over the cardboard, around and around.  Once I had  checked to make sure it would fit the bench (not covering the portion where the hinges were)  I took the material and wrapped it around and around the pillow I had just made.  Then I folded in the ends like a gift wrapping and squirted fabric glue underneath the material folds to hold the folds in.  Next I TRIED to use upholstery pins to tack the pillow onto the bench, but the wood was too hard and after I bent several upholstery pins, I gave up and took regular tacks and got one in each front corner.  Lifting the rest of the pillow up, I squirted fabric glue all over the bench and pressed the cushion back down.  I left it to dry and it appeared to work.  I hope it holds up under use.  If not, the buyer can try something different.  I then put the hooks back on and took blue tape off mirrors and washed them.

 

The finished product. 

Yes, I did say Buyer.  I had to go back to Amarillo, so I asked Tera to either get the tree to the flip house and put it in the entry hallway or try and sell it, as I doubted Jerry would want to come to San Antonio with the truck and bring it home.  Tera did put it on 5 Mile Thursday, and today (Sunday)  she texted that a lovely lady in New Braunfels bought it this morning for $130.00.  I had spent $10 on the material and supplies, used paint I already had, and bought 2 cans of white spray paint, for a grand total of $20 on supplies, and with the $10 I paid for it, $30 was invested in the piece.  With this sales price, Tera and I split a nice little $100 profit.  It won't pay the house payment, but it will buy me another project and a dinner out with my husband, and possibly a movie too!

I'm happy, but now I need to find me a coat tree in Amarillo to do this to so I can have my dream tree in the laundry room here in Amarillo in my own home.

Ode to My Staircase.

Howdy!  Judy writing again today.  Poor Tera has sick children and just hasn't been able to get on and write.  Hope you aren't tired of me.


I bought a house in 2003 after a divorce in an attempt to help my kids start over without all their memories blasting them every day at home.  I let them pick the house, and I ended up with a 4 bedroom 2 story, built in 1960 and added on to (the upstairs and huge den) in 1966.  At that same time they added a BOMB SHELTER.  Over the bomb shelter the man built a workshop; which I have turned into a library/office. 


One distinctive thing about the house was the maroon/red carpet, which was old but very, very thick, soft and cushy.  It also hid a ton of living.  With 3 teenage boys, I needed that.  Even though I am NOT a red person and hated the carpet, I never spend money unless I have to, so I decided to live with the majority of the carpet until such time as it showed wear.  I had some removed in the formal dining room and uncovered gorgeous original wood floors, which I had rejuvenated by a super guy who rented from me (that was before I started doing that myself, I was teaching school then).  I loved it so much I had him pull the carpet up in the small living room, but oops, found plywood, not original wood floors.  So I shopped and found the closest thing I could to the original in the dining room and had it put down.  I left the red carpet in 3 of the 4 bedrooms (later changing one to blue) and the large den and hallway and staircase.  Boy that red carpet held up so well on that staircase, all the running up and down those boys did, and then 5 grandsons and 1 granddaughter came and it still held up. 


Red carpet in den, probably 25 years old.

See how the carpet was rolled over the sidewall

Previous picture had grandson and this is granddaughter looking at  me back in the day when she played with her baby toys. 

I remarried in 2005 and my new husband believe it or not had the same carpet in his house, and he was sick and tired of red carpet, and for the next 9 years he talked a lot about changing that carpet.  So finally in October, 2014, I did get new textured carpet in the large den and the staircase, after we pulled down the popcorn and retextured the ceiling and the wall of the staircase and covered a brick wall with sheetrock.  The den really looks larger and brighter now with the gray carpet. 

 

This is the newer wood I had put down to match original in dining room.
 

The staircase presented a real problem though.  I've never seen this before, but the carpet on the stairs wrapped around the edge of the stairs onto the sides of the wood trim.  When the carpet guys pulled the red carpet off they didn't roll it but left the stained, beat up sides with lots and lots of staples left in it.  It was a mess.  But I was busy with other things, and left it like that for a year.  When I returned from San Antonio and flipping a house in Converse, a suburb of San Antonio, in October, 2015, I decided it was time to fix the sides of the staircase.

The first thing I had to do was remove all the staples, which still had some of the carpet under them.  When I pulled the staples out, chunks of the wood came with it, so then I had a beat up sidewall besides staple holes.

  So I got some wood filler and coated the sidewall and left it to dry all night. The next day I sanded lightly with my palm sander the sidewall to make the surface even.  Smoother but still butt ugly.

Please note that I do cover carpet where I'm working with drop cloths.
 

 I could tell the worse parts on edges would always show, so I went to Home Depot and bought some wood trim we sometimes use for shims, and with a hand saw and my miter box on the kitchen counter, and my measuring tape, I started measuring and cutting the trim to wrap the edge of the sidewall from where the carpet ended.  Zig zag, zig zag was the pattern.  I used my nailgun to fasten the trim to the sidewall.

After I finished the trim, I then got out my trusty can of semi gloss white paint and painted the trim (which was already primed) and the sidewall.  In the end I put on 3 coats because all those wood chunks, filled, and bumps in the wood itself took a lot of paint to cover.

After I got my new white sidewall, it still lacked something; so I went to Michaels and found some wood medallion pieces.  I glued those on with gorilla glue and painted them white too, and I really, really like the sidewall now.  It has a Victorian flare to it.  I've had a lot of compliments. 

Now that I've lived with it for 11 months, I feel that the spindles on the railing need to be painted white too, but I dread doing that with the new carpet there.  Plus I'd want to leave the handrail top and the big post the shiny MinWax stain; but that may look weird, but it ties it into the 1960's brown paneling in the large den with the big Spanish door.  Yes, one day that will be my next project, but believe it or not my hubby loves wood paneling. 


Most women never think about adding wood trim to things to dress it up and if they do they think they need a man.  LADIES, it is easy to use a hand saw and cut through thin trim pieces, and with a miter box with has slots for the angle where sides meet which costs about $8, it really is easy.  If you are wondering what I mean by miter cut, look over your interior doorway trim and see where the top and sides meet at the top, and you'll see the wood cut in a 45 degree slant.  That's a miter cut. 


So if you think I should paint the spindles, let me know.  If you think NOT, let me know that too.  Sometimes I think the stain is rich, but other times I think how it would look more "today" if they were white. 

A Tribute to Minwax Wood Stain

Judy, here again.  Yesterday I wrote about my love of spray paint; and today I'm going to tell you about the best thing for wood I've found. 

As a realtor and a remodeler, I hate to list a house that isn't in good shape.  If the house sells for less because of something I could change, then I postpone the listing if the seller allows and I do the work myself.  The other realtors in my office in Amarillo always said I did too much, but again if doing a weekend of staining for 7.77 (which Minwax costs) will bring $5000 more for my seller and make me $150 more, then it is worth my time and energy to do that. 

Some of the times I've done this have blown up into big jobs, like the time I told my ac man Larry that if he'd give me $5,000 for supplies, I'd get him a lot more money.  He did, I did, but me and my now business partner spent several months doing it.  Maybe I didn't make enough off that job to spend that much time and energy, but hopefully if he ever buys a house, he will remember me.  Another time I renovated an elderly couples rent house for them, and all I made for 3 months of work was my commission of about $2,000.  But I figure it helped someone else, and it is not always about the money. 

Today I'll talk about how great Minwax is and give you some pictures and examples.

Minwax is a stain and sealer all in one, so you don't have a lot of steps.  Actually when I'm fixing cabinets that already been varnished and I want to keep them the same, I use Minwax.  I get the same color, and I think when I'm finished they look new==and that's without sanding.  I just dip a Bounty towel in the minwax and wipe it on.  I wear gloves as it's messy, but one coat and I'm through.  With Bounties there are no brush strokes and you can quickly wipe off drips. 

Story 1:  A lady had her townhouse on the market for sale by owner and her dad asked me to look at it as she wasn't having any luck.  (80% of sellers who start by themselves end up getting a realtor).  I went and looked at her townhouse which was a two story 2 bedroom with huge living room, gorgeous fireplace, 1980's picture frame paneling that looked rich, and matching kitchen cabinets that went all the way to the ceiling witih doors on one wall.  It was a great townhome but I knew upon walking in the door why it wasn't selling.  The entry wainscoting looked as if someone had poured bleach on it and stripped it of all its finish.  The picture framing paneling and kitchen looked fine except some scratches due to the age.  However, when I got upstairs the cabinets looked just like the wainscoting. 

Bathroom cabinets before

Entry hall wainscoting.

I asked the seller if I could have the weekend to redo the woodwork, and she allowed it.  I bought some Minwax at Lowes, but when I got to her house it was the wrong color.  Luckily she worked at Michaels and was able to buy it with her employee discount and she got the right color.  I took mine back and all this ended up costing me was my time and the Bounty paper towels.  I not only did the cabinets in the bathroom and the wainscoting,  I went ahead and put a coat on all the picture framed paneling, all the cabinets in the kitchen, including that wall from floor to ceiling, all the woodwork on the staircase, the laundry cabinets, and all window frames that were stained wood.  So easy.  Just dip towel into stain and wipe on.  That townhome looked new once the woodwork was revarnished and stained in one fell swoop; and I also had a carpet man stretch her carpet and put a threshold between the dining room carpet and the entry tile. 

First coat - it took 2 coats on these  they were so damaged.

Final coat

My partner putting up backsplash before cabinets redone.

Story 2.  The house sold quickly and we became friends.  A few months later when I was working on the ac man's father's home, the seller wanted to help me.  We spent a month or so remodeling this 3 bedroom home.  After she put up a really cool metal backsplash I spent a day redoing the cabinets.  The owner's wife who had known those cabinets since she started dating him and being married to him for 30 years, said that she'd never seen them look so good.  That house too sold quickly.  My friend and I saw how much the seller made and decided to join forces and buy homes to remodel and flip.  However, her father is a landlord and her heart is in rentals, so all the houses we bought are now rentals; we have a partnership and share the responsibilities, and I went out on my own to flip houses.  



After new floor laid and wood freshened up with Minwax.

Story 3.  I sold a house to the sweetest Chinese doctor who was retired and working at a lab.  After we closed her house, she and I decided to refinish her kitchen cabinets, as the seller had added new granite counters, but done nothing to the cabinets.  We each put on gloves and she took the upper cabinets and I took the lowers and in one evening we made her cabinets match the granite.  I didn't take any pictures though. 



Story 4.  Personal.  I use Minwax on my staircase and sometimes my furniture to bring back the shine and give them a newer, shinier look. 

My shiny staircase due to Minwa.  The sidewall has since been another project that I will write about soon, with tons of in progress pictures.  Also yellow and mauve walls are GONE,and are now a trendy two toned gray.  Another project, no less.  I stay busy.

Minwax is really a very cost effective way and an easy way to make old wood look new again.  You don't have to sand before, just make sure all grease and grime are washed off.  It dries very, very fast, but has a strong odor; so open those doors!!