The Flipping Files: What Did I Get Myself Into???
/Hi everyone! Wow... it's been over two months since I've written a post. TWO MONTHS! Full disclosure: I haven't been able to bring myself to write a post because everything at the house just took a severe dive. It's been a nightmare.
On the last post, I mentioned that we discovered there was absolutely no insulation in 90% of the house. And because the ceiling was the roof, there was no insulation in the ceiling. I cannot even imagine how high the electric bills were! So we had the ceilings framed out and got to work putting insulation in the ceilings and wall.
Once all of the insulation was in, we began putting up the new wood ceilings.
And that's pretty much when everything went south. During the installation of the ceiling, one of the huge windows in the dining room was cracked - but no one accepted responsibility. Another window was damaged while the exterior siding was put on - again no one accepted responsibility. So yeah, that was a $4500 uh-oh.
Then there was the sheetrock. Sigh.... the guys who quoted us our sheetrock hung up with me and then started to go on and on about how they were going to stick it to me and find problems they could make me pay for. What they didn't realize is the electrician who was there heard it all - and is engaged to my cousin. Another contractor bites the dust.
I reached out to my floor guy and he said his main tiler did sheetrock and he would come up with a crew and do it before putting my flooring in. Great! Except it wasn't. The flooring guy did sheetrock, but his helpers did not. Actually his helpers just stood around and watched him work. He decided to quite sheetrocking and put the wood floors in instead. Because you always want brand new floors down before you hang sheetrock and mud, right? WRONG!
Once we figured out the floor guy wasn't going to sheetrock I found a new sheetrock guy. He was such a great guy and even said a prayer over the project! When he met me I was putting paper on the floors to cover them. He told me to stop doing that and that he would put paper down and a drop cloth. I said I would do it and he insisted no, I'd done enough and he would do it. He said he would be finished in 3 days. 14 DAYS LATER... I walked into that ----->
When I asked the guy about it he said, and I quote, "we planned to clean it up before you got here." Oh my gosh! I stewed on it for a bit and then yeah, we had a bit of a blow up. And the kicker, after 14 days and what he did to my floors he still didn't finish.
At this point, I had brought up my GC from Austin to finish the job. He estimated 2 weeks. It's been 6 and we are not finished. I'm so stressed I can't even put it into words. But, there is progress, there really is. Check out where we stand now.
Inside:
So what's left? Outside: The exterior trim (around the windows) needs to be painted and the new front door needs to be put in. Landscaping around and in the atrium. Inside: Finish backsplash and fireplace, install shower fixtures, install vanities and toilets, finish painting. We are close. We are sooooo close. And I'm hoping that we will be finished next week because this six week flip has turned into a 4 month extremely stressful experience. But man does it look good.
With all of this you think I'd have no time for anything else, right? Wrong! While it's true all of my projects have been put on hold because my tools are all at the flip house (6 hours away), I decided to finish my real estate courses and I am now a Realtor! Woo hoo! The last two weeks I've been in training and I'm about to head out to an international real estate course (I'm sure you are all surprised by that. haha). It's so much fun and I'm excited to pick up this aspect of the home business. I'm also set to meet with international clients who are interested in having me head up their remodeling in Austin. There are so many great things happening and, once this flip finishes, I will be ready to rock and roll! Until then...
