Flipping A House

My husband and I have been on this little adventure before...fixing up a house. Although last time it was much more work and he did most of it since I was still in graduate school. This time around, we fixed up a home for us to live in, not just sell. Being able to put down such a large down payment was thanks to our previous flip, and so all that hard work really was such a blessing. This time, the hard work is a blessing because we get to live there!!

Let's take a look at that process. In September we closed on a little three bedroom ranch with a partially finished basement. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't our favorite house that we had looked at, and it didn't really have much character, but we looked past that at what it could become. Now, it has become so much more, and while we are still working on adding our own character to the house, it has come such a long way! It's almost time to hit up those thrift stores for the items we are missing. I don't want to sound materialistic because we have plenty of stuff, but since hospitality is one of my spiritual gifts and my husband is a youth pastor, we do have lots of people coming over all the time. That means while I like to keep it simple, we do want the basics like plenty of seating, a place for shoes/coats, and that sort of thing. We are working our way there as we speak. So, let's take a look! We will start with the guest bedroom on the main floor. It began as a purple and white room with PAINTED HARDWOOD FLOORS! I mean, that should just be illegal! Who paints gorgeous original oak flooring from the 40s?!?! So, the guest bedroom had to be primed, repainted, some window glass taken out and replaced, windows repainted, and floors refinished! In the end, I am super happy with it! You can't see it, but the wall across from the bed has a beautiful old book shelf and my wedding wall complete with an old windows used in the wedding with wedding pics, an E for our last name, a canvas pic from the wedding, and a shadow box with my leftover flowers, garter, hairpiece, programs, etc. Might be one of my favorite rooms!

 Then we have the bathroom. This is the room in the house (along with the kitchen) that adds the most value to your home. It is also the most work oftentimes :) This time around we gutted out that old, nasty tiling, ripped out the sliding door, plumbing, insulation, toilet, and sink. We put in new insulation (the old was original from the 40s made of cotton and like an inch thick..not real warm) We also changed out the window for a nice new one. We covered the insulation with hardy backer, then tile, then grout. We added in the plumbing, a new sink, and a new toilet. Also, a new floor. My poor hubby had to scrape up four layers of stick on tiles/old laminate/etc to get to the bottom where we could add in our new laminate. I have two collages for that so you can see the many different angles.

One of the more shocking rooms was our master bedroom. It was painted darkest gray and BLACK! All of it! The ceiling and floor were black, the walls were super dark gray, it was DARK! Not the comforting place meant to spend time with the love of your life. So, we ripped down the old, yellow blinds, primed the whole thing, scraped up the nasty stick on tiles off our hardwood floor and got to work! We repainted everything, refinished the floor, fixed up the windows and wah-la! A brand new room. Still using gray, but in a much friendlier, happy way :)

 We also refinished our kitchen and dining room. The dining room was mostly ripping out carpet and painting and the kitchen included new appliances (there were none when we bought it), painting, and new hardware for the cabinets. The hubs is going to build me some more cabinets sometime soon to add more space because he loves me :)

I am thinking about doing a post of how to refinish hardwood floors, but I didn't take many pictures since it was so dusty and you need to do most steps pretty quick. If you have any questions about our projects or if you'd like to see one featured on this blog just let me know! I'd be happy to share how we did anything in our home to help you!!

The basement will be coming along in the next few months, but we are going to Germany on our one year anniversary trip (two months after our anniversary because of work) but we are saving up money and busy planning so we might have to wait a bit to really finish down there which will include an office area, third bedroom (yes, it is legal), and our living area. Until then, happy flipping :)