"Jon, we need more paint", and salvaging the cabinets
One of the downsides to just having the contractors bid the labor, and supplying the materials, is that sometimes you get it wrong. That happened today. The painter called late afternoon to say he was going to be short on the interior paint, but was trying to finish up today. Seems the new ceiling texture was soaking up a lot of paint, and needed a couple of coats. OK, no big deal, but it did mean a quick run by Home Depot to pick up the bucket and then an unexpected trip today to the job site. They were mostly done, though. Should be finished tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I had a task to rebuild the sink base. The cabinets in this property were in pretty good shape, except for the sink base and the drawer fronts. Sink bases always take a beating from the moisture and all the nasty stuff that gets stored there. The front finish panel was in good shape, though. The bottom had been replaced at some point, but in typical DIY fashion of cutting two poorly fitting pieces and scabbing them in place. The bases had to come out anyway to make way for the tile, so the sink base got a trip home to get property fixed up.
A sheet of cabinet quality half inch plywood set me back $25 at Home Depot. Since I had the hole thing, I replaced everything except the front. A bit of a finicky job, since I'm no cabinet maker. I can't recall the last time I had the dado blade on the table saw. But a few hours of careful cutting, and all the pieces fit together. Unfortunately, my compressors over at the property, so I couldn't finish putting it together. You don't have to use a nail gun much, or in this case, a stapler, to never want to drive a nail by hand. My wife had borrowed my SUV today, so I was in her car and didn't want to break anything trying to squeeze it in. I'll run by tomorrow and check the paint, pay them if they're still there and finished, and grab the compressor.
The drawer fronts had really taking a beating. I guess the former occupants hated drawers, because they were really beat up. Just the drawers, though, not the doors. Go figure. Anyway, I found a place online where I could order them in the exact sizes I needed and with the proper edge profile. I thought about just making these myself, since there are only seven, and they are just slabs with routed edges. But the only bit I could find with the proper profile requires a 1/2" router and mine's too small.
With replacing these drawer fronts, rebuilding the sink base, and a thorough scrubbing, the cabinets will look fine.
A little about how we found this place. This is in a neighborhood where I've not looked in this past. That bit me a little, but it worked out OK. My mortgage broker recommended I have a look here, and I have a hard money loan out on another property in this same area. We (Mike and I) looked at about three dozen houses in this area over the course of three weekends. Its one of the areas that really had a lot of foreclosures, and its still dealing with the fallout from that. Most of the properties we looked at were REOs, a few short sales, and a few that were trying to be sold by the owners.
We pulled comps and it was pretty useless. You could pretty much pick your comps and make any price you wanted make sense. Anywhere from about $60K on the low end up to retail sales around $160K. This particular house was one of the better ones. Plenty of space, no major issues, built in 1983 (no lead paint), proper egress windows. Listed at $69K. The area is very competitive, with lots of investor activity, and we didn't really think the $69K price would hold. We came up with a value of about $130K and offered $73K. At that point I think I was estimating, guessing, really, about $5-6K in fixup. We were looking at lots of houses, making lots of offers, and trying to get something to stick, figuring we would have a chance to sort the details out later.
Agent told us there were other offers and we didn't get it. Oh well, we have others on the table.
A couple weeks later, the agent calls Mike and says it failed inspections and were we interested in making another offer. After some hemming and hawing, I ended up offering $77K. That offer was accepted. He and I gave it a careful look and came up with about $7K in work. That still worked, with the $130K estimated ARV. The appraiser came back saying he thought it would only go $120K, and did I want to proceed? We went back and carefully looked at the best few comps. We also pulled current listings from $110K to $130K for the area with similar square footage and spent a day looking at these. Indeed, the ones on the high end of that range where pretty nicely fixed up. Tile in baths and kitchens, granite counters (mostly tile, a few slab), good paint in and out, and new carpets. The ones on the high end had all new appliances, mostly that fake stainless stuff. So, we reluctantly accepted the $120K value as about right. Plus, to even hit that, more work was going to be needed. In particular, the tile and granite counters. Nicer than I would have planned for a rental, but quickly becoming the standard for this neighborhood.
We ended up going back to the listing agent. By this point we're just days away from when we're supposed to close. The whole thing was something like two and a half weeks from executed contract to closing to start, and we're at the end. Still have a loan contingency, though. As Mike puts it, he gave him two documents. A request for release of earnest money and an amend and extend for a new price of $70,550. We also said we could close a week later than planned, which was the 28th of the month, and that we would drop all contingencies.
Amazingly, they accepted this contract. Boo yah!
Meanwhile, I had a task to rebuild the sink base. The cabinets in this property were in pretty good shape, except for the sink base and the drawer fronts. Sink bases always take a beating from the moisture and all the nasty stuff that gets stored there. The front finish panel was in good shape, though. The bottom had been replaced at some point, but in typical DIY fashion of cutting two poorly fitting pieces and scabbing them in place. The bases had to come out anyway to make way for the tile, so the sink base got a trip home to get property fixed up.
A sheet of cabinet quality half inch plywood set me back $25 at Home Depot. Since I had the hole thing, I replaced everything except the front. A bit of a finicky job, since I'm no cabinet maker. I can't recall the last time I had the dado blade on the table saw. But a few hours of careful cutting, and all the pieces fit together. Unfortunately, my compressors over at the property, so I couldn't finish putting it together. You don't have to use a nail gun much, or in this case, a stapler, to never want to drive a nail by hand. My wife had borrowed my SUV today, so I was in her car and didn't want to break anything trying to squeeze it in. I'll run by tomorrow and check the paint, pay them if they're still there and finished, and grab the compressor.
The drawer fronts had really taking a beating. I guess the former occupants hated drawers, because they were really beat up. Just the drawers, though, not the doors. Go figure. Anyway, I found a place online where I could order them in the exact sizes I needed and with the proper edge profile. I thought about just making these myself, since there are only seven, and they are just slabs with routed edges. But the only bit I could find with the proper profile requires a 1/2" router and mine's too small.
With replacing these drawer fronts, rebuilding the sink base, and a thorough scrubbing, the cabinets will look fine.
A little about how we found this place. This is in a neighborhood where I've not looked in this past. That bit me a little, but it worked out OK. My mortgage broker recommended I have a look here, and I have a hard money loan out on another property in this same area. We (Mike and I) looked at about three dozen houses in this area over the course of three weekends. Its one of the areas that really had a lot of foreclosures, and its still dealing with the fallout from that. Most of the properties we looked at were REOs, a few short sales, and a few that were trying to be sold by the owners.
We pulled comps and it was pretty useless. You could pretty much pick your comps and make any price you wanted make sense. Anywhere from about $60K on the low end up to retail sales around $160K. This particular house was one of the better ones. Plenty of space, no major issues, built in 1983 (no lead paint), proper egress windows. Listed at $69K. The area is very competitive, with lots of investor activity, and we didn't really think the $69K price would hold. We came up with a value of about $130K and offered $73K. At that point I think I was estimating, guessing, really, about $5-6K in fixup. We were looking at lots of houses, making lots of offers, and trying to get something to stick, figuring we would have a chance to sort the details out later.
Agent told us there were other offers and we didn't get it. Oh well, we have others on the table.
A couple weeks later, the agent calls Mike and says it failed inspections and were we interested in making another offer. After some hemming and hawing, I ended up offering $77K. That offer was accepted. He and I gave it a careful look and came up with about $7K in work. That still worked, with the $130K estimated ARV. The appraiser came back saying he thought it would only go $120K, and did I want to proceed? We went back and carefully looked at the best few comps. We also pulled current listings from $110K to $130K for the area with similar square footage and spent a day looking at these. Indeed, the ones on the high end of that range where pretty nicely fixed up. Tile in baths and kitchens, granite counters (mostly tile, a few slab), good paint in and out, and new carpets. The ones on the high end had all new appliances, mostly that fake stainless stuff. So, we reluctantly accepted the $120K value as about right. Plus, to even hit that, more work was going to be needed. In particular, the tile and granite counters. Nicer than I would have planned for a rental, but quickly becoming the standard for this neighborhood.
We ended up going back to the listing agent. By this point we're just days away from when we're supposed to close. The whole thing was something like two and a half weeks from executed contract to closing to start, and we're at the end. Still have a loan contingency, though. As Mike puts it, he gave him two documents. A request for release of earnest money and an amend and extend for a new price of $70,550. We also said we could close a week later than planned, which was the 28th of the month, and that we would drop all contingencies.
Amazingly, they accepted this contract. Boo yah!
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