Before-After Photos of My 1st Flip (numbers coming soon)!!!
Hi BPers,
(This is adapted from a post on my blog, Read My Flips (get it...like "read my lips"?), where I document the process, trials and tribulations, etc of my ventures in real estate. I would love more BP readers! I'm also on twitter @readmyflips.)
After 3 months of working on it, my partner (@John Li) and I put our first flipped house on the market in mid-March and it went under contract shortly afterward. Closing is around the corner, but I’m superstitious so won’t be sharing any of the financial details until the money is in the bank. But, as soon as I can, I'll respond to this discussion with the financials.
In the meantime, I’ve finally gotten around to organizing the 100s of photos I have. While John did the lion’s share of the labor on this project (unsustainable for future projects), I made every single decision around finishes and look. There were definitely some hiccups (mental note: white penny tile + white grout = blech), but all-in-all I think it came together nicely. I loved every minute of the project and can't wait to move onto the next (which is just around the corner)! My goal is to eventually leave my 9-5 office job. One thing I should mention here is that I'm very fortunate to have @John Li as my partner....while this may be my first flip project, it's not his. He's done about 15 flips to date and all of them have been profitable, so I'm learning A TON from him. Not to mention the fact that he is a real estate agent, so that comes with huge benefits as well.
Anyway, onto the good stuff. Here are the “before” and “after” photos (and at the end, I even included before/after video):
Front
First things, first. A facelift, which included:
- new roof
- new windows
- painting the exterior (whoa! that is really much more blue than I was expecting!)
- new shutters
- new door & storm door
- cleaning the gutters
- adding a small concrete step
- new mailbox & light
Living Room
It’s hard to see from the photo, but we replaced the lighter-colored laminate flooring with a dark coffee-colored engineered hardwood. It looks black in the photo, but it’s really a dark, rich brown. I felt very strongly that we needed to stage the smallest rooms in the house when we put it on the market. Mainly because the house is teency and empty rooms seem smaller than they really are. I wanted to let prospective buyers see the potential of the small living room and smaller bedrooms. And rather than spend $1500+ on a stager, I decided to stage it myself. I planned to spend no more than $1500 and to re-use the furniture for the next house. I did all of my shopping at Walmart, IKEA, Home Goods, and Goodwill. I bought the two armchairs I put in the living room (you can see one of them in this photo) for $7 each from Goodwill. They were stained and an army green color. I planned to put Pinterest to work and re-upholster them. In the end, I decided to paint (yes, paint!) them a dark gray. It was a lot of work and they are not the softest chairs you will ever sit on, but they get the job done and most people have said that they would have never guessed. The biggest compliments I got were from a realtor who called asked who our stager was and said that it was some of the best staging she’s seen and another was from a college-aged girl who came in with her parents for the open house and asked if the furniture came with the house.
Here are few more “after” photos to give you a sense of how we set up the space.
Kitchen
Quite the transformation, right!?! We went back and forth on whether to replace the kitchen cabinets. From the photo you can’t see how dirty they were, but that could be easily rectified with a toothbrush and some elbow grease. But, all-in-all they were in pretty good shape and ultimately it would have cost us an extra $2000 or more to replace the cabinets, not to mention the added time. So, I busted out the rubber gloves, toothbrush, and Comet and I got to work. Every single groove was spotless when we put it on the market. We also changed out the hardware from chrome to brushed nickel (a whopping $50 investment!). Add in the new granite counters, stainless steel appliances, and updated backsplash and the cabinets seemed brand new.
Family Room
The basement was not finished when we bought the house. Finishing the basement doubled the livable square footage. The space was already split into two separate spaces and we kept it that way so that the larger area could be used as a family room and the other as a master suite. With the light colored carpeting, light walls, and white trim, the whole space is now so bright and welcoming, when it used to feel dark and scary.
Master Suite
Creating a master suite in the basement makes the house much more practical for a family. Technically, because it doesn’t have a window large enough to escape from in an emergency, it can’t be considered an extra bedroom, but we set it up to be used that way. The buyers can do what they want with the space. The bedroom now has a his (standard) and hers (walk-in) closet. The walk-in closet was John’s brilliant idea. The bathroom in the basement was ridiculously large (12′ x 8′, which is as big as some bedrooms) and had almost nothing in it – one pedestal (!?!) sink, a toilet, a small corner shower, and for some reason a very large closet with double bi-fold doors. We basically left the closet where it was, but turned it around so that the entrance to the closet was one small bi-fold door off of the bedroom, creating a long, one-sided walk-in closet.
Here is a photo to get you oriented:
There was a lot of floor space in the master bathroom. Too much. So, we did a double vanity (well, more accurately, we did two single vanities), put in a new corner shower (tiled with subway tile), and added a little make-up station. The other thing we did that really added value was to install heated floors in the bathroom. We wanted to give the family that bought this house a little bit of luxury.
Here’s another view of the bathroom:
Back
We originally wanted to rip out some of the back concrete or add a very low deck, but it was cost-prohibitive. Instead, we just cleaned it up a bit and ripped out the fencing that was on the side. The new roof, house color, windows, door, and gutters make it look so much better.
Videos
Finally, for a comprehensive view of the project, both before and after, here are some videos:
I hope you enjoyed seeing the fruits of our labor. I’m pretty proud of what we did and I’m looking forward to moving on to the next project, about which I will hopefully share details soon. Also, as promised, as soon as we close and the financial details are set in stone, I will share that information.
Thanks for reading!
Adela