Investor · New Bedford, MA · Member since 2016 · 43 posts · 24 votes
I’m about to tackle my first live in rehab (first full remodel as well). I’m purchasing a personal residence and it needs a complete interior remodel. I’m looking for any tips, tricks, hacks, or knowledge on making my families life easier during the process. Also if y’all have some favorite materials you guys like to use in your remodels I would love to know what they are!!! Thanks in advanced.
@Russell Lavoie I would like to know this as well. This is my plan for the near future. I did hear Mindy Johnson on the Bigger Pocket podcast say that when they do a live in flip that they try to reserve a room or two that has no rehab work. This way when things become too much and you need an escape you have a place to go. Not sure how this works with young kids.
@Russell Lavoie I found the podcast!
How to Invest in Real Estate - The Ultimate Show for getting started. Oct 18th 2018
Time = 15:35. She is the last guest. This is one of the longest podcast at 2:22:16 so she is on at the end starting at 15:35.
I hope this helps and good luck brotha!
In my personal experience doing this, it's best to go one room at a time. It takes longer and costs a bit more, but if you're doing most of the work yourself and your family is living there at the same time, it will make your life much easier.
I've been using a lot of LVT lately, the decent quality stuff is nearly indestructible and it looks great.
@Russell Lavoie
I'm about 90% done with my first live-in rehab, and it's me and my wife. Take one room at a time, don't leave your tools out in the other rooms, and clean up the mess you make (not in the "working" room, but in the other rooms) after you're done each day.
Figure out what work you can actually do yourself in a timely manner. The other stuff find subs that come in and bang it out quick. Biggest mistake I ever made was being stubborn and taking on too much.
lots of good advice here. Depending on the size of your family doing your bedroom and the kids room first is probably the most important. Having that sanctuary is absolutely critical to not going insane. At some point you are going to have to do the common areas... kitchen, living room and hallways.. your going to be living in a construction zone for a while.
im a clean freak and am not known for my patience. Personally I would never do this, ever again. It is not worth the stress and headache. You can remodel an entire house in less than 3 months or live through it and it takes years. I would rather rent a place for a short time and pay professionals to do their specific trade (Im a contractor) and get it over with.
Something else to consider is the amount of dust that will be in the air at all times that your family will be exposed to. It will makes its way behind closed doors and into every space of the home no matter what you do w/o specialized equipment. Just my $.02
1. Going room-by-room is going to cost you money, time, and effort. It will seem like an enormous, wasteful expenditure at times. It is not. The last 5% of any renovation project at any level but especially the room level is the most difficult and least satisfying. Resist the temptation to skip ahead before finishing it. Resisting that temptation will be very difficult at times.
2. Isolate work areas from living areas with plastic sheeting. Dust goes everywhere.
3. Keep your work shoes and work outfit in a pile just outside the work area.
4. Have a schedule of agreed quiet hours set up in advance.
5. This goes for all renovation work but is doubly important for live-in work that you're doing yourself: relentlessly map out the work on a wall calendar BEFORE YOU START ANY PROJECT ROOM. Using that calendar, keep your spouse 100% informed on the progress of the work and any setbacks especially.
6. Minimize noise pollution while your family is present. If there's a quieter way to do anything or a way to do anything quieter, do it that way. Noise pollution wears on them, it takes an extra toll that makes living with a live-in flip just a bit more miserable.
7. Minimize stink for yourself. That means, usually, N95 paper resirator dust masks (you get them cheap in bulk on Amazon) and a standard half-face painter's respirator with removable cartridges. You should always have P100 filters and organic vapor cartridges standing by. You should think about minimizing stink as less about breathing in harmful substances and more about being comfortable enough breathing to devote your full attention to doing a job carefully. I can't emphasize this enough -- nitwits who go at oil-based primer or poly without a mask to prove how macho they are invariably end up rushing the job. This is also why you can never trust a renovation contractor who isn't clean-shaven.
8. Pack the kids and wife off to Airbnb or someone's house or whatever when you do the main bathroom. Be laser-focused on finishing that room within the schedule. Take few risks when it comes to doing ambitious remodeling in the bathroom.
Points to remember:
1. Methyl chloride paint stripper isn't worth it. If you can't accomplish what you need to accomplish with products like Citristrip or a heat gun, it's not worth achieving in a home remodeling setting.
2. Have a variable-speed oscillating tool. The number of small jobs you can get done with this tool is remarkable. You don't need an expensive one. If you buy five of them in a row from Harbor Freight you still haven't hit the price tag of best-in-class, a Fein MultiMaster.
3. Utilize the hell out of the DIY forum here. Very few people do. Keep your cell phone in your pocket and take lots of pictures. Furthermore, in my experience, two of the four consistently strongest DIY forum advice people here are women.
4. It's been said that you can learn anything from YouTube -- sure, but you can't learn how to do everything WELL from YouTube. When you don't know how to do something, start with DIY books from good publishers like Taunton, and THEN go to YouTube to learn more.
5. When it all turns to crap, and it will, remind yourself that this is a learning experience and it's OK to pay yourself a learning wage for it. I have made more money in the long run off DIY than I have in any other educational investment in myself, and I walked away from an Ivy League PhD fellowship.
6. In my experience in Western PA, finding quality subs to do smallish jobs reliably is very difficult. It is much more useful to learn how to do the jobs yourself the first time around so that you in turn are able to supervise them. The ignorant homeowner trying to GC and/or micromanage subs gets no respect in this world. By most tradesmen, the ignorant homeowner in general is seen as a crippled half-man who exists for them to ridicule and swindle.
7. Plumbing and branch circuitry are there for you to fully understand before you try to work on them, preferably with an experienced guy over your shoulder and an inspector coming to check on your work. If you ever hire a plumber or electrician to work on your property, try to learn as much from them as you can. These guys are not just good at what they do -- they are better at the basics of doing things correctly than all other tradesmen, from planning their work to finishing up. Pay attention to their work habits.
I'm actually doing this right now, but have no kids, just 2 dogs. I do, however, rent 3 of my bedrooms out. Things you should do before moving in, if you can: remove walls and/or wallpaper, drywall.
If you remove walls, plan on replacing the flooring unless you can find any exact match or figure out some way to cover it up. Drywall is super dusty, will get everywhere, so it's best to do that before all your personal belongings are in the house.
As someone else mentioned, if you only have one bathroom, do that FIRST before you move in.
If kitchen cabinets are in good condition, just paint boxes and reface them with new doors (several sites: barkerdoors, cabinetdoorsnow, etc). It'll save you a headache of a full remodel, and will be easier to live through.
Make sure you replace your air vent filter(s) monthly! Remodeling kicks up a lot of dust, even if you don't see it. So make sure these are replaced in a timely manner.
Another thing I've learned with a second story... if you plan on replacing carpet with hard flooring (wood, laminate, vinyl, etc)... spend plenty of time researching sound proofing underlayment. You WILL hear noises down below. I thought I bought a great underlayment (did my research) and I can still hear things, but not as bad as before I screwed down the subfloor. Squeaky floorboards are no joke in a 60 year old house.