Investa-Brothel the Odyssey

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Investa-Brothel the Odyssey

Lee Fahy
Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes

My wife and I had been interested in purchasing a rental property for about a year with the intent of making this a business. She's a teacher, I'm an engineer and we have little faith in the future of Social Security / 401k stability. So bring on the house viewings! After many viewings we decided to look at a 'slightly' downtrodden 1954 ranch with the right square footage. 

Notice the fancy red-white-blue spray painted garage windows! Seems like we may have an artist on the premises (more on that). After viewing the place twice, researching the rent comps and recently sold comp values for the area we decided to purchase it.  Here is my wife after closing...inspecting her snazzy new $60,000 purchase (so much better than an escalade). 

And after she hears me laughing without control:

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Linda WeygantPro Member
Investor and CPA · Arvada, CO · Member since 2015 · 2k+ posts · 3k+ votes
9y

Your wife and I are kindred spirits.  If things don't work out between the two of you, please give her my number.  She and I would be a match made in heaven because clearly she knows what hell looks like.

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  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    @David Dachtera ; We budgeted 25K for the remodel and we are still below that, sitting pretty at 19K today but the basement still needs to done (gulp).

    0Reply
  • David Zheng
    Investor · Saint Louis, MO · Member since 2016 · 970 posts · 1k+ votes
    9y

    LOL your commentary is hilarious. please keep up the awesome updates

    2Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    @Account Closed HA! Owner operator. I'll ask her about it but I feel like I already know the answer. 

    0Reply
  • Mindy JensenPro Member
    BiggerPockets Money Podcast Host · Longmont, CO · Member since 2014 · 7k+ posts · 10k+ votes
    9y

    @Lee Fahy , how did you find this beauty? (I can smell it through the pictures. Smells like money.)

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    6Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    So the upstairs bathroom on possession had been left with the same 'presents' as the downstairs bathroom.  I put this up here, and I KNOW its gross but I want people who haven't done this to understand what a....crappy job this type of work can be. 

    The bathroom had GFCI! LOL, No....no it did not. They had just installed a GFCI outlet. Stickers were free though.

    Nothing says craftsmanship like taking the shower wand and gluing it with a block of wood to the surround: 

    Classsssy

    So we gutted it, cleaned up the sheetrock and put in bead board, new subfloor.  

    1Reply
  • JD MartinBusiness Member
    Moderator
    Rock Star Extraordinaire · Northeast, TN · Member since 2015 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes
    9y

    LoL, this is a fun thread. I'm guessing you don't want to run the owner/op thing past your wife :D  And you know they blur out those crap-filled toilets on HGTV? Of course, the property brothers make the homeowners always take out the toilets. 

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  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    I'll put the finished product up of the bathroom but we also tackled the garage door (red-white-blue spray painted windows) problem buy purchasing a craigslist door for $50 and spraying it. 

    3Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    Every time I see HGTV on in my house I walk passed and yell "LIES! LIES!!! THAT'S ALL LIES! " I acknowledge that a team of 20 professionals can probably bang out a project like this in slightly less time than an inexperienced engineer and his music student/elementary orchestra teacher wife. 

    9Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    In Room 1 I decided to take out the single 28" door to the 6' long closet (why would they do this?) to make it more user friendly. There was a closet facing the other direction, this one was in the entry way to the downstairs unit and thus nobody would use it because it was a shared area. 

    0Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    When you do sheetrock skim coating on all the walls you need help, when your help decides she needs sheetrock stilts you simply reply "Are we rich? No." Then tape five gallon buckets to her feet and photograph her. 

    29Reply
  • Michael Boyer
    Investor · Juneau, AK · Member since 2015 · 980 posts · 741 votes
    9y

    The posts, pictures, and comic insights are awesome.. Like Dave Barry meets REI...

    Heck, if the project doesn't pencil out, you may have a best selling humor/fix up story on your hands... Neat cross over genre of home improvement and hilarity.

    Maybe "My Broken Fixxer Upper: The Crazy Story of Restoring a House Without Losing Our Minds"....... You could do the podcast circuit and have audiences laughing.....

    The funniest part is it is all real--the raids, brothel, the crazy colors, the smells, leaks, the wife's facial expressions......you have the photos and and hilarious anecdotes to prove it! Skull game on the cover.....

    This is definitely on my all time top ten best ever posts on BP for hilarity and realism....

    3Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    So we skimcoated every wall and sanded three times, piece of advice. Don't do this. Don't ever do this. 

    Moving on, after replacing the broken window in the entryway laundry I broke some sheetrock and discovered there was no insulation. So I ripped all the sheetrock out of the room, they had screwed a pocket door closed on one wall and used a combo platter of spare lumber, particle board, shelving etc to close off the garage side wall. 

    Notice the pocket door

    I did the insulating when it was about -20F because I'm an idiot and why wouldn't I? 

    And the after:

    2Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    @Michael Boyer; I WISH I could be making some of this up or churching up the hilarity of this trainwreck. It was like watching a train wreck or car accident in slow motion. The more we fixed the more we fixed. 

    All I can say is, "marry the right person and laugh".

    And be sure she can do vinyl work better than you can. 

    Wut?

    4Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    Also try to understand that it gets old and you'll find yourself in home depot towing your wife behind you at all hours of the evening:

    6Reply
  • James Caruso
    Real Estate Investor · Middle Island, NY · Member since 2016 · 147 posts · 68 votes
    9y

    Great thread! I love the commentary :)

    0Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    So room 2.........good God. Just magnificent. 

    The musty stink of money...and wet insulation. Anyway, we dried it out and fixed the ceiling but after six months the floors were still showing major gaps. The quote I got was 1600 to redo the wood floors(not including this room because the guy said the floors were a total loss) but I'm a naturally cheap and stupid person. So I redid them myself. 

    Here's a pic of the ceiling and prefloor work:

    I had to pull them together and reattach the boards as much as possible before sanding. Not perfect but the drum sander evened things out. 

    0Reply
  • Ryan Huggins
    Real Estate Broker · Thousand Oaks, CA · Member since 2017 · 63 posts · 33 votes
    9y

    What? No cement in the drain pipes?  No animal feces under piles of clothes left behind?  No dead bodies?

    Honestly, this house isn't bad.  I've seen houses worse than this and at least you didn't have to go through evicting the prior owner!

    0Reply
  • Ryan Huggins
    Real Estate Broker · Thousand Oaks, CA · Member since 2017 · 63 posts · 33 votes
    9y
    Originally posted by @Lee Fahy:

    Every time I see HGTV on in my house I walk passed and yell "LIES! LIES!!! THAT'S ALL LIES! " I acknowledge that a team of 20 professionals can probably bang out a project like this in slightly less time than an inexperienced engineer and his music student/elementary orchestra teacher wife. 

     Yes, those shows are staged and have artificial timelines for drama.  Flip or Flop for example never factors in labor costs.

    1Reply
  • Linda WeygantPro Member
    Investor and CPA · Arvada, CO · Member since 2015 · 2k+ posts · 3k+ votes
    9y

    Your wife and I are kindred spirits.  If things don't work out between the two of you, please give her my number.  She and I would be a match made in heaven because clearly she knows what hell looks like.

    Podcast Guest on Show #244
    9Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    Meanwhile, laying in bed on a Saturday morning after a week away in the field (field engineer) my wife shows me:

    (+)

    and now we've got more things happening. So I am now being accused by my buddies of forcing my pregnant wife to work on the CrapPlex. 

    Nine months later:

    Sleep... that's a thing I used to do. 

    8Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    @Ryan Huggins; HA! I love it, I can't imagine what you've seen if this one isn't that bad. I'm still 'fingers crossed' that I'll find drug money tucked up in a basement ceiling tile so I can pay somebody to finish this project. 

    1Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    @Linda Weygant; If things weren't going to work out with my wife I'm pretty sure it would have been the night we put sheetrock up on the ceiling of Room 2. We made it through that and didn't speak for 24 hours after.....so I think we are going to go the distance. If not though, I'll PM her contact info, haha. She's a keeper. 

    5Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    So the problem about thinking you know what you are doing is.........YOU DON'T REALIZE YOU ARE CLUELESS. Drum sanding and edging then:

    If you have a chance, IMMEDIATELY volunteer for the drum sander and not the edger. Here is my dad drum sanding because he made the mistake of visiting from Houston. 

    Here's the wet room 2 after sanding:

    Also, there is no whining about chatter marks on the floor when your labor is free (minus buying him lunch). 

    0Reply
  • JD MartinBusiness Member
    Moderator
    Rock Star Extraordinaire · Northeast, TN · Member since 2015 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes
    9y
    Originally posted by @Lee Fahy:

    @Linda Weygant; If things weren't going to work out with my wife I'm pretty sure it would have been the night we put sheetrock up on the ceiling of Room 2. We made it through that and didn't speak for 24 hours after.....so I think we are going to go the distance. If not though, I'll PM her contact info, haha. She's a keeper. 

     LoL. A rehab DIY project will let you know real quick if you're going to stay married. 

    Podcast Guest on Show #243
    Skyline Properties
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    3Reply
  • Lee Fahy
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
    9y

    Long day:

    I'm mid thirties and in fairly reasonable shape, working out and maintaining a TIGHT chicken wing and craft beer diet. That said I could barely walk the next day after edge sanding. 

    2Reply
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