Breaking all the rules with my First Rehab

My First Rehab

My first rehab is my mother’s house that I inherited after she passed. It was built in 1930 in Baltimore City, a block from the county in the Parkville area. My Mom purchased the house in the winter of 1976. It was a 4-bedroom 2 bath house. It is heated with a boiler for steam radiators. Mom had vinyl siding put on it and new windows in 1978 and that was the extend of the improvements. Mom did very little to improve the house for the next 40 years except have the electrical panel upgraded from 80 amp fuse panel to a 150 amp breaker panel. 30 years ago, I reconfigured the 1st floor bath by moving the tub to the back wall and making it a shower and rerouting the water pipes into the warm walls instead of in the cold crawl space. Then about 15 years ago I redid the upstairs bathroom removing the cast iron tub and putting in a shower. Oh and I almost forgot, she replaced the oil boiler sometime in the 90s to natural gas but that also had to be replaced 5 years ago because of the lack of maintenance caused it to crack.

I always knew if I ever got the chance I would convert the house back to a duplex. You could see in the basement at one time there had been 2 gas meters and 2 water mains and the way some of the other houses were configured that there were 2 front doors. I started on the upstairs. Upon demo I found an entire kitchen infrastructure behind the paneling on the wall in one of the bedrooms. I decided to use that same infrastructure with some updates for the new kitchen. I pulled back the wall separating the bedroom now kitchen from the adjacent bedroom to open it up a little to make that other bedroom the dining room. One of the bedrooms remained a bedroom and the other large bedroom was now the family room. The kitchen was mostly gutted because the ceiling lathe had pulled away on the ceiling and the plumbing had to be redone. I replaced 11 windows, the front door, replaced the aluminum wiring and hung the drywall. I did most if not all this work on the weekends for over 18 months by myself. I brought in a professional drywall finisher to tape and mud and his work was outstanding, best $2500 I spent.

Now there is a back story to all of this. My younger brother who lived with Mom all his life, has no job and no means to really take care of himself very well moved in upstairs rent free. I went into this project all along knowing that was the deal. I can’t just make him homeless, he needs help. Oh and I’m using my money to do the rehab.

I’m now rehabbing the downstairs by myself, the one I will rent out, where I converted the dining and living rooms into bedrooms making it a 2-bedroom apartment. Again, I replaced all the old aluminum wiring and redoing the plumbing. I replaced 9 windows and 2 doors (front and back), building closets, a laundry room and rerouting plumbing into the warm walls rather than a cold crawl space.

Many reading this are asking themselves why do all of this work yourself it could be done faster with help or using contractors. Yes, you are right, and I’ve asked myself the same question, but I have made an agreement with myself that when I get it ready for drywall I will use contractors to hang and finish the drywall, install the LVP flooring, hang interior doors, install the trim and do the kitchen cabinets and countertops. I like doing this work on weekends its relaxing but if I want to scale and amass rental properties I need to take these skills and use them to better plan rehabs and allow others to do the work while I’m still working my 40 hour a week JOB.

I’m handy and can do a lot of this work, don’t know where I learned how to do all of it since my daytime job is in the computer field but it’s fun. But I can also use these skills to allow me to better assess the work a property needs for a rehab and more accurately scope out work to keep costs under control. I will start looking for others that may want to help. Either a partner that is not working the 40 hour a week job or a money partner that wants to JV on some flips or rentals. If you are in the Baltimore area and you want to talk reach out.