All Forum Posts by: Christopher B.

Investors and homeowners have the exact same sentiment about you as you do them. If you vet an investor for legitimaticy and have a solid contract then you should have no issues getting paid at all. Just as they should vet the contractor for the same. If I don't pay a sub they file a lien on my house then I can't sell that house until it's resolved. So the chance of them getting paid is pretty much guaranteed because I've got to get paid. I don't pay people before they've earned their take and expose myself to that liability though, especially when contractors have easy recourse against me and I have none against them. 

Thanks Mathew. I'm not happy about the overage but have a few line items I can trim if needed.  

Alright, it has been a busy couple weeks but we've made some progress and I signed the contract to sell the house for full asking price this past weekend. WOO HOO! The buyers wanted to make some changes but the city would not allow any changes to the approved designs. I figured this would be a deal breaker but they came back the next day with a full price offer. I love selling the house for my desired price but I've never pre-sold a house this early so it will be interesting to see how that goes. I laid out some ground rules upfront and the buyers as well as their agent seem great so I think it will go smoothly. 

Progress: The footers for the additions have been poured and block laid. The framing for the addition under the original sleeping porch has been complete and everything but the roof for the 2 story addition has been completed (my pics are a few days old though). So the house is now sitting back down on a foundation again which is always a good feeling. 

It has rained at some point about everyday for the past 5 days as we are entering spring rain season here in East TN, so my framers have been bouncing between our project and a new construction project as weather has dictated. We've got the brick and framing scheduled for completion by next Friday, after inspections we should be ready to begin MEP on the 17th. This will put us at about 4 weeks for the two additions, structural repairs, all framing, and all masonry. I'm pretty satisfied with that and project a finish date of mid-June, hopefully sooner. 

Budget: We're $2,600 over budget which considering the scope of the project and the fact it's a 92yr old house I'm not torn-up about. However, about $1800 of this I feel should have been included in the original SOW. This is the first project with this GC and there has been a couple miscommunication's and ultimately it is my fault for not making sure items got line-itemed in the final agreed upon SOW. We've improved our communication and have taken extra steps to clarify no more slip-ups happen. 

Lastly, as you can see from the pics we uncovered the original cedar shake siding which is in excellent shape. I've decided to install cedar shake on the rest of the house to match. This should look great and hopefully save a little for the budget as I budgeted for all new vinyl siding on the entire house. 

Coming along. Sadly we must remove the chimney at the roof as it's in terrible shape and too costly to rebuild

Garage addition

Looking into garage door. 

Bad picture but I'm in the dining room looking into what will be a short hall and the powder room

I'd like some input from anyone that has gone through this. I'm in the framing stage of a large reno on a 1925 colonial. I've been approached by pre-approved buyers who want to buy at my full asking price and make some changes. 

Requested Changes: The house has a 2 story addition; a 500sf garage on ground level with a master suite on the 2nd floor. They want to convert the garage into a master on main and turn the upstairs into a bonus room then have final approval of material selections. They're ok with the extra costs and are willing to pay a non-refundable deposit. This will be a 2 week delay for us which potentially can be mitigated with a quicker close on the back end. 

Now, I won't give final approval of selections away. The location, house, and lot are all prime so I'm confident I can get my price either way. The extra work and square footage, at cost +20% only nets me an extra $5k. 

Anyone that's been down this route have any takes? 

Stray away from particle board and melamine cabinets.. (Home Depot and lowes). Find your local rta cabinet supplier and get something that is of solid wood that will last longer. Don't create future work for yourself by being cheap on the front end.

As you've stated you don't know how it's done. If you don't understand even the basics of how a house is rehabbed then they will see you coming a mile away and it wont go well for you. The book has a lot more information than just the rehab process as well. It explains the entire process of investing in a house from acquisition to disposition.

If you think being handy is a requirement go reach out to a few home builders. 

$900 to a friend's father. Could have gotten double or more if I'd taken it to the open market but I knew it was going to a good home.

Found an 1823 log cabin hidden under a 1920 farm house I bought

WW1 Pistol in an attic

1950's girly mags hidden in a wall.

Architectural drawings of TVA damns from the 40's

All the std gross items

Footer for garage addition

This beauty was covered with a solid layer of plaster. Probably the shallowest firebox I've ever seen. 

T

Tore off the carport roof on left, front porch, and patio on right. Contemplating if I want to remove the aluminium siding or not. It's in a great shape and has an 8" lap vs 5" if we go with vinyl. Though the cedar shake below is in good shape from what we've seen and I'm leaning towards exposing it and just doing repairs and painting. 

Braced old sleeping porch above, removed concrete porch and foundation; have dug for footer.

Backside of house. Foundation has been demoed to corner. Repairs to the band joist started here. Footer dug. The house on this corner has 2 walls underneath as well as the bracing seen here holding it up.