We were very fortunate enough to recently buy our second
dream home for a great deal. We had bought
our first home with the goal of turning it into a rental as it is in a perfect
location and is a perfect size (not too big - not too small). This process just happened a little faster
than we were expecting. That’s what life
is filled with, though - unexpected things happening at the most unexpected
times. Luckily this unexpected situation
was definitely for the better. Since
this process happened sooner than expected, we weren't as far along in the renovation process as we had hoped before putting it up for rent.
Let me tell you, the overall process of "flipping" our home to be up to our quality standards is a TON of work when undertaking the renovations all by ourselves. Matt and I come home from our “more than full
time jobs” as engineers and immediately work on our rental. This is very exhausting as we need to get
this house up for rent as fast as possible.
Lots of friends have asked us why we don’t just show it in the condition
it is in and the answer is simple… we want our products and name associated
with a high quality product, not something that ‘we promise we are going to fix’. Not that the house is falling apart or
anything – it’s not, we just want it to be beautiful and pristine. Our goal is to have the house be as maintenance free as possible for both ourselves and our renters. The funny thing is we have fixed a lot of
little problems that we wish we would have fixed when we lived in the house. We used to have a blanket in front of our
back door since there was a gap which air could get though which was super annoying. Now we have completely fixed the weather
stripping and threshold of the door to have no gap. Man, do I wish we would have fixed that job
way earlier.
The top picture is looking down on how nasty and rotted the threshold used to be and the bottom picture is the proper way the door should have looked all along :)
Another thing we have done is completely re-wire and add
electrical with new 3 prong plugs on the right breakers. I am super jealous of our soon to be renters
of having this amenity. We had to have
lots of extension cords and 2 to 3 prong converters all over our house. The picture below is of a nasty 2 prong plug that used to be in the house and we had pulled Romex for a connection to a new, pretty, white, 3 pronged plug :).
It is great having the peace of mind that we now know there
is no knob-and-tube wiring and that everything is wired correctly with a
ground.
Doing this renovation work is not for the faint at heart as
this has become our second full time job.
Our social lives have definitely taken a hit which can be hard when our
friends invite us to go out and we feel bad constantly saying no. The thing we remember is that this is a ton
of work right now, but once we get the rental up and running, it will be self-sufficient
for a long time. There is no doubt in
our minds that this is worth it, especially because we love doing it.
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