Week 5 of our 4 week flip

OK so I know it has been awhile since I posted. Ben had to go and have surgery again so that kind of threw a wrench in our lives momentarily. He is recovering nicely. We had a new surgeon & a new hospital do the repair. The new doctor said basically there is nothing that Ben could do to Tear it apart now.

But enough about that. I'm sure you are wondering how our flip is going.

· scrap popcorn ceiling off of living/dining room ceiling DONE

· re-texture living room, dining room, bedrooms & study DONE

· gut the existing bathroom IN PROGRESS- grout & finishing touches are all that is left

· gut the kitchen IN PROGRESS- still needs outlets, grout on granite, old gas pipes cut out, door for water shut-off, upper cabinet above stove, and appliances

· re-finish the hardwood floors

· new windows

· new roof DONE, well sort of done. The original roof guy did a crappy job & refuses to certify his work. Which is a big problem. He won’t be getting paid & we have to get another company out to re-do the work.

· paint the exterior of the house IN PROGRESS- brick is primed

· remove front fence DONE! Rest of fence still needs to get painted

· tear down existing sheds DONE

· move the washer/dryer hook-ups & hot water heater to new closet DONE!

· build master bedroom with closet & master bath on the existing patio foundation

· build family room on rest of patio foundation with french doors to backyard

· and, maybe, a little bit of yardwork IN PROGRESS- yard is being watered & mowed. After calculating how much it will cost in gas & time to maintain the yard from the time the contractors finish to the time it closes, we decided not to do any yardwork. If needed we will offer a concession but considering the yard looks as nice as the rest of the block, we are not too concerned.

We ran into a few snags along the way over the past 3 weeks.

Snag 1: The contractor let his Denver license expire and did not get the proper permits before he started the addition because he was trying to save money. Since the house was vacant for so long, it was on the vacant/abandoned list. All that means, is that there is a city official that drives by a couple of times a month to check on the house. He of course saw the work going on & saw that it was being done without permits & shut the job down until the inspector could come by. The inspector came by, told the contractor to get a valid license, and what permits he would need as well.

After a week and a half delay, the contractor had a valid license & permits. The permits cost a grand total of $85. Yes, $85. Seems like a HUGE amount to be concerned about, right. Before the city would approve the permits for the addition, they needed to see a floor plan.

Snag 2: While Home Depot was creating the plan, work was able to continue on the rest of the house. We had the furnace guy come out to certify the furnace. The furnace was shot. It was original to the house & had never been cleaned. So we needed to replace it. Not too big of a deal because we had planned this into the budget.

Well at this same time, the city came back & said we could not use the original patio foundation & we needed to increase the pitch of the roof for the addition. This added about $6000 work which was not budgeted for. So the addition had to go bye-bye :(

But this freed up a little money so we are able to put in air conditioning along with the new furnace, so it was not all bad.

Snag 3: Over Memorial weekend, someone kicked in the back door & stole a bunch of materials & tools. They took off with the tub, sink, toilet, shower tile and other misc things. Basically all of the materials for the new bathroom to the tune of about $1500. The contractor for some reason did not call the police or let us know until this past weekend. So we are trying work with the insurance company & see what we can do at this point to file a claim. If that is even possible.


But all in all, it is coming along nicely. And it is set to be done by Saturday! We already have it on the market & the feedback has been very good. It won't be long before it is under contract.

I have updated the photo gallery with some pictures from the past 3 weeks. Or you can see a slide show of the photos here. What do you think so far?