April 2

Well, I think this is it.  The final blog post.  

The house is finished, the renters are in (one moved in today, the other moves in tomorrow). 

All in all I have to say I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished.  We set out to rehab a house with the money we had and get it rented, and that's we did.   We set out with a budget of $26,000 for the rehab, and we ended up spending about $28,000 by my not-yet-finished estimates.  Its pretty close.  That's not to say we're not broke- we are.  What we didn't plan on was the 2 months we had to wait for our zoning hearing board.  I'm still upset about that.  It was such a useless formality which has ruined so many of our plans.  I estimate we spent about $2000 just living through those 2 months of waiting.  But our time frames were pretty accurate as well.  We thought we'd get everything done in 6 weeks, and it ended up being more like 10 once we had our zoning, however 2 of those weeks were because we were delayed by a contractor, so figure 8 weeks.

We learned so much doing this house.  We hired someone to do the PEX plumbing, but after I fixed all his mistakes, I'd be confident doing a whole house of PEX myself.  Ryan did most of the drywall, but through helping him and watching him I was able to do complete walls by myself by the end.  Same goes for electrics.  The more I looked at things and studied them, the more I understood them, or at least knew what I needed to read more about.  I estimate we could have saved close to $1000 by knowing then what I've learned by now, or about $6000 if I did the work we paid some contractors to do.   I think the biggest thing we learned is that we can do this.  Normal people can do this.  The TV shows don't show you all the crap you have to deal with, but if you deal with it, then it's do-able. 

Fanette and I couldn't have done this alone.  We need to thank a few people.  A big thanks to Mom and Dad who put us up in a room which was only supposed to be for a couple weeks and turned out to be a few months, including letting us store so much crap in the basement while waiting for our zoning.  A huge thanks to Ryan who came over nearly every day at the beginning of the project.  Not just for the work he did, but for the momentum he gave to the project at that critical time.  Same for Dad who came over many days near the start, and near the end when I was getting lonely in the big empty house.  A big thanks to the Habitat ReStore people who provided us with so much of the discounted supplies we needed, and the Freecyclers who responded to our 'wanted' posts with everything we needed to be comfortable in the house. 

And last but not least, I need to thank my wonderful wife.  We watch HouseHunters on HGTV and see these women who walk in to a brand new huge kitchen just remodeled and say, "I CANT live here, it doesn't have granite countertops", and equally disturbing things.  I married a woman who walked in to a house full of graffiti and holes kicked in the wall, with broken windows, crumbling walls and ceilings, no pipes for water or heat and fell in love with it.  She believed we could do this and was willing to get dirty doing it.  We spent 6 months not buying anything other than groceries, gas and building materials.   That's really not easy to do.  We'd evaluate $10 non-essential items to see if we REALLY needed them, and most times didn't buy them.  Most of the clothes I wear were bought in the 90's and packed away for 10 years.  In fact, buying a new pair of pants was such a big deal, it made it on to this blog.  But I digress. 

In the end I'm really proud of what we've done and hope to have more success doing it again in the future. 

-Rick

March 23-26

March 23rd - Sick day.  Which is amazing that through this whole project, this was really the first day I couldn't work due to being sick.
March 24th - Worked on my list
March 25th - Did the last 3 things on my list and Ryan came over and helped me adjust the water heater.   Got a visit from my Grandma who's coming in to town for a visit.
March 26th- Passed the last of all my inspections!!!  Insulated the attic, cleaned up stuff and started moving out. 

March 22nd

So on my list of things to do from the inspector:

Run the sump pump outside 5 ft from the house
Install a grabable handrail to the basement instead of the 2x4 on there now.
Replace bad GFI outlet
Reverse Hot/Cold in downstairs shower
Caulk tub
Reattach tiles
Secure toilet
Low water pressure in shower
Fix ground wire in upstairs bedroom
Add one outlet in upstairs bedroom

Today I mostly worked on getting the sump pump hooked up and my other outlet.  I also put on the hand rail, but that was a 2 minute job.  I went and bought a dehumidifier to help with the mildew in the basement.  Its running and taking a lot of water out of the air.   Bucket was half-full after being plugged in for 6 hours.  Installing the sump pump wasnt as hard as I thought, although it did invovle me slithering through the icky crawlspace.  Something I've been able to avoid for the past months.  I can now say I've been in every nook and crannie in this house. 

Although it wasnt on the list, I installed the dryer vent in the downstairs laundry.  I had the drill bits out and was poking holes in the wall so I figured why not. 

March 21

Had the rental inspection today at 2pm.  This was the one I was most worried about.   Spent the morning cleaning and working with the radiator guy today.  All is fixed.   The inspection went very well.   My worst fear was that he was going to either:
a) Point out something big (like I'd need to rebuild the foundation of the house)
b) Accuse me of doing some work without permits.

In the end he gave me a list of 12 easy things which I should be able to get done in a couple days. 

March 20

Spent the day getting ready for the rental inspection, which included getting a lot of stuff out of the house as well as hooking up the washer/dryer and changing the pex taps. 

Later on I repaired a lot of the floor tiles which were missing in the upstairs laundry room. 

March 19th

Ok - starting to get back in the swing of things.  Had the final building inspection today and passed.   Now have the rental inspection on Wednesday at 2pm.  Will see how that goes. 

Today I got more done before 7:30am when the inspector showed up than I did most of the other 3 days.   Installed my anti-tip on the stove, re-hooked a circuit that accidentally got disconnected and put up a shelf.  Then fixed a faulty outlet (the main one I was using for all my work!!), put up the 2 edges on the countertops and generally did odds and ends. 

Also, made a trip to mom and dads to take care of some stuff, go HD to get some pipess, to the county office to schedule the last inspection. 

March 18th

Inspector comes tomorrow so I should have done a lot today.   Did some but not as much as I could or should have.    Not sure what it is.  I'm just really tired of working on this house - although if I got my ass in gear it could all be done in a matter of a couple of days.  But I cant.   I miss my wife and I guess I'm angry about the zoning issue which wasted 2 months and thus made us be apart for now, so I'm actually upset at the house.   And now that the end is in sight, I seem to have lost motivation because of it.    

Cleaned the basement real good, Ryan cleaned the deck.  Put new plates on all the exposed wires downstairs and finished the trim for the wires and pipes.  Radiator guy came out but didn't get it all fixed.  :(  Keep finding new things which need to be fixed.   One is a circuit that now does not work.