I’ve been working on another fix and flip in Boise.  This one is over budget and way behind schedule. We are now crashing into other plans I’ve made and it’s maddening to be going back and forth so much, trying to finish the house between other commitments.

I bought the house sight unseen.  I was in California when my realtor contacted me with a house which she thought would make a good fix and flip.  She wanted to submit an offer right away because this one would go fast.  We put in a cash offer that was 10k over asking and it was accepted.  We closed on July 18th.  I had expected 2 months of rehab.

First Issue – The Stairs

When I saw the house, the first thing I noticed (after the smell) was that there were stairs in the living room going down to the basement.  The stairwell had a 5’2″ clearance at one point. I needed to figure out how to resolve that issue first because the solution could have a snowball effect on other steps in the process.

There seemed to be only 2 options: 1) Move the stairs. 2) Open up the ceiling by cutting out a portion of the living room floor.

I brought in a carpenter to get a professional opinion. He charged me $100 for the consultation and bid. His recommendation was to cut into the living room floor. He gave me a bid which I accepted. I had called 3 carpenters. He was the only respondent and he could get started right away. I was anxious to get started.

The Kitchen

My realtors had lots of recommendations for the rehab on this property. They wanted to see the wall between the kitchen and the dining room opened up. They also suggested that I keep the original cabinetry and add a dishwasher. This turned out to be problematic. I ordered a dishwasher and had it delivered only to find out that the cabinets were non-standard size. One of my realtors is a designer, so she conferred with the carpenter on building up the height for the lower cabinets and making a frame for the new counter top that would extend beyond the lower cabinets and be flush with the face of the dishwasher. By the time we were done with all of that, it would have saved me a lot of time and money had I just replaced all the cabinets with new, pre-built cabinetry.

(To be continued…)