House Flipping Day 1

We purchased a house 2 years ago.  The market was bad. There were foreclosed houses on the market and we picked up a trashed house for a steal.  Our problem was that even if we fixed it up, no one was buying houses.  We found out that the place could be rented out for $1000 a month if we fixed it and made it livable again.   We spent $10,000 including a new water heater to start with.  The second year, we added a new HVAC unit and a new roof, adding approximately another 10,000 to the purchase price.  We paid $70,000 for the house, put 20,000 into it and received 23,000 in rent for 2 years (our renter ripped us off of the last month rent, but that is another story).  On first inspection, we need to paint and carpet the entire house again, fix some rotten wood on the outside and see what else is broken before putting it onto the market.  Our realtor says that preliminary estimate for sale would be in the 130,000's.   The market was really hot and we sold for 25,000 more than our original estimate.


All I can say is gross. Our renter moved out and left the place disgusting. She did not pay her last months rent, she broke the door to the garage and bragged about cleaning the carpets. No amount of cleaning would have saved those carpets.


 There were three bedrooms. In the master, someone had knocked something off of a table and it ran down the wall and stained the floor, which I guess wasn't too bad, but who doesn't clean the wall when they spill something?

 The master bath toilet had been cleaned, but the tub still had scum in it. I used an entire bottle of a cleaner called "The Works" with no luck. When you don't clean a bathtub for months, it just has to be cleaned over and over again until all the sweaty body yuk decides to break loose.

 The ceiling fan in the master bedroom had a fat layer of dust on it. I grabbed a face mask and the ladder and chunks of dust fell to the floor.

 The second bedroom had a light place on the carpet where the bed had been. The walls had some really good dings and the closet door was inside the closet.

The third bedroom looked like a couple of drunks had a party with gallons of grape juice. She bragged that she had cleaned it and I could see the marks, but I guess she doesn't understand that stains don't come up when they have been lying on the floor for a month or more.

 The threshold to the bedroom was also broken.

I did not get to the laundry area.  When we purchased the house, I had tile laid there thinking it would be easy maintenance.  I am so glad that I did that.  The pictures will tell the tale, I took two.

I wonder if the renter thought those were clean.


 The kitchen cabinets were sticky. Even the realtor commented on how gross they were. Since we plan on painting them, they have to be scrubbed. I started working on them, but hubby noticed a bad leak in the water in the laundry room and cut me off. *sigh* The light does not work. The renter had not called to tell us the light didn't work, so we have another surprise. I got to scrub cabinets in the dark.  The fridge had brown liquid inside it.

 The Great Room that has the family room and dining room combined was disgusting. Cobwebs and bugs were on every wall and under every window.  I am not 100% sure, but I believe all those brown specs are roach poo.  We hired an exterminator for her a few months ago, so these are not recent.

 There is also what appears to be human feces on the floor and the laminate has a place that is scratched beyond repair. The renter had broken the chandelier in half. The lights were on the floor. Short of hanging from it, I am not sure how that happened.

 A few months ago, we replaced the HVAC unit. I left the renter with a stack of filters for the intake vent. It was covered in dust so I grabbed a ladder to let the chunks fall and when I opened it I was shocked to find no filter at all inside the vent. Great. So my brand new heating system was being used without a filter. This was either done because the renter was really stupid, or on purpose. I can only guess which.

 We will hire someone to paint and carpet, but they cannot work until the house is clean enough to paint.  Our goal is to clean up the inside and outside and have the contractor come work.  We arrived at the house after work on Friday and I worked on the tubs. I took a cobweb duster and started with all the ceiling fans. I tried to knock the cobwebs off the walls and I started work on the window sills. I had to stop because I was getting sore, so we decided to pull the carpet up and get it ready to haul to the dump. It was 80 degrees in the house and I had just turned the A/C down so it had not had time to cool the place off. It was hot, hard work and because we had the garage door open, there was no time for the A/C unit to cool the house. It was miserable work and I was sweating inside my face mask. I washed the lower cabinets, but hubby turned the water off before I got to the fridge.


Tomorrow's goals:  Mow grass, cut bushes in front yard, see if more cleaning is possible inside house.  It's Saturday and the plumber would make an emergency call, but we would be charged for an emergency call, so we are going to see if we can figure out what is wrong with the valve for a temporary fix.  If we can temporarily fix the valve, we can turn the water back on and continue to clean.





Want to read more?  View Post #2 here:  http://emmafrancisisathome.blogspot.com/2016/11/diary-of-house-flip-post-2.html