Introducing The Eula House Flip

This is our latest Real Estate adventure. Chris (my husband) is far less excited about it than I.

This little house came to me via email from my property manager. The owner was looking to sell it as an owner-financed deal, and my manager thought of me. It helps that I’d mentioned to her that I was a) looking for a deal like this and b) had even gone to look at this exact house two years prior and had tried (unsuccessfully) to buy it then.

This deal had been on my mind for a long time (years). It is finally mine … I mean … ours. For those just catching up, Chris supports this hobby of mine and trusts my decision making but you should see how up his eyebrows can go when I pitch some of these ideas! When we did our walk through of this one he admitted that he really couldn’t see the vision of how it was going to work out, but that he trusts me so “good luck, please don’t ask me to do anything.”

Back to this house in particular…

Yes, it is uninhabitable (photos below). Yet that makes it all the more exciting in my opinion. This might seem like a crazy waste of money, but stick around. I have a feeling I’ll have good financial news to share once it’s all said and done.

So, for the curious: I agreed to a $20,000 purchase price for this house. It was originally a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom home with a single car garage. At some point, an effort was made to begin converting the garage to living space - but it wasn’t finished. Because the exterior wall has already been added (albeit, with issues) we are opting to keep it as a living space so that we can add a third bedroom and a designated laundry space.

The (former) garage space:

As you can see, the foundation of the house and the footer for the walls of the (former) garage end where the garage door used to be. When the prior owner put a wall up, they forewent any footer and now the bottom framing of this wall has wood rot from water seeping in from the outside. We’ll chop the bottom bit of this wall out and install a real footer to fix this issue and prevent it in the future. We’ll also raise the whole floor up a few inches before installing a subfloor so that it won’t be uneven.

The ceiling also needs attention, obviously. Then we will patch, retexture and paint it all. We’ll install a vinyl stick down floor and it’ll be a bedroom!

The view from the opposite side of this room shows what used to be a storage space. This will be converted into the bedroom closet (on the left) and a designated laundry space (on the right) as well as the water heater closet.

The Kitchen

This photo was taken from the door to the garage / future third bedroom. The back door is on the left, the entrance to the rest of the house is on the right.

The floors are in rough shape, the bottom cabinets will have to be replaced and the plumbing is something we will have to evaluate when we pull it out there is a gas hookup for the oven/stove on the right hand side. We will be pulling the old paneling off so we can find and repair any issues with the walls, and so the finished walls throughout the house are uniform.

There’s also some Sheetrock repair required on the ceiling.

The Living Room

We kind of love the front door - but unfortunately it is warped so badly that it does not open or close properly. We’ll keep it though and maybe find a way to up-cycle it somehow (feel free to share ideas).

The giant grate in the floor is the antiquated heating system, which is neither installed anymore nor are they serviced. We’ll pull that and the old equipment out and patch the floor. The original hardwood floor is covered in a black tar-like substance, probably from whatever floor they had in here previously, and it’s likely the floors won’t be salvageable. We will probably just do a vinyl floor in here as well.

Once again, the walls and ceiling will need patched, textured, and painted. The unique floating shelf space that separates the living room from the kitchen will stay. It’ll need cleaned but it’s unique and is in good shape considering. New trim throughout and a new window are also on the docket.

The door on the right hand side here is a small closet, which is nice but we’ll be using it for our central heating instead. Don’t worry - the hallway (where I stood to take this photo) has some built-in cabinets and drawers for storage.

The Bathroom

I have a love-hate relationship with this window. I love windows - but the location and size in this bathroom doesn’t make any sense.

We’ll be removing the window and framing up the exterior wall to close that off. That will allow us to put in an insert instead of using tile for the shower. The walls in here are covered in a water resistant paneling - but the walls are also soft which means damage is hiding back there.

We’ll pull all the paneling out, repair any damage, re-do the outlets and update any out of code wiring. Then the floor will definitely needs new subfloor (around the toilet in particular) and we will evaluate the plumbing once we open that up. The tub is an old style cast-iron - so we intend to reuse that because it is in great shape. It just needs cleaned up.

We’ll get a new toilet, but we’ll attempt to salvage the vanity.

Bedrooms 1 & 2

The two bedrooms aren’t in terrible shape. We’ll patch, texture and paint the walls and ceiling, refinish the floor (we want to try to keep the hardwood since it is original and is in really good shape), replace the windows and paint the doors.

These two rooms require the least amount of work.

The Exterior

The previous owner had the roof replaced, but didn’t repair any of the trim, fascia, or soffit. It means a little extra work to do that now instead of while the roof is off - but at least the roof is new.

The brick has separated from the building on the front, right-hand side. For now we are going to cover the gap to keep water out and eventually we will decide if it’s worth repairing or just pulling off and replacing with siding.

The door on the left leads to the kitchen, the door on the right currently leads to the (former) garage. We’ll be framing the second door out as it’ll soon be a closet, and all that damaged siding will be replaced. This kitchen window will also be replaced.

Also, I admit that I forgot to initially take photos of the rear. There used to be a big wooden porch back here that was collapsing on itself (absolute safety hazard) and the back door wouldn’t close. It was always just swinging in the wind. Very secure. So, this is after the porch was hauled to the dump and the back door was replaced.

That, my friends, is what our most recent project looks like and what our plan is.

For those of you who know me personally and are paying attention to today’s date you might be asking, “aren’t you 9 month pregnant?” Yes I am.

Lucky for me, I have a really good contractor (and it’s not my husband).

He’s started on this for me already and I’m excited to say I’ll have updates for you all soon! We can go over the numbers a different time, and I promise to keep it really with you. Real Estate investing can be an absolute money-suck, I’ll be honest. Even so, I’m excited about getting life back into the house that’s been vacant for years and hopefully see a nice little return on investment. Fingers crossed it works out as we hope.

See you in a few weeks with updates!

Cheers,

Kathryn