Flip House 1...Part 7

Chapter 7......The Month Of November Wrap Up In this chapter a lot of different things are going on so we will be all over the place working. This house is driving Mike nuts because he likes to work on one project, finish it, and move on to the next project. Well... we haven't been able to do that. 11/21 Back to the fencing. Mike and I picked up more fencing to complete the back fence. This is our process. First Mike drills into the concrete. And then he screws in the concrete anchors. After that is done the post has to be bolted down. Then we put the white cover over the post and start screwing in the fence panels. We have to make a gate for the fence since they don't pre make them. After we cut it down and add the wood for the cross bracing we install it. The fence and gate is done on one side. The fence and gate on the other side by the garden area. While we are working on the fence Mark 2 shows up to finish the pool. He starts off by cleaning the pool with some potent chemicals. Next he makes repairs on the pool with new fiberglass. He rolls on fiberglass to patch it. Mike calls our old curbing man to see if he can give us a quote. He says he can come the following day to give us a quote on both houses. The next day he shows up and gives us a reasonable price. We do the same thing on every Florida house for landscaping. First we get rid of the overgrowth. Then we have curbing installed around the house and around any larger trees or garden areas. After that we re sod up to the curbing. Then we out rock in the gardens to keep it clean before we paint the house. Then we plant. It makes a little more work to do all the planting at the end but it keeps the house the cleanest for painting. His crew will be back before the end of the month. That night Mike and I start working on the wood floor in the kitchen and dining area. The hardest part of this job is figuring out to start the job, lol. We are installing a real Mahogany click and lock floor. We start at our angled entrance. 11-23 Mark 2 is back to work on the pool. He starts off by rolling on the first coat of resin and this is some really stinky stuff. We got our first quote to replace the front window and back window of the house. It came in at $1576.00 for 2 windows. If it was my house I would have replaced the windows and put in Formica counters in the Kitchen and finished the back fence. Since it is not my house and I don't think many women buying a house will want Formica so we will have to pass on the windows. At least the new owners, if they want to replace the windows will get the tax credit. But a lot of the houses here still have working original windows. And on that note the granite men show up to do the templates for our tops. Here are our templates. And They will use those templates back at the shop to make our granite tops. That night Mike and I get back to work on the kitchen floor. It's coming along. 11-24 Mark 2 shows up to do the final coat of resin on the pool. I get back to doing a job I was avoiding in hopes that we would be able to get new windows. I am going through a ton of razor blades. Here I am scraping away. And on the back window making a mess. Mark 1 shows up to pressure wash the driveway and prep it for staining. Mark is hungry for work so Mike and I decided to give him some extra work. We could have done the driveway but this way it will get done faster. Mark also gave us a quote for ripping out our old lawn and putting in new sod. Later on the we get an estimate form a painter to do the outside of the house. He came in at $2580.00 which is way too much. Back to the drawing board. The Home Depot measuring man showed up to measure our house for carpet. We found a carpet that will match our counters, cabinets, and wood flooring perfect, at least that's what we hope. Home Depot had to do a full measurement before they can give us a final price. 11-27 Today Mike and I started painting the bedrooms. Again he does all the rolling and I do the cut in. Here he is painting one of our many dreaded closets. They are dreaded because there is no way to get done without making a mess. The space is just too tight. It was a good day. We got both bedrooms done. Home Depot called us with our real quote. They are trying to nickel and dime us on the install. That's how they can advertise $139.00 for whole house installation because they charge extra for everything. We told them we would have to shop around some more. We went to a couple of smaller carpet places that were recommended. Yes they could match the "price" but the quality of thee carpet was far less than the HD carpet. Finally we go back to Home Depot and talk to the Flooring man. After a lot of haggling they gave us an additional $736.00 off. Ok we can handle that. when the carpet comes in they will call us with an install date. Now we have to move it along in this house. While we were there I also ordered the master bathroom vanity which turned out to be a small fiasco but I won in the end. They don't carry the vanity in the store so I have to order it through their catalog. I know the vanity because we used the same one in TN otherwise I never order something without seeing it. So Home Depot's on-line site had the double vanity for $529.00 with free shipping and the HD store catalog has the exact same vanity for $699.00 What a rip. So I have to talk to a salesman and the manager because I want the on-line price plus my 10% off. I also want it shipped to the store and not my house this way if there is a problem with the vanity DH has to take care of it. Finally I get the $699.00 vanity for $476.00. Woo hoo. So between the carpet and the vanity it was a good day of savings. 11-29 Today Mark is going to stain our driveway. We decided to keep the driveway since it is in good shape and hopefully make it look better. The first square is stained. I hope this looks good. Mark and Rick staining the driveway. While Mark and Rick are outside staining the driveway, Mike and I are inside painting the bathroom and the hallway. We get done with tat and start the ceiling in the den area. The driveway has 2 coats of stain. The next day is busy. Mark and rick will be back to do the border and lines on the driveway and the curbing will also get done. the outside should really start coming together. Woo hoo. Mark starts off by taping off the driveway. The curbing crew show up to work. It's a pretty cool process. First they dump in the sand And then they mix in the concrete and then add water. After it is mixed on their truck they put the mix into a wheelbarrow and bring it to the curbing machine. They shovel the mix into the machine and it spits out curbing. How cool is that? I love it. It's the little things that make me happy, lol. Next they smooth out the curbs. And add some expansion joints. Now that they finished the curbing at this house Mike and I go over to the other house with them. We come back to see how Mark did with the border. We talked about doing the border and putting in 2 or 3 vertical lines across the driveway but no seeing it we decided against the additional lines. We don't want to make the original squares in the driveway stand out. Here is our driveway with the border. Now we have to pick a house color. We might do it the same as the border. Well that finishes up our second month in this house. I think we are doing pretty well. Now we will be in for the final push. I hope you all enjoyed our story. Lisa

Flip House 1...Part 5

Chapter 5....Time To Move The Dock And Say Goodbye To October Hello everyone. I am happy to say that Mike and I took the whole day off. Our neighbors invited us for dinner and a boat ride. They really want us to keep that house. Well after a back breaking day with the shed and the pool enclosure Mike and I are left to clean up the back area. On one side of the screen room there was an old pot that was about 2 feet by 20 feet and filled with sand. I guess at one time it was a garden. Anyway we have to bring it up front to the dumpster and it's too heavy with all the sand. We also have to clean out the back garden which was a raised garden. Raised gardens next to the pool just don't mix. Since we don't have a wheel barrel I have to use our hand truck and two 5 gallon buckets to get all of the sand out. I must have taken at least 20 buckets of sand out of the planter. Now it's light enough for Mike to help me carry up front to the dumpster. Then I move on to the back garden and take out about 8 buckets of sand. It's not enough but I am done. Mike works on taking more stuff like wiring and broken lights off the back of the house. There seems to be an endless amount of wires, screws, and hooks on this house. 10-11 It's time to get the bathtub out of the second bathroom. It sounds easy right? Well it's a cast iron tub and Mike and I can't budge it. Mike says "I watched them do this on TV." Uh oh now I know this will be interesting. He said in order for us to get it out we have to break it. OK, how do we break it? You guessed it. So Mike gets the sledgehammer and starts pounding away at the tub. Nothing is happening. I said "are you sure about this?" Yeah we just need one crack and it should break. Oh..kay. This tub is really stubborn. I think they must have fast forwarded the episode that Mike watched on TV, lol. Finally, Mike breaks the tub. Now the toilet is in the way and Mike is ready to get it out of the way. And we pull the tub out. Next we have to get the tub through the door. Mike works on breaking it while I get the hand truck. This tub is really really heavy. FYI, if you ever break a tub like tis be very careful of the edges. They are very sharp and will cut you up. The tub is broken. Yay. We finally get the tub out and it was not as easy as TV, lol. At least not the cast iron ones. After more hours than anticipated the tub and the toilet are in the dumpster. For the rest of the day we empty out the garage and load it onto the dumpster. 10-12 Today Mike 2 is going to move our dock from our second house to this house. We will eventually get a new dock for that house. Mike 2 and his friend have to go to the second house by boat. We will help them unbolt everything and then they will tow it to this house. Mike and I drive over to the second house and wait for them. We can see them coming down the channel. At least it's a nice day. Here they are getting the dock ready to move. Once they get the bolts off of the seawall they slide the ramp onto the dock. And away they go and Mike 2 says "thanks for the dock." Mike and I will meet them at the house. It takes them awhile to get over to the house. We actually were worried about them. It was a little choppy on the Gulf and they had to hang on to the dock. But they make it safe and sound. Once they get their, Mike helps them bolt in the ramp to the seawall. And oops we don't have enough anchors so we have to run to the store. Twenty eight dollars later for a bag of bolts and the dock is in place. After they go back and get the boat out of the water we meet Mike 2 at the second house. He is taking our refrigerator and stove. He is also going to come back to take the laminate flooring throughout the house. If we are really lucky we can get the second house stripped before we move into it. The second and last dumpster for this house ready to go. Now that we have taken 2 full dumpsters of stuff out of this house we have to start shopping and re fill the house. 10-13 Mike and I are back in the kitchen. Mike makes a new post so we can have electric at the island. Next Mike hangs boards(furring strips) for the sheet rock to be nailed to. Yay now it's time for one of my favorite jobs. I know, just call me strange, lol. It's time for me to put the insulation back in the ceiling. FYI, is you are touching insulation and it irritates you cold water will help. Here I am putting in the insulation. And The kitchen ceiling is ready for sheet rock. The next day Mike 2 showed up to pressure wash the roof. Now it's time to start the shopping process. Mike and I hate shopping and we need a lot of stuff to put this house back together. First we started to shop for and price Kitchen cabinets. They have gotten so expensive. We ended up buying stock cabinets from Lowe's because they were 25% off and I had an additional 10% off coupon. We just couldn't beat that price anywhere else and we do have a budget to watch. We also picked out the stainless steel appliances and we picked up our new bathtub. We will make multiple trips back and forth to Lowe's to pick everything up. We don't want them to deliver the cabinets because if there is a problem it becomes a hassle. Mike and I pick out our cabinets from the shelves and have them put on skids with our name on it. This will make it easy for us to get some every time we are there. Our new bathtub is in place. We are going to tile the outside walls. Our seawall also got pressure washed. We called a landscape contractor who we have used in the past. We asked him for a quote on tearing out the concrete in the driveway and installing pavers and also putting half pavers around the pool. His quote came back at $16,000. We will not be doing pavers, lol. We also called Norm who is our old drywall contractor. He said he can do our job at the end of the week. Woo hoo. It's so much better to let the professionals do drywall especially when the plaster has to be matched. For the remainder of the week Mike and I pick up all of the Kitchen cabinets and get rid of all the boxes. Thank goodness we brought our small motor home down. We took out the back sofa and use it like a cargo van. We also had the appliances delivered and they are ready to go. We picked up the bathroom vanity and the sink and a ton of small stuff. I think with all of this shopping Mike and I are being very supportive of the economy, lol. We also did a lot of smaller jobs around the house. We bought new doors and changed some of them out. It is amazing ow long it takes to make one door fit. Mike also took down an old antenna off the roof and took out a clothesline. I would love to have that clothesline back in TN. I got stuck with the window tinting removal job. Holy cow. There are over 50 small windows in this house and I have to remove all of the tinting. We would have left it on but it is cracked and peeled in too many places so it looks really bad. I will have to do this job a little at a time. It's the last week of October and Norm, our drywall, man shows up. Woo hoo. Lets get the kitchen going. Mike helps Norm and Kevin hang the drywall on the ceiling. While they do that I paint boards for the back soffit. When they tore off the screen room there were some rotted boards that we have to replace. Me painting the boards. Kevin gets the drywall done in the bathroom. And the Kitchen drywall is up. Woo hoo. Now it has to dry. Norm will be back on Monday to do the plaster. Over the weekend Mike and I work on hanging the soffit boards. Nailing them in. Moving along. Hanging a soffit board and then a trim piece. Now it's finished. And on Monday Norm shows up to do the plaster. Well that is what we did our first month. We have a lot more to go to pull this house together. I hope you all enjoyed the story. Lisa