Flip House 1...Part 3

Chapter 3....The Kitchen Demo Hi everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful week. Mike and I went to our next door neighbors house last night for a small party and to watch the Boat Parade that comes through our canals during the Holidays. It was a lot of fun and a beautiful night. Mike had also been talking to a young man who wants to get into flipping. Mike explained how tough it is and how in this time there are just too many unknowns. It's not as easy as some people think. Believe me it's not like those TV shows, lol. Anyway, we gave him our Realtors name and number because she is 1. very good and 2. very upfront. Turns out they talked and our Realtor is trying to talk him out of flipping. She doesn't think he has enough experience and she doesn't want to see him lose his shirt. I thought that was pretty darn ethical. Way to go lady. She is not allowed to see this site or our house until it is complete. We want to surprise her. OK, enough babbling. It's time for the next chapter of our story. This time we will be tearing out the kitchen and what a job it was. The kitchen is in the center of the house so it is a main focal point and then the water view which is just beyond the kitchen. Our original kitchen had a wall we want to remove. The reason we are removing this wall is because it blocks the water view when you enter the house. Mike is very strict about having a water view when you walk in the front door. It's a must for us. Because after all if you are buying in this neighborhood you are buying it for the water. Here are a couple of original pictures. That one has the old lumadome in the middle. We will take this out to make the kitchen bigger. In this one you can see the cabinets that hang down from the ceiling. They block the water view. We start our demo by taking off the cabinet doors. Taking out the cabinets on the refrigerator wall which will also be removed. Ah, Mike's favorite. It's show time. Here I am taking off more doors. Mike being gentle and unscrewing doors. Now that the door fronts are off it's time to get the cabinets out. We start working on the section of cabinets that block the water view. The top ones are just about down and now we can start on the lower cabinets. It's time to break out another tool. Woo hoo. Mike is going to use the reciprocating saw or saws all to cut through the counter top so we can get it apart. And the sink is out. My turn. Since we need the refrigerator we move that into the living room. We already took the dishwasher out to the garage. Next is the oven. We manage to get all the cabinets into the garage. We are starting to get one heck of a pile out there, lol. Now it's time to take the wall out. Mike starts with his sledgehammer. Oh yuck, it's plaster. That means the walls are sheetrock and "then" they are covered with plaster which makes them really hard to break through. It's going to be a long and messy job. But the clean up girl is here. I fill up about 20 commercial garbage bags with plaster, sheetrock, and dust. Mike is through to the other side. We are done for the day. We got the wall out and everything cleaned up. We are open to the front of the house. And open to the back. Not too bad for one day of work. The next day is Sunday and we took the day off to do a little homework. We went to some Open Houses and talked with some Realtors about what is going on. We know a lot of the Realtor's here but it's always good to catch up. We have been watching this neighborhood for many years and I have a book that I write down every house that has been listed since 2003. There have been many many changes over the years. This time we have to be better than what is out there. OK, it's Monday. Fun time and socializing is over. Time too take the soffit out. Mike starts off by taking the ceiling fan out. Next it's the lumadome and the lights. We now have to figure out the best plan of attack. It looks like we should start at the top front corner and work our way through. Mike breaks through the plaster just opening things up. Next he has to cut out some 2x4's so we can continue. Then he uses the sledgehammer. It looks like that will be the process. Break it open a little, cut the 2x4's with the saws all, and then use the sledge to yank things down. There is blown in insulation in this house which makes a huge mess during demo. It's like it is snowing. At least it's very clean insulation. The last house we did had lots of mice droppings, yuck!! The soffit mess and it seems like I just can't keep up on the cleaning. Mike making more of a mess for me. I think he enjoys this, lol. There is insulation and plaster everywhere. We use a broom and make sure all of the furring strips in the ceiling are free of any debris. I must say the attic looks like it is in really good shape. The ducting also looks pretty new. Mike is on the final section in the ceiling. After a lot of banging and a lot of garbage bags the soffit is down and everything is clean.(at least until Mike gets the sledgehammer again) And Well since we don't have a kitchen I am using the master bath as my kitchen. I love to cook and I know I will be so excited to get back to a real kitchen. Here is my FL kitchen. Our living quarters for the next few months. And Well that's all for this week. Once we get everything apart we can start putting it all back together again. Lisa

Flip House 1...Part 2

Look Out Florida...here we come:):)

In order for Mike and I to go to Florida to work on the houses we have to shut down our house for the winter in TN. On September 29 we prepped our TN house and loaded up the mini motorhome(van). We left for FL in the wee morning hours on September 30. Woo hoo. We are so excited to get back to some sunshine. It was a rough year in TN this year. Mike promised that when we first got to Florida we would take a break and relax for a week or so before we start work on the house. Promises, promises. We arrived at the house at 6pm on September 30. The last time we saw the house was when we made an offer on it last April so it was very exciting to actually see, touch, and feel what we bought. the only difference is that the furniture was taken out by the previous owner's son. First things first. I have to clean up our new living quarters. We plan on living in the master bedroom and using the master bath as our bath and our kitchen. It will be a little awkward but at least we are on site to get this house done. I wash down the walls and scrub the floors while Mike unloads the van. Niki, our pug, is confused but I'm sure she will get into the swing of things real soon. She's been with us a long time now and she knows we are a little bit crazy, lol. She is also ecstatic because we are setting up here bed in the bedroom with us. She had "never" slept in our room before. We get the air mattresses set up and Mike turns to me and says "we need to call in a dumpster" I knew it. So much for a vacation. We are going to start work right away and we are actually both happy about it. We just can't resist work especially when the sun is shining. Mike and are nice weather workers. 10-1 Our first full day in Florida. Woo hoo. First we have to go shopping. Mike drops me off at Walmart to pick up kitchen supplies and food while he goes to Home Depot for tools. We didn't know how much stuff we could fit in the van on the way down so needless to say we need a lot of stuff. Let the spending begin. Mike bought the biggest Dewalt battery operated tool set. He said all of the men were drooling because he got the best toys of the day, lol. Woo hoo. We are back at the house and ready to work. This is our favorite thing to do. The first and most fun part of remodeling is the demo and we got a brand new sledgehammer just for this job. We start working in the second bathroom. We are going to completely gut this bathroom and update the whole thing. Here are some original pictures. and Mike takes off the shower doors and brings them into the garage. Next he takes the track off the wall for the sliding shower doors. Next we work on getting the old tile off the wall. This turns out to be a fairly easy job considering a lot of the tile starts to fall off as we hammer. Me taking out tile. Mike working on the back wall of the shower. After we get the tile off the wall Mike takes the sledgehammer to try and break up the tile on the ceiling. Now we have to be careful. We don't want the whole ceiling to collapse on top of us. So that part isn't as easy as the walls. This is going to take a little more effort and a lot more mess. I stay in the bathroom to clean up the mess that we made. As you will all find out I spend an awful lot of time cleaning up after Mike. Mike works his way around the house tearing anything apart that he comes across. Here he is taking down one of the ceiling fans. Then he starts to take out the original intercom system. Check it out it was an 8 track player. It was probably "state of the art" at the time, lol. Next he starts to work on taking a half wall and a banister out. Here is the original wall and banister. It's a good thing I had that picture from April. Mike is tearing things apart faster than I can get in the same room as him. Mike taking the rails out. Then he takes the base off. And finally he gets to use the sledgehammer to bust out the wall. That was our first full day in Florida. I think we did pretty good so far. We already have quite a pile in the garage. I may really have to call the dumpster in soon. 10-2 Our second day of work. I start off the day by going into the bathroom to take down the wallpaper. Thankfully it is coming right off the wall. That's a first. Shh, now I probably jinxed myself for the next bathroom. I also clean up the debris that is in the bathtub. While I am working in the bathroom I hear Mike out back banging away. I run out with the camera and see that he has already taken most of an old wood cabinet apart. Here he is cleaning up the last of the cabinet pieces. We both go back into the bathroom. Mike starts to take down the mirror. I hate this part. You can only hope it comes off the wall in one piece and doesn't smash all over the place. Yay, it's coming off in one piece. We carry the mirror out to the garage together. Next is the vanity. Mike using the sledgehammer on the vanity. We got the sink off and now Mike is tearing apart the rest of the vanity. And the vanity is gone. Not too shabby for our first 2 days of work. There is much more to come. Next week's story will be our Kitchen demo. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and I will write again next Sunday night. Lisa