Florida Flip 2...More Demo and Moving In

More Demo and Moving In Hello everyone. It's time for another segment for our story. I don't want to overload the pictures. So far we have gotten the kitchen walls out. We have two more walls to go and then we should be wide open 12-15 We have scheduled the carpet installation at the other flip which means we have to get this house ready for us to move into while we work on it. We will use the master bedroom for our "living" and we will set up a table for kitchen work next to the refrigerator that we saved. Mike is in the master bedroom taking out the baseboards. The baseboards are out. While Mike works on that I get the closet ready by painting it. There are a lot of nooks and crannies in closets...ugh!!! They are not my favorite thing to paint Next we sweep down the ceiling, the walls and the bedroom floor. Now it's time to paint. Mike rolls the ceiling. After he does that I start to cut in the corners on the ceiling and the walls. My cut in. Mike rolling the walls. Now we have to wait for the paint to dry. On to more demo in the main area Mike tearing up the front wall. It's starting to disappear. That was all we did that day. We had to get back to the other house. A new day!! 12-16 We bought some floor paint for the master bedroom. It was just too gross to move into so we decided to make it fresh. I did the cut in which is my job while Mike rolled the floor paint on. What a team we are After we cleaned up the brushes and the rollers we got back to the main section. The walls are gone except for the studs. Now it's time to take the soffit down. Most of the houses in this neighborhood were built in the 70's. Most of them had and still have soffits in the bathrooms and the kitchens. Mike and I think they make the homes look old so we take them out. Time for the kitchen soffit to come down. Mike uses the reciprocating saw and the ax to start the process. Mike starting on the soffit. Ooh.....it's coming down. And it is down. Time for me to clean up the mess. Mike sweeping up the final debris. Wow what a day!!! We moved out of the other house and now we are setting up to stay here. Mike puts the plantation doors back on the windows in the master bedroom. That is the one room where we can keep the window coverings Niki, our pug, has a new home in the hall closet. This poor dog has moved more times than most people. She is good with it as long as she has her bed My temporary kitchen which is so much better than the last house Our living quarters in the bedroom. and We are moved in but we still have the bathroom to do at the other house. We are almost done with that house Finally we have filled the garage so it's time to call our dumpster company. They give us a discount if we fill it the same day they drop it off. Sounds good to me. The garage is full. The dumpster is here. It should take us a couple of hours to load it up We got a little carried away and made it quite full. I jump on top to stomp some stuff down. We are done and the first dumpster is being hauled away Well that's all for now. We need to do a lot of planning and a lot of shopping for the next few rounds. I love the planning but Mike and I both hate the shopping. I hope you all enjoyed this story. Lisa

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