Many many moons ago, I wrote my last post, which focused on my financial independence, or how I don’t have to work for money anymore. Ah, what an innocent soul I was back in the halcyon days of late 2018.
Little did I know then that I was about to embark on the most challenging remodel project I’d ever undertaken. After selling our last remodel project in 2018, I freed up some of our equity, most of which was doing pretty shittily in REITs. I also did a big basement dig out and remodel at my house throughout much of 2018, so 2019 would have been a good time to take a break from remodeling. But then we found this house:
We closed on January 10, 2019, for $250,000. I budgeted about $120,000, including my labor, for the remodel.
Hey, I thought, we can do a quick fix n flip and then move on to some non-remodel projects. A few months and we’ll be outta here.
No.
The snow and cold of winter and spring ebbed, and we were just finishing structural work. As summer crept up, we were working on rough electric, plumbing, and heating. As the drywallers began their work, I sabbaticaled by doing a small remodel on another house I was planning to sell – that one-month project became a two-month project. Meanwhile, we ran into permit issues on the main project. Suddenly, we were working in the stifling heat of mid-summer. Permit issues mostly resolved, we began our kitchen addition.
As we opened up the kitchen walls, we discovered old newspaper used as insulation. Note the classified ad here: “A boy or young girl wanted in cigar factory.”
Before I knew it, the snow was back and we were slogging away. Then it was December, and we were still working on the finishing touches inside, the rooftop deck, and landscaping.
All told, I was in it for about $200,000 (including my labor), and about 6 months past my expected finish date. I had run out of money several times, blowing through my HELOC and Ameritrade funds (sold those REITs for a tidy loss). I was saved only by the generosity of friends willing to loan me money (and, as always, by the friends who pitched in to help with the work). See, despite having tons of equity, it was all wrapped up in real estate, and the banks don’t like our meager debt-to-income ratio, so I couldn’t score an increase on my HELOC.
The lesson here is that these kinds of projects often involve more than one envisions (this is cliche by now). Moving forward, I will have a much more robust cache of cash, and hopefully more realistic expectations before I embark on my next remodel project.
That said, my plan is to never do this extensive of a remodel project again (at least not as the guy doing most of the labor). As with my basement dig out project, though, I’m glad I did it. It was a grueling project at times, but ultimately rewarding.
In my last post, I talked about how privilege, fortune, good decisions, and hard work have helped me in life; it was the same on this project. We found a tenant in mid-December, and we hope to turn the house into a short-term vacation rental this summer (good practice, as we may look into vacation rental properties in other states in the future). And long term, we may make this our empty nest house after the kids fly the coop (to mix metaphors slightly).
In 2020, my focus will be on some writing, video, and art projects that I neglected in 2020. Although I do have a little more remodel work on that garage…
_________________
There will be a video of the 1880s house remodel forthcoming. Here are a few pictures of the (mostly) finished product.
Poppa's Cottage 
Leave a comment