Q: How's the flip coming?
A: iiiiiiit's..... coming alooooong.....
The REAL question is how do I summarize in a quick and interesting way how the flip is really going? I still haven't figured out how to do it! Mostly I ramble for a minute until the conversation is mercifully interrupted by something more interesting, and the person who asked learns not make THAT mistake again! Fortunately, if someone wants actual updates I can just send them to the ol' blog! So let's dig in
Starting with the laundry/storage area: This particular room gets no glory - mostly because it's such a random room! It could possibly be a small craft room, or a big pantry/storage room, but since it started as such an unattractive room this is a step in the right direction! You can see the new floor - yay! - and you can also see there still needs trim and paint - boo! - but we're closing in on this particular room.
The actual laundry section is still looking poorly (as seen on the left, below) but it will be covered in beadboard from floor to ceiling, glued up with liquid nail and trim nails. It'll be quick and lovely!
The main rooms we're working on are the kitchen and the master bathroom, so they're the ones with the most photos! Thus the most fun to blog about. The kitchen, as it progresses:
No countertop, IKEA cabinet bases set on a slim amount of floor (not visible here), no appliances set. We brought our little extra microwave and often heat up leftovers for lunch. We're pretty fancy.
The countertop was installed last week, and it's pretty sweet! Laminate countertops would have made more sense for a manufactured home, but the kitchen layout has an obtuse angle, meaning we couldn't buy stock countertops; Lowe's had a really good deal on some solid surface colors, and having this solid surface installed as the same price as paying for laminate! Happily, nice counters are a decent up-sell (unlike all the necessary but expensive stuff we've had to do), so it felt like a win. Once counters were installed, appliances were in!
The IKEA cabinets are gray, and we chose a nice navy to accent the kitchen island and match the big ol' built-in. We originally planned to tear out the built-in but HOT DANG that thing turned out to be seriously well-built, and it will be super-functional, AND all the doors turned up stuffed in random places, so ta-da! We kept ourselves a built-in.
Painting those doors has been taking up the whole living room until today when we put them up
They look much nicer on the cabinets than lying around, don't you agree? The pendant light is holding a place for a nicer lampshade, also navy blue.
Also, notice those pendant lights over the island! Purdy sweet. After the picture, but before we left, there is a matching one over the kitchen sink. The luxury laminate flooring down in the laundry room is the same floor throughout the kitchen, hallway, and living room, but to keep it as nice as we can we've covered it with cardboard while we continue to work. (I spy a range vent hood!)
We chose a butcher block countertop for the island because it WAS inexpensive (as far as countertops go), as well as gorgeous. We stained it first, then sealed it food safe polyurethane, and it is seriously one of my very favorite things about this flip house. I definitely want one of my own one day!
Just lovely!
The blue we chose is English Channel by Behr. It's is exactly the navy we wanted!
We spent a full day putting in windows - there were 6 windows that were foggy/hazy/broken/downright ghetto (the frames were full of screw holes because the GO was full of nonsense), so here are the two living room windows. The gray we chose is Dolphin Fin by Behr, and it's pretty great - warm undertones, not too dark. We love it, too.
On to the master bath, we knocked a few holes here and there, and looked inside the attic from the old skylight, and it turns out the large patches of mold we THOUGHT were pervasive, were simply superficial mildew run amok! So we knocked down a few nasty patches and re-drywalled the entire ceiling with green board, a type of drywall that is mildew-resistant and meant for moist places like bathrooms. We nearly killed ourselves (well, Joe wanted to kill me because I am much slower than he at cordless screwdrivers, but he couldn't hold the drywall AND screw it up), but WE DID IT. And we both agree we'll just rent the drywall lift next time, even if it IS only for two full sheets of drywall. Worth not wanting to punch your wife in the face.
Still a big mess here (as of Monday)
New ceiling! and walls! and hardi-backer over the plywood! and on the floor!
Remember those expensive countertops we talked about? This is the expensive stuff you don't see that is NECESSARY and totally unappreciated. Stupid expensive necessities.
Although we ket the tub and the existing tub surround, The GO had built it to the wrong depth and without any structural supports, too, so it was literally hanging by its edges over a cavernous space. Filling that tub with 200 pounds of water and a 200 pound person would probably have broken everything to bits! Lucky for us he liked to not finish things, and when we bought the dump - I mean, house - the tub was filled with junk and covered in grime, so I doubt it ever actually got used. Joe built structural supports around the edges and the tub will eventually rest on a stand underneath it, and meanwhile I've cleaned up that nasty ol' bath to a sparkling, sanitary oasis (not seen here).
Zoom in to see them, they look awesome.
Then take a guess at how many sheets we needed. Those corners around the tub are tiny! Surely we only needed, like, 2 sheets of that stupid expensive mosaic tile, right?
WRONG. NINE. We used NINE SHEETS.
Oh well, what's $150 between friends?
The plumbing in manufactures homes (at least this particular FAS) is a little different, they have a different back flow/venting system that sticks out all wonky. When it's hidden by a giant vanity, it's whatever, you chop up the backside of the vanity and call it a day. When you don't want to spend $800 for that length of a vanity, you get creative and make a stub wall to cover it! 
The stub wall is all textured now, and has two pedestal sinks waiting in the adjoining room to be placed first thing Monday morning. SO glorious!
The master bath looks pretty light even WITHOUT a skylight, all thanks to new light fixtures! We also installed a new bathroom fan (no chip bags!) but who cares about bathroom fans? Nobody except the poor schmucks buying them because the house will never pass inspection without them.
Coming up next week: shower tile! It's going to be epic.
And by epic I mean beautifully boring white tile.
Last but NOT LEAST: The new bedroom! We have been anxious about this room THE WHOLE TIME because it could potentially hold up the ENTIRE FLIP - inspections! Approvals! More inspection! Baaaaaaah! But we have had our paths blessed time and again, and all inspections were smooth ad snag-free, and we were able to get electrical and electric inspections done in a timely manner - something we were assured would NEVER happen when we first decided to go this route. Because electrical was inspected, Joe was able to drywall, mud, and (not shown here) texture the room; it is ready for paint on Monday, and carpet is scheduled for install on Wednesday!
We definitely think having a 3-bedroom house will be a more marketable feature than having a 2-bedroom house with 2 living rooms, though, so now hopefully our gamble will pay off!
See that kid sneaking past? Ethan has handled this house flip pretty dang well, considering he's the one who's had to spend the most time here. Sure, all the kids were dragged against their will nearly every day of Christmas break (HUGE shoutout to all my friends who took a bullet [four bullets] and watched my kids over the break!), but he was with me many day of many weeks prior to break, and now he tags along with Joe and I, Monday through Friday, with little more than his Beyblades, an hour of iPad time, and the neighborhood cat Jack to keep him busy.
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