To market, to market

The flip house is on the market! We staged it for the listing, but the furniture was only there for 3 days until we loaded it back up to move it to Colorado. Looked good while it as there, though ;)

To see an official listing for our flip house, Google 2415 92nd court se, Olympia WA.

While they had a professional photographer come do the photos, there are not nearly enough pictures for my taste! Having touched EVERY SQUARE INCH of the house made me feel compelled to take photos of every square inch, so that's what you're about to get!

New exterior paint, new windows, new front door (with great new paint), and new landscaping made for  great first impression - the official listing is bettter than this because it a) doesn't have my van in it, b) has the pile of rocks spread out, and c) doesn't have the empty bags from mulch lying in the yard. But DO notice the new cedar shingles over the front door to match  the existing cedar shingles over the garage! That turned out cool.

Walking in the front door we did get the weird closet thing changed back into a coat closet, but I think Joe and I both failed to capture that. Instead, if you turn to the right you walk into the living room. We staged with our own furniture (plus a new rug from Walmart, we are fancy).

Going toward the dining room and looking back into the living room you see the awesome new window, all the lovely trim, and a cute little setup.

The built-in looked pretty dang cute with these ikea plants.

From the dining room, toward the kitchen. Love that cute island! We didn't have chairs the entire time we worked there, and once we put in staging furniture we just GRAVITATED to this island. It is a great gathering spot.

From the kitchen looking into the dining room, we love the pendants - they're actually just $10 fixtures from Ikea! But they turned out great. The island cabinets and butcher block countertop are from Home depot, and also turned out nicely. In these few photos you don't see the gold knobs and pulls we put in, but they got there eventually thanks to a few wonderful friends and their wonderful patience and tools.

HUGE run of counterspace! So awesome

Similar pendant light above the sink as over the island. The tile turned out very cute and sleek!

More tile, more counters, a great range hood over a great new stove.

From the kitchen going toward the hallway. I loved how this photo fit into the space and made a functional space turn into a furniture space - I think it warmed the kitchen up. I don't think the listing even showed it (wah-wah!) and now it's not there because we took the frame home with us, but it looked good while it was there! It's hanging on the wall outside the new bedroom, which ended up being labeled an "office/den" because the septic system is rated for a 2 bedroom house.

But seriously, it's a bedroom. There is the egress window and the closet.

But I staged it with a desk instead of a bed because this desk is so much smaller and easier to move than a bed, and I just love this rocking chair of ours. The pillow was a going-away gift from the girls in YW and I adore it, it has all their signatures on the back.

Straight across the hall from that bedroom is the laundry/mud room. With beadboard up and trim painted it looks pretty dang smart!

Sorry about the black spot on the cabinet door, that was an oversight when I saved out the right size of door (from the 50 or so cabinet doors he had squirreled around the house) and then we had no more doors, so up it went. Oh well. But there's the washer-dryer hook-ups.

Next door to the laundry room (there used to be a door between the two of them) is the guest bath, All white tile shower felt clean and simple.

Navy blue cabinets to carry over from the kitchen

We kept the existing wall cubby and painted it blue, which turned out cute. We kept the existing mirror, which turned out to be a mistake - there were some deep scratches on the left side of the mirror that we ended up covering with a plank. It wasn't our finest moment, but it got the job done.

We liked the long run of shiplap! Hooks instead of towel bars is one of our favorite little swaps to make. Easy and updates, and my kids still have never figured out how to re-fold a towel over a bar so at my home it's a personal favorite.

2nd bedroom - one of the original 2, and quite frankly THIS would make a better office, it's darker and more enclosed in here.

Though it DOES have a more traditional closet.

Remember when this wall was a giant dinosaur head?!?

At the end of the hallway, walking into the master bedroom. They obviously all have new carpet, and it is just lovely. Although it's a flip we didn't go for the absolute rock-bottom cheapest option on anything, and this was one of those examples - it was inexpensive but still nice to look at an soft underfoot. And for how easy it is to have someone else install the floor, I swear next time we are installing carpet EVERYWHERE, bathrooms and kitchen too, bad taste be damned.

With vaulted ceilings and 2 windows, it is so light! This is the wall that had paper towels shoved in the holes.

Seriously great walk-in closet. since we closed off the door between the closet and the bathroom (because who need 2 doors into once closet?) we had room for a third wall of shelf and rod

Over by the windows, looking toward the bathroom. See that lovely door? ALL the doors are lovely 6-panel doors and they ALL are a pain in the butt to paint. I recommend NOT doing 6 panel doors on a flip, but whatever.

Walking into the bath, we have the matching sinks/lights/mirrors and the bump-out wall to hide the plumbing which gives a nice shelf for daily basics and, shown here, a handy tube of caulk.

From the sink looking rightm, more caulk. And also the wainscoting paint job we went with - make things a little more interesting. Because pedestal sinks obviously have no storage, we hooked the bathroom up with some shelves that keep your necessities close but out of sight.

A closer detail of the mosaic tile around the tub. Although IT WAS a pain in the butt, we still really like the finished product, and it got lots of compliments. And that's what we go for!

In the shower stall, just on the right side of the toilet and handy storage cubby, we did the same white tile from the guest bath, plus a vertical accent run of the floor tile. A vertical run of the mosaic would have been great, and would have been another $150 so we said "nah."

And that's it! That is the house! It will be a really great place for someone - they just need to BUY IT. Pretty please?

WILD things

Our lives are crazy right now. We should probably be in the insane asylum... but instead we've settled for the Nut House, right?

When we started the flip house, and I started blogging about it with no inkling of the sharp turn our lives were about to take.  Then it felt weird in the middle of "project - project - project - project" to be like, "Joe left his job and we're moving to Colorado!" It felt especially weird since they are intimately connected, but it's hard to see unless I get it down from the very beginning. Which I didn't, but I will now.

Here's why: we did the flip house because Joe needed to be done with his job at Target Distribution here in Olympia. It was such an opportunity when we moved up! A promotion to Senior Group Leader, a pay raise, some cool scenery to go with it... we were in heaven! It went south quickly, though, and before a year had passed, incompatibility with his General Manager had Joe browsing local job openings online. Just when we though he was stressed to the max, the GM quit and Joe was left working in a building as the only Senior Group Leader, where there should have been a minimum of 3, and without a GM. "Max" had reached a new level! Rather than find simply another job to tide him over, we pursued a long-term dream of ours as a couple: flipping houses. When we bought this Nut House he intended to stay at Target one more stress-filled year while we would flip multiple houses, and at the end of that year he could comfortably leave Target and we would just flip full time. So while he was still working at the Target DC I couldn't write anything negative about his job situation - that is biting the hand that feeds us! What if he mentioned the blog to a co-worker so they could see pictures of the house and BOOM, negative comments got him fired? Far better to simply be excited about the project for what it was: a cool opportunity to flip a house. So that it how I presented it here - no secret hopes attached!

Come Thanksgiving, Joe was sat down by his District Manager (because he had no direct boss, remember) and it seemed clear to him that Target was heading one direction and Joe was heading another. This A) Scared the crap out of us, and B) Left us with some big decisions to make. Should Joe re-direct himself and stay with a job he didn't love, but that had a steady paycheck? Should he look for a different job? Jobs here or jobs outside Washington? Stay in Distribution, or go back to Construction Management? There were many good options, and we sorted through them a little bit like an optometrist checks your prescription; "which looks better, A or B? ... now B or C? .... " They make a few adjustments and do it again, whittling out what your prescription ISN'T until they find what it IS. And we found that what we want IS to move back to Colorado, it IS to live in Grand Junction, and it IS to do something Construction Management related. We needed to get to work.

Enter: Facebook. (Who knew Facebook could save you? I could sworn it was just a time-waster!) But it saved us this time, as I connected with old friends who live in Grand Junction, who have husbands in Construction Management, who were able to get Joe some interviews with General Contractors in town. My dad, who is King John to the Grandkids but could usually be called King of Keeping Out Of Your Business, made it his business to find contacts and job leads for Joe.  It seemed like a long shot at the very best, but everyone was warm and welcoming in spite of the random connections, and LO AND BEHOLD - Joe interviewed for, and was offered, a job.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If life seemed wild and stressful and maxxed out before, we just hit a new level! We leveled up! Suddenly our time frame was much more real, as Joe had "last day of work" and "first day of work" to bookend "get this crazy flip house on the market, and oh yeah, don't forget to sell your own house too." His last day in the building at the DC was December 15th and he has worked at the flip house every day except Sundays since then, and we are closing in on it.  We have been blessed beyond measure with the things that have fallen into place during the process, from installations to inspections being completed earlier than planned and without a hiccup. We have also been blessed in general health, which has allowed us to work as hard as we possibly can. We have been DOUBLY blessed because without even trying to, our house here is under contract and we have a home ready to move into when we do finally get to leave. A close friend with 4 kids approached us after I broke down to her during the "I don't know what we're doing!" phase and said she and her family would like to buy the Ken Lake house. Of course!!!! Not having to deal with putting the house on the market, intense cleaning and staging, scheduling showings, ALL of that, would save us SO MUCH HEADACHE. Blessings!!

So that is life. House under contract, flip house nearly on the market, moving truck scheduled, new job lined up, new house to move into... life is WILD.

We're, like, totally popular

The kids bathroom was in a serious state, and the thickness of the paint from the murals wasn't something paint could hide. The framed in door from the bath to the laundry needed to be cobered, and instead of redrywalling the entire bathroom we decided to go for a totally new and totally popular project: SHIPLAP!

Thanks you, queen Joanna, for giving us a way to cover ugly walls in an interesting way.

We used 1/4" pine plywood, and had the good team members of Home Depot rip 3 sheets of it down to 8" lengths. The guys helping me wondered what we were doing, so I described the process and finished look. He shook his head and said, "sounds like something from pinterest." I laughed so hard! But I laughed to myself, I didn't want him thinking I didn't appreciate him doing all the hard work for me. Incidentally, I notice there is a SKU for cuts, they can apparently charge you 50 cents per cut, but in spite of ripping down 5 boards for me, I wasn't charged anything extra. Good thing I held in those laughs, huh?

We primed the walls gray to cover the various colors because the shiplap will be white, and would be difficult to do multiple coats through the narrow gaps. The shiplap boards will be painted tomorrow.

Joe noted the stud placement, got his finish nailer hooked up, and tacked those planks to the wall with 1/8" tile spacers.

Going up!

A view with the tile backer board and new tub Joe also installed today.

All the way to the ceiling!

Across the room we kept the giant mirror up, it will be trimmed out with a frame

The room already had a built-in shelf thing (it used to be Giant Octopus Red), so we painted it and kept it, I think it will be a cute and functional niche 

Tub, backer board, and shiplap - that was quite a day! And all installed by Joe, who is quite a guy.

Let there be light(s)!

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). 

Joe laid some tile! We chose an inexpensive but contemporary type, 12x24, laid in a classic brick pattern. Cheap and easy! Except for that round tub in the middle of things....  Joe was second-guessing his ability to cut tiles for those corners, he was sure it would be a headache and he would break quite a few (they're porcelain, which is more difficult to work with than basic ceramic), and I suggested doing mosaic tile around the tub - you could cut them off in small notches, remove them where the faucet handles go through, it could maybe save time! Joe agreed (perhaps too quickly, I should have been suspicious) and we picked a mosaic tile pattern we liked. Trouble is, we SHOULD have been second-guessing the mosaic idea, NOT Joe's abilities! Mosaic tiles are still tiles, so there was still lots of snipping and finagling, AND they were ridiculously expensive. They didn't save time, they did NOT save money.... but man oh man, they DO look good in the end!

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.