Hiring a Contractor

Contractors can be tricky.  Honestly, hiring a contractor is one of the most daunting tasks, in my opinion.  Thank goodness for the World Wide Web.  I did so much research on how to hire a contractor on the internet.  The key here is this:  know the scope of the job, and know it well... don't let the contractor teach you, you need to sometimes be able to teach them. Not that their experience will be overlooked, but the internet in this case will be your best friend.  For any task, there is more than one way to skin a cat.  

However, there will always be better, faster, more efficient, cost effective ways of doing it.  Know your options.  

After getting recommendations and referrals, looking on service magic, I took 5 bids for the job.  One guy said he'd match the lowest bid given.  One guy told me a wall in the garage (obviously added to create a closet when it was converted into a room) he was afraid of knocking it down because he thinks it is a load bearing wall (SERIOUSLY!? SERIOUSLY???).  One guy told me he only works on homes that requires additions to a home, not renovations.  One guy told me that he wasn't licensed.

Enter Mark.  Mark was an easy-going, Ford F150 driving, old-school Levi's wearing kinda guy, in his late 40's.  I took him through the house.  He, right off the bat, gave me a scope of how he would tackle demolition, his approximate timeline, and understood the design I was going for in the kitchen.  His plan for demolition was what made me think, 'I think I may have a contractor'.  

After getting several bids, I hired Mark as my general contractor.  With these design plans:

Kitchen:

1.  White Kitchen Cabinets

2.  An Off-White color for the cabinets, and a turquoise based color for the walls

3.  Refinish existing (fingers crossed they are still there... because it is covered in vinyl) oak floors dark

4.  A glass subway tile with a strip of a decorative tile

5.  Tracklighting and Pendant lighting for the peninsula

6.  Oil-Rubbed Bronze hardware

7.  Corion top in "Night Sky"

This is the Before floorplan:

My proposed After:

Exciting!!

Inspections, Inspections, Inspections.

My offer was accepted $8,000 below the asking price, and about $50,000 less than what a typical house sells for in my neighborhood.

I just love this photo.  Aren't the white and pink dogwood trees amazing?

Inspections revealed a MANY things, but to note:

• The drains from the gutters were pretty worn out, and weren't properly directed away from the house and needed to be fixed
• The chimney, from all the settling the house had gone through for the past 85 years, needed tuckpointing ($$$$$$$$)
• There was a fuse box, which is pretty common in old homes, inspector recommended that it gets eliminated

Good news, a lot of the issues the inspector saw were in the areas I was planning on renovating.  So the conversation usually went like this:

Inspector:  "Well, then I see this light here in your converted garage..."

Me:  "You can stop right there.  I'm converting the garage back.  Will that issue still exist after?"

Inspector: "Nope.  I guess I can skip over the next 4 things then."

 With the addendum to the original sales contract, Michelle and I put in that the chimney tuckpoint and the drains from the gutters be fixed, which the sellers accepted.

Now, with inspections behind us and nothing too detrimental found, it was time to call those contractors in, start designing a new kitchen and a bathroom, and get to work with closing the house!!

The Search (Part Tres)

UGH!!!!! What is that SMELL?????

The odor was undeniable.  The whole place reeked of a stagnant, sour smell.  They tried to mask it with a combination of Glade, Febereze, and reed diffusers.  IT WASN'T WORKING.

The Breakfast Nook

 

The Kitchen

Kitchen - BEFORE Blueprint.

Michelle looks at me and says, "I think it's coming from this pantry."  We look inside... yep, a.k.a. the "Cat Palace".  The room was a small pantry-ish room off from the kitchen.  The room had a tiny section with cat food, three litter boxes, with the litter scattered everywhere.  It was apparent the cats didn't use the litter boxes entirely.  It was apparent the owners didn't clean this room often enough.


We go upstairs to the Master Bedroom.  The room was painted half green and half brown.  It matched an artwork on the wall.  Except... well, they painted the trim also the same color.  Window trims were the same eggshell Green as the rest of the walls.

The Original Bedroom

 The master bathroom had 2 vanities, one had a sink, the other didn't.  The whole room had wainscotting, which I didn't mind.

The garage, had been converted into a family room, hence why the house got missed by so many searches.  Most likely, people typed in "at least one car garage" which had limited from this house from showing up on search results.

Great things about the house?

• It had thermal windows.  EVERYWHERE.
• Air Conditioning Unit - Lenox 3 tonne.  Almost new.
• Water heater, relatively new, working properly
• Furnace, relatively new, working properly
• Timberline roof, under 5 years old

It seemed as though the couple who lived here focused on the comfort of living, rather than the looks of their home.  Maintenance of the house was done intricately.

We left the house to look at another house... only for me in the middle of the viewing, say, "I'm going to put the offer in on the other house!!!"

The Search (Part 2)

Let me start off by stating the stats before I bought and closed on my house.

87 houses... from end of July until mid-October when I put an offer into a home.

of that...

23 were Foreclosures

12 were Pre-Foreclosures/Short Sales

5 were Estate Sales

14, I would actually consider as "Move-In Ready" under my terms.

33, the rest, were homes that had features I would love, but then features I couldn't stand that would cost $5K - $10K to fix.

My stack of listings... yes, I kept them all!

 1 home, I actually put an offer in (it was a Foreclosure) and lost the sales war.  Hindsight is 20/20, but now I am SO glad I did lose.  The buyers won by a mere $2,000.  The home actually is in the same neighborhood I ended up in; I walk by with my dogs every night to see, almost 2 years later, that the house is still very much in a renovation war zone.

At first, I saw a mix between Move-in Ready's and Foreclosures.  It wasn't until the latter half of my search when Michelle said,

"Miyu, you obviously need a project.  You're not going to settle for a home that is utterly and completely done."

When I announced to my friends and family that I am going to buy an old home and restore it... everyone's first reaction was... "How are you going to pay for it?"

Property Brothers, Love it or List it, Flip This House, those are some famous TV shows that take renovations into account before buying or selling a home.  However, the majority of Americans just don't have $30,000 saved up on top of what they save up to buy a home to do renovations on a house.  So, how do you fund a renovation?
 
Well, the answer is an FHA 203k Loan.  Most people are afraid to touch a loan that most realtors are unfamiliar with.  A lot of Banks don't do the loan, because of its complicated nature.   Some sellers are unfamiliar with the loan, so they reject your offer.  Yes, it also takes about a month more to close.

203k, in a nutshell, allows you to purchase a home that is valued less than what it could be worth (either because it is outdated, it's a foreclosure, or there's structural flaws to the house, etc.), then allows you to put restoration/renovation money all-inclusive into one mortgage.  Many years ago, before the real estate crash, people were allowed to put "construction fees" into their mortgage when closing, even with a conventional loan.  What happened?  People bought stuff with that extra cash that had NOTHING to do with upping the value of their home... vacations, new cars, etc; and when it came time to either sell their home, their home was way overpriced because of how much they owed on their mortgage.  So, what happens?  Short sales, foreclosures... those are to name a few.

With 203k, there comes some strict guidelines.  FHA will "micro-manage" you on how you use the renovation money by requiring you to hire an HUD inspector (on top of the regular inspections) who will come out and observe your renovations.  They will release money as the HUD inspector allows (honestly, my HUD inspector was awesome... he just let me have however much money I needed at the time to pay my contractor).  This is for the Full 203K loan, there is also a Streamline 203k loan, that I will write in another post.

Michelle and I decided to go with it anyway! (Did I mention that she's amazing?)  She and I did so much research on 203k loans our heads hurt.

So, here we were, in mid-October, standing in front of a gorgeous A-line Tudor style home.  The neighborhood was ideal.  I inhaled a deep breath of the crisp autumn air... I had a good feeling about this one.

The Search (Intro)

I started thinking about moving into a house when I got my second dog, Zoro.  I got him to keep my Boston Terrier, Sasha, company while I was away at work.  

(That's Zoro keeping Sasha company... literally)

Then, I wanted a backyard.  The initial start to rent a house with a backyard eventually got me thinking to purchase a home.  This is when I pulled up my Kindle app and downloaded "Mortgage for Dummies".

At age 25, most unmarried women don't think about purchasing a home.  There are a lot of "what if's".

What if I get married?

What if I decide to move in with my boyfriend?

What if I don't want to settle in the city I'm in?
What if I lose my job, and can't pay the mortgage?


Well, ladies, if you're thinking these questions, I totally understand.  If you have any doubts, I suggest you keep renting.  However, the faster you dive into the real estate business (at least, in my opinion), the better of you will be in the long run.  Kinda like your 401K.  Like any investment though, there are risks and you have to be willing to take them.

There are costs associated to purchasing a home, yes.  It is not an easy task to buy a home.  You need to save a lot of money.  But ultimately, your home will be yours.  You can do whatever your heart desires to it. Why pay someone else's mortgage (whether it's the apartment complex's huge mortgage or your landlord's), when you can pay your own?  

Enter Michelle.  My crazy AWESOME Realtor.  My SuperHero and SuperMom (she was 8 1/2 months pregnant and about to pop when she first met with me) who, honestly, did it all.  We looked at houses for 2 weeks after we met, then she went into labor.  She calls me 5 days after and says, "Ready to go for more houses??"  I'm telling you, she's crazy.

We looked at 87 houses.  87!!  Did I mention that she's my hero??

Ultimately, I landed a lovely home that I love love LOVE.  

Now, my entire process to get to this point?  Stay tuned...

Welcome to M.I.Y.U.

Welcome to M.I.Y.U.!

It's quite the corny blog title... but hey, I was thinking of other things like...

D + MIYU - U = DIY !!!

Then I realized that most people won't understand what the heck I'm doing with that equation.

OR

MIYoUrself.  Yeah, that one just looks obnoxious.


Anyway, I'm obsessed, addicted, can't get enough of home renovating, improving, and DIY projects.  I watch HGTV and DIY Network religiously.  Nicole Curtiss is my hero.  I *may* have even swapped cable companies despite the price increase (it was only a $5/month increase!!) because the new company had DIY Network in HD and the old one didn't. 

I'm a happily unmarried upper-20's working engineer, proud pet parent to my two lovely dogs, Sasha and Zoro.

My house was built in 1938, pre-World War II.  It's an A-line Tudor style house, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bath with a lot of character.  I bought it through a short sale, took out a 203K loan, and renovated with my visions and dreams.  This is my story.