I’m not sure the exact value that a 2 car garage vs 1 car garage would be from a bank appraisal but the real issue is that it limits the nbr of buyers that will come look at the house. Some buyers just won’t even consider a house without 2 car garage. That was one of the limiting factors with finding a buyer for the Liberace House on Nipoma.
Today in the mail, I received an envelope with a fancy (printed) calligraphy address; no return address. Opened it and learned that I am “warmly invited to attend a very special San Diego event” because “Tarek & Christina are now…flipping the San Diego area!”
Enclosed were two complimentary VIP tickets with a $147.00 value each. The program is limited to the first 100 registrants. I can pick from two locations, and a total of three times.
Hey CB, want to go to the Marriott at the Marina on the 18th? After all, it’s an exclusive invitation so I’ll bet hardly anyone got one! 8-|
I got an invitation too!! Amazing how we were both personally picked out to attend a Get Rich Quick Seminar for Flipping Houses 
I have loaded a photo of my VIP tickets to the Flickr group
I sure hope that Tarek & Christina aren’t going to come down and buy up everything here. Somehow they manage to flip their houses in 8 weeks or something. I finally did some research on a couple of guys that had a Flipping San Diego TV show. The reality is that they bought the house on Day 1 (according to public records), but that they don’t really start their ‘count’ of days until about 3 months later. I guess this has something to do with shooting schedules and getting their designs and permits all in place before they ever even ‘start’.
Today we had an interesting visitor at the project. There was a guy lingering around in the back alley and he came in and started talking to the framing guys. They came and got me. It was the son of the Sellers… but not the brother that was living in the house when they were trying to sell it - another brother. He confessed that he has driven by several times and seen the new front of the house.
I invited him in to see the work completed. He was astounded and loved all of the work, especially that we were keeping the character of the house. Took him up to the top of the stairs and he said that the new view was much wider than the original view of the house (before the neighbor went up). So somehow, going up another floor has captured more sweeping views than the house originally had. He asked permission to take some pictures (including a picture of me) so that he could send them to his sisters. His favorite item was the new fireplace surround.
He was not clear about who was living in the house when it was being sold… he kept saying it was a grandson (one of the sister’s sons), but the agent kept saying it was one of the sons. Oh well…
BUDGET UPDATE
Boy, this is getting embarrassing… I am just bleeding money. I guess the good news is that the majority of expensive items are already purchased and staged… waiting to get installed. The only big ticket items remaining are drywall install labor and the roofing. We are only 75% complete with rough plumbing and electrical, but I don’t think we will have a large amount of dumpster costs going forward. Here goes…
SPENT TO DATE $219,000 (where the heck did it all go???)
Demolition and Hauling = $10,000
Framing and Materials = $38,000
Plumbing = $8,000
Electrical = $8,000
Kitchen = $14,000
Bathrooms = $8,000
Landscaping = $27,800 !!! this is absurd. I just cannot stand this number
Painting = $2,200
Foundation = $30,000 (majority of this was tearing out old concrete and grading)
Permits/Fees/Engineering = $22,238
Remainder is windows and doors and stuff
EXPECTED FINAL COST = $325,000
I think we will make that cost if drywall installation is a reasonable cost. But just today I realized that we are going to have to install tall scaffolding all around the new addition for safety in order to go up 2 more floors.
Just looked at my envelope for VIP Tickets. It was actually addressed to my little brother who hasn’t used this address for forwarding for 2 years, is a total deadbeat and hasn’t held a real job for 30 years! He would have been a prime target for the Get Rick Quick invitation.
Now my feelings are hurt… I didn’t receive a private VIP invitation !
Now I’m worried about what database they used for the invitations!
I’m not totally sure but my brother’s name would have only come from a database where Post Office had ‘forwarding’ instructions because he forwarded his mail from my Dad’s house when we moved my Dad out of his home. That ‘forwarding’ expired about a year ago.
Ah, and we had forwarding from last year when we moved.
Today we passed our major inspection. We had an inspection of the entire bottom floor for framing, structural, plumbing (basement bathroom), water heater install, electrical and ceiling joists. The water heater was the tricky part because we have to side vent out the wall instead of running vent all the way up through roof.
We are now proceeding with putting the floor sheathing down to begin building walls for 2nd floor. Everything should go really fast now, cross my fingers!!
Yay!
Woohoo! What is your sort of projected completion date?
Yay!!!
I am still hoping for end of October which gives us 3 more months. I think we are 2 weeks behind but I’m hoping we can go parallel in some places.
Today the flooring guy came by to measure and estimate and he had a fit because i want to do it in phases. I want him to patch and refinish existing portion as soon as possible. He had a fit and insisted that everyone has to be completely done and off the project so he can have the whole place to himself for 3 weeks. Uhhh Nooo…you are just going to have to be flexible:)
Hooray on the inspections!
I took some more photos today and they are loaded to Flickr.
One of the key issues I have to solve by the end of this week is that the kitchen floor is a mess of linoleum layers (and I think there is some of that 1930s asbestos type flooring in a bottom layer). The floor boards under the kitchen are higher than the oak hardwood floors. This was not noticeable when there were walls between the kitchen and dining room but it is real noticeable now that we have everything opened up.
We are going to have to start working on leveling out the transitions between the rooms that we opened up and there is a bunch of work involved. I’m afraid that the only correct solution is to tear out all of the kitchen flooring and apply new plywood sub floor. Not what I want to hear right now, but I see another dumpster in my future.
FLOORING
I have made my decision on the wood flooring for the house. I have measured everything up and we need to get it ordered and delivered into the house to get ‘acclimated’, even though the flooring guy is horrified that he might have to install flooring while guys are still working.
Phase 1 - original pegged oak hardwood floors
Patch in the areas in the existing house where walls were taken down and install flush to the original red tile in entryway. We thought the red tile in entry way were tiles but it is something entirely different. Evidently the floor was poured with fine cement that was colored all the way through with red. Then they ‘created’ grout lines in the floor. There is no way that this can be recreated or matched so we had to meticulously take out the curved ‘baseboard’ sides and save them to try to redo the area. We are going to have to grind out some portions of it to make a straight line for the oak flooring to be installed in the area. It is going to be a lot of work to save the original character of the entryway area.
Phase 1 - original regular oak hardwood floors
The living room and dining room have pegged floors that were laid down to look like wide planks. But, starting in the hallway the floors are regular thin strip oak floors. Since there were walls between the pegged area and the regular oak area, we are going to have to install transition pieces between the areas that will probably ‘chop up’ the floor a bit but it is important to me that we keep the original floors. So we will have to live with it. These need to be sanded down and then all of the areas will be stained to match.
Phase 1 is tricky because I have a ton of doors and windows stored in the back bedroom and I have no place to pull all this stuff out and store securely until we get something built out in the back of the main floor. Otherwise we are ready to start Phase 1.
Stain - TBD. Don’t think I am going to go with the greyish driftwood stain that I’ve done in the last 2 houses. I might go with a medium stain that will match what is getting installed upstairs.
Phase 2 - lay new oak strip flooring (that matches the hallway and back bedroom flooring) in kitchen and the hallway and bedrooms in new addition on main floor. This will have to get laid in the future when ceiling and drywall are completed on main floor
Phase 3 - this is where it gets exciting! I have sourced some gorgeous 3/4" thick solid dark walnut flooring that I am going to install upstairs (at an incredible price). The staircase going up will have white risers and walnut treads for a transition to the top floor. Family Room and Master Bedroom/closet will have the dark walnut floors. They go with the traditional design of the house
Bottom line… I can advertise the house as having all Solid Hardwood floors which is a big selling point. Several people were trying to convince me just to put carpet in the back bedrooms but I decided that buyers really want wood floors.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I don’t like carpet in bedrooms since my whole family has dust allergies. It’s just not good for you and it looks cheap. You don’t really have to worry about cold floors in San Diego either. We had one bedroom with carpet in our old house and it was a very happy day when we replaced it with hardwood. We had carpet in our family room and that was fine - nobody was sleeping in there and it made it nice for people like me who like to watch TV while sitting on the floor.
I LOVE our wood floors and our house has solid oak plus sheet vinyl in kitchen and both bathrooms. It is MUCH better for all our allergies. My sis, who just built her home has the entire downstairs in hardwood. I can’t remember if she put carpet upstairs for bedrooms.
Just saw the garage pictures where you note that you have an electric car charger. Yea! You rock!