I just finished the accounting for the project. Have a meeting with the owners today to discuss a couple of key issues.
Spent to Date = $36,400
This includes a lot of materials, appliances, cabinets, doors and windows that are stacked up waiting for installation. We are going to tear out the old aluminum sliding door in the back of the family room and replace it with a french door and two tall side windows. The old sliding door doesn’t even work right now but it is a large 10 ft opening.
We have to bust a hole in the original exterior wall that goes from family room to garage to make a door for a laundry room. Currently, the laundry is out in the garage and I have invented a way that we can build walls in the garage area and create a laundry room that is accessed through a door from family room.We are going to use a decorative barn door for the laundry room that will add some character to the family room.
Still need to run a gas line under the family room floor to the exterior for the deck that is going to get built at the end of the project.
For $36,400 we really do not have much to show for it that is ‘pretty’. But soon the ‘pretty’ will start getting built. Painters are coming to pressure wash the exterior on Sunday. We have worked hard to remove a bunch of crazy stuff that was stuck all over the outside of the house. We had to make the hard decision to keep the old aluminum gutters because they are fastened to the house with strong grip nails and it will take a lot of labor to get them off the house and they will not be able to go back onto the house. So, we are going to have to scrub years of corrosive dirt off them and prime them carefully to get painted with the house. It’s going to be a big job, but in the end it will cost less than having to put on new gutters.
@BunsenBurner … how is your escrow going?
It is going! 
We are done with the paperwork on our side. Now the sellers want some extra time to move their precious crap out of the house… I would have just put it out curbside with a sign “Free.” That furniture is not even that good. And their realtor is trying hard to prevent us from seeing the house before signing the papers… Nope. Not. Gonna. Happen. Even though it is a fixer - I do not want a new $50K “surprise.” I swear we are not going to be such a difficult bunch when we sell our current home.
coralbrook, I know you will appreciate this… We had record rains here in our neck of the woods, and Mr. B found a puddle of water in our back yard. What did he decide to do? To build a massive drainage system so the new owners of the house will not have a puny puddle in that remote spot… LOL.
Have you already sold the house you live in?
In Washington what paper signing are you referring to ? Your loan documents? Or clearance of the inspection contingency?
Yes, we are getting a loan, because I’d rather have a mortgage for a few months than move twice. It is impossible to buy anything decent here with a contingency… So we will do only one move, sell the current place, and pay off the loan. We could have sold some investments, but it makes more sense to do it this way. The sellers owe us a final walkthrough - they have to contractually maintain the house in the same condition as it was on the day we agreed to the deal. For some reason, they and their realtor are trying hard to make it as difficult for us to see the house as possible before giving us the keys.
We have that final walk through requirement here too…before signing on the dotted line for,the loan. It’s called “pre-closing inspection”. And yes…you can withdraw from the contract without penalty if something was covered up by their belongings…or if they damaged something when moving out.
Or if they refuse to let you do the walk-through.
Yeah, we insisted on the walk-through. Knew friends whose final walk-through discloses appliances that had been removed that weren’t supposed to have been, fixtures, damaged floors, etc. I’d be a hard-aXX on that one, too.
Light fixtures seem to “disappear” too. One family we know went to do,the walk through, and the owners had left a BUNCH of trash in the garage, and house. Thing…things they just didn’t want to move like old furniture, and stuff.
The closing had to be delayed until they cleaned out their stuff. Completely.
We had a drippy faucet that was supposed to be fixed at our first house. It wasn’t. We told the agent we were pulling out…and the two agents each kicked in part of their commissions to cover the costs of the repair (we had an estimate in hand).
Stuff happens…I would NOT forego that preclosing inspection!
Here in my state, anything that could have been reasonably discoverable by the buyers, like a stain under a piece of furniture, is on the buyers - even the toxic mold that was not discovered during the regular inspection because it was behind some surfaces that looked ok.
I do not care for the light fixtures or stains in the carpets… Those will be quickly replaced by us. It is the combination of the old roof and the record February rains that worry me. Not signing anything to release any $ to them from the escrow until we do a thorough walk-through.
Just to report a bid I placed on a house, labeled as TLC needed and it is a Trust sale. This house is in MLS, with only ONE exterior photo, I went to the inspect the home from curb side, it is vacant but no keys to the locker. The agent had only one open house for 3 hours, I missed that. The list price is 400K but it should worth around 600K when fixed, there is no upgrade potential, it is a house across the highway from one of my houses, so I don’t have to worry about its value. The house invoked 77 bids and I was one of the many. I will have no chance to buy it, bidding is fun.
cb, the project is looking amazing! Love the changes to the porch/entry!
We just spent an entire day yesterday cleaning the exterior of the house to get ready for paint. The painters were supposed to show up today (Sunday) to do the pressure wash, but then it started raining in the morning and they texted me that they couldn’t pressure wash. I don’t really see the logic in why they cannot pressure wash when it’s raining, but I didn’t want to be a jerk about it because they had volunteered to do it on a Sunday to squeeze into their schedule. Probably just as well, the power washer makes a lot of noise and it wouldn’t be really nice on a Sunday for the neighbors. They wanted to start at 7am!!!
The owners pitched in a lot yesterday and went out and got a long brush and I gave them a special TSP concentrate solution and they went around the house and scrubbed the gutters which were almost black from soot and age. They came out nice and now we won’t have to take them off and replace them! The guys tore off the carport to get ready for painting, my carpenter finished up the porch overhang except for one area and the roofing and we meticulously had to get all the hooks and staples out of the house and plug up any holes. There were a million hooks and staples that were holding up all the loose cable wire everywhere.
The owners decided to throw out their screen door and now the front of the house is hilarious with all kinds of colors.
I loaded some photos
Since I’m usually going to have to gut a house that I am buying, I don’t fret about final walk throughs except to try to get the Seller to get all their trash out. If I was buying a home for myself I would definitely insist on getting all the furniture/trash out of the crawlspace, house and attic because it is a pain in the butt to get rid of all that stuff.
It looks like the side supports of the car port are still there. Are you going to take them down or put the roof back up? Looks a bit odd to me the way it is now.
In the California standard purchase agreement there is a final walkthrough in the contract set for 4 days before close of escrow. This happens before a buyer signs their final loan documents and the loan gets funded into escrow for the purchase. The buyer has to sign a release paper and they can note things on the document that are still remaining to get repaired or cleared out of the house. If you are not holding up the loan document signing, I have no idea what other recourse a buyer would have if issues are found in the final walkthrough. There’s a lot of hidden stuff under appliances, behind refrigerators, under furniture that can be found. Not to mention how nasty it gets behind stuff.
I think this varies quite a bit by location. Here in MA the final walkthrough often happens right before the closing, as in you stop in the house and do the walkthrough while on your way to the closing. At worst, the day before.
^I believe same is here in my neck of the woods. Because the house sits uninhabited (except for the rats in the attic - 
), I want to make sure that we are not in for a swimming pool-sized puddle in the master bedroom or something like that. It is a neglected piece of property, but not to the point that it needs to be gutted out.
There are ways to deal with the stuff like trash left behind. It depends on the locality, most likely. Even if we paid with cash, the money is in escrow. The buyers’ OK triggers the release of $ to the sellers.
How long has the house been vacant? If longer than a month you might start to have serious issues with plumbing clogs. Just an FYI
The side posts for the car port are getting pulled out also, but we are saving them, since they are pressure treated and in good condition, to build the back deck. We also saved the 2 x 6 roof pieces to use as floor joists for the deck