I live 4 hours north of San Diego and I keep marveling at the green hills. It has been so long since we’ve seen green.
The best part of the remodel is that you can see through the whole house now to the big trees in the back yard. Unfortunately this couple is not interested in yard work and the back yard is now at least 2 ft high with weeds. I keep hinting that some weed wacking needs to get done back there 
I do think the house is going to stand out in the neighborhood. Not necessarily because it is over done but because the color scheme and style stick out. Every other house in neighborhood is brown or that mediterranean pinkish tone. The two addresses mentioned above are probably the only two houses in neighborhood that are nice. This house has one redeeming quality… all those additions, including the back master suite, give the house almost double the square footage of anything in the neighborhood. And, it’s a neighborhood where families cram a lot of people into their houses
Hopefully it will sell for a lot when they’re ready to move so they can live in a nice place and make your investor happy! It’s great that you’re putting such care into this project, just like all the work you do!
Painting marathon going on at the project and we are looking so clean and crisp and light. I spent all morning identifying all the areas that needed prep before they could start painting. They were so anxious just to start rolling on the paint but there is a lot of prep required. Finally got the prep done and they are going to town with Mom and Dad helping.
Mom is painting and Dad is building all the IKEA cabinet boxes. Unfortunately the Chinese cabinets for the island did not come with any instructions at all!! How can you sell cabinet parts in a box with no instructions? It’s crazy… Their Dad and I sat around looking at all the screws and metal parts trying to figure out where they go
I loaded some new photos… Professional painters came and sprayed trim, doors and the shiplap. They are gorgeous with 2 coats of semi gloss on them
Cb, those cabinets probably came with instructions - in Chinese!
It’s looking great. I hesitate to ask this… it do they have nice enough furniture to put in she. It’s all done!
This one won’t get nice staged furniture.
Speaking of which…what you went over to flip 5, did you get to see the interior decorating?? Hope it looked good.
And that the drains were fixable.
Looks fabulous!!!
your LUCKY clients have gotten MUCH MORE than their $$ worth.
the transformation from “before” to “after” is priceless!!!
Funny you should mention furniture. The husband has a large golden oak table (which does not go with the new style of the house) that has hideous cheap square chair things with ruined fabric seats. We are desperate for some garage space to store all the cabinet boxes and other stuff that we have to clear out the house to get the floors installed. We were in the jam packed garage yesterday and I told him, in no uncertain words, that those chairs CANNOT come back into the house. It would ruin everything they were going for if those chairs came back in. So, I am suggesting that they use the table but find some cute chairs (they don’t have to match) and then a large bench with cushion for one side of the table. The bench can stay tucked under the table when not in use to give them more space to walk around the table. It would be much better for the style of the house.
I believe they are buying a new couch but they keep showing me denim grey couches with the squared arms… too contemporary. She has a lot of photos loaded to Pinterest that she saved to show me the style they were looking for. Every time they talk about furniture I just keep bringing her back to her photos to show that her style lends itself to slip covered (which would be handy for washing with kids) comfy rounded arms.
This morning my roofer went back over to Del Monte to inspect an area that had a very small single drop leak in the roof. I told him to just go into the back yard but he rang the dang doorbell at 8am on a Sunday and then called me “they are not answering”. I talked him through the back gate and he put up his tall ladder in the area I explained. There is a small metal valley in the angles above the kitchen that flows water up against the upper deck wall. He says there is no way that the roof is leaking there because he torched 6" up the wall against the studs of the deck wall and then put metal flashing. Stucco is overlapped over the flashing.
So, it is possible that we have pin hole leak in the wall where the posts or railings are set on top of the wall. The buyer really isn’t worried about it and told me it is not a big issue because the 4-5 drips only appeared during the torrential ‘once in a lifetime’ rain day. We will still get over there and get on the deck and try to do a water test. But he says it is going to take 3 guys to figure it out. One guy has to hold a hose over the areas, another guy down in the kitchen to watch for leaks and another guy analyzing where the water is flowing.
We have fixed the area where water was intruding into the basement. There were small areas where the living room deck attached to the side wall under the dining room window where the stucco guy did not get the stucco patched well around the lag bolts and deck ledger board. My carpenter spent a lot of time sealing those areas and applying new stucco. He also went around the whole house and looked for any other small holes in the stucco that needed patching up.
My other laborer spent 3 hours digging out the dirt in the back yard away from the garage walls. We are letting the walls dry out for about 10 days (crossing our fingers to avoid any more rain) and then we will seal the heck out of the walls and re apply a membrane that whisks water away from the wall.
The buyer thinks that he will pour some concrete along the back of the garage walls so that water will slope away from the walls. He tried to hint that I should do that but that is above and beyond the call of duty in my opinion. There is a full french drain system behind those walls but it just doesn’t seem to be doing the trick.
And then the final fix I promised is installing gutters around the front door area because the roof runoff is overwhelming the french drain system
My roofer went to the project yesterday and the roof over the porch overhang is done and the flat sloped roof over the kitchen addition is all water tight now with a big stove vent for microwave venting to roof.
Today is a fun shopping day. We are going to go up to the flooring wholesale place and pay for the flooring and then go to several places to pick our countertop materials. She wants quartz on island near sink and granite on cabinet run in back where the stove is. I think we will not be able to find two different countertops that will work together in the small space.
The island cabinets are a Harbor Grey and the back run of cabinets are Shaker White. We could do a light countertop on the island and then a darker variation of countertop on the white cabinets but it might chop up the space too much. We will see
Lots of great progress in your photo stream. Awesome!
I agree with Menloparkmom, although something tells me that these young homeowners do not realize just how fortunate they are to have you overseeing this project. I hope their parents appreciate it!
This last weekend, Dad and Mom came over for 2 full days to help with the painting and cabinet construction. Dad had not been to the project since the beginning. He was blown blown blown away. Between the transformation of the exterior with new paint and the new porch overhang, removal of the ugly carport cover and the transformation to a large open concept inside with views through the whole house to the back yard. He is really happy
But all he really cares about is he wants to h ave a big deck off the back of the house. We haven’t gotten to that and it is one of the key things the kids want to make sure stays in the budget. The daughter works hard at saving money and shopping ‘sales’. She had a keen eye… IKEA had a big sale 20% on kitchen cabinets and she read the fine print that it was retroactive to any purchases in prior 30 days. She ran into the IKEA and got a refund of $600. Good job.
Yesterday we shopped hard for the kitchen countertops. We narrowed it down to two possible Quartz choices that looked good with the combination of cabinet colors and floor color. One was on sale for only $170 a slab. Guess which one we chose She got a huge island piece and two prefab countertop runs for only $800 total, including tax
Blast from the Past
Just today, one of my flips from 6 years ago just went back up for sale. The listing advertises Newly Remodeled, Tankless Water Heater, remodeled kitchens and baths. I was intrigued… did they do a bunch of work? Looked at all the photos and it is exactly as I sold it 6 years ago. I bought it for $680,000. Sold it (and it was hard to sell in 2010) for $867,000 and he’s asking $1,395,000 !!!
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I know! It’s the closet organizer! He put that in, right?
That advertising seems dishonest. You would thinks someone might ask WHEN the recent renovations were completed. Additionally…those 7 year old,appliances…clearly out of warranty…and if NEWLY renovated…a buyer would want NEW 2016 or 2017 appliances! Right?
That is really weird.
Have property values appreciated that much?
Yes, property values have skyrocketed since 2010. I’d say, based on the square footage, maybe a bit below the lower end of the range ($1,295,000)? I tracked the market for years while we were waiting to relocate, and there were houses in the $600-700K range in 2012 that are over a million now.
Well, you did a great job! It still looks great!
I can imagine that 2010 was still pretty depressed for housing prices. CB, is it worth $1.3 million now? The views are only from that front deck, and the front deck is exposed for everyone and his neighbor to walk by and look at you. I doubt people sit on it very much.
Those aren’t the exact same photos that were for your listing, are they??
We just sold a house out of town that we had purchased for our son to live in during graduate school. It was renovated in 2013, and we added new appliances that year. In the listing, we said the renovations and appliances were new in 2013 – which, in my book, is still pretty new, but I wouldn’t dream of suggesting they were “brand new.”