Good Fences Make Great Neighbors

Good Fences Make Great Neighbors

I’m getting close now so I’m feeling a bit relieved. Even with ongoing rain delays I’m making progress. I installed all the electrical fixtures and this time I spent a little more on Craftsman Style sconces for the porches. Really worth the extra money, check out Lumens.com for some killer stuff. The house numbers and mailbox are from Restoration Hardware again. I replaced the front door with an extra gem I’ve been holding onto after acquiring it from the Hat Trick House last year (some of these old bungalows come with 2 front doors and I always remove one to modernize the floorplan).  I’ll paint it my same brown color when I second coat the porch. This Pine, 6 panel, beveled glass door came from renowned San Antonio developer H.C. Thorman’s personal residence in Mahncke Park that we flipped, it was the first house he built there in 1900 and appropriately on Thorman Place. It looks right at home on our project and seals tighter than new with a modern threshold and new weatherstripping all around. A building envelope test will be coming our way shortly as part of new code changes this year in order to pass final inspections, so the house can’t be drafty.

The 2 ceiling fans on the porch are a nice added touch. Just makes you want to pull up some chairs and have a cold beverage. As you can see I am flying the” Tarrant Realty ~ Coming Soon” sign in the window, we’re getting some warm bites already. I’ve weeded the yard and we’ll be laying out some river rock beds and putting down sod this week while the floors get refinished. 

This door knob is older than you, unless you are 111 years old. It’s the original from our 1900 door that I refurbished. Note the modern weatherstripping, this thing shuts like an airplane door.

 

The tile job kicked my butt but was worth the effort. The hall bath was fairly easy but this master bath stand up shower and tub box seemed to go on for an eternity. I used white subway tile, river rock floor and a modern white/grey marble accent liner. The shower is tiled inside and out and all the way to the ceiling. Custom frameless glass for the door and picture window are on order from Thad Ziegler Glass. If you guys are flipping houses and not putting shower doors on your new showers at least give them a cheapo, so many times I see all this fancy tile work and expensive fixtures in a brand new bathroom with no shower door. It ranks right up there on my pet peeves list with no rods or build out in the walk in closet.  

The see thru fireplace in the master is my sizzle feature on this project, while the tub side of the fireplace is surrounded by white ceramic to match the bathroom, I chose white and grey marble for the master bedroom side. Very romantic to say the least and all with a flip of the switch. There is a direct line of sight from the master bed location through the fireplace, and to the spa tub and into the shower. It’s sure to keep the fire burning in the future owners love life.

 

Good fences make great neighbors. In this case we have really cool great neighbors already but its very common with the older neighborhoods not to have good fencing. Part of my business model with redeveloping these urban properties is not only to give the potential buyer a complete package but also make them feel safe living close to downtown. A 6 foot privacy fence and automatic driveway gate (coming soon) usually does the trick. Any attorney, doctor or young professional could feel safe here and these are our target clients. My friend and I rented a hydraulic auger and jackhammer and it still took us 2 days to dig the 20 holes for this section. Nothing comes easy in the South Texas heat. A menagerie of rocks, roots, glass, and ancient plumbing were thrown our way but nothing can get between a cowboy and building his fence.

Moving Forward Slowly, Holiday Delays

 I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thanks for checking out our house flipping blog this year and a special thanks to the 6000+ returning visitors who find our content interesting and have returned regularly. In this first full year with the website we received over 23,000 new visitors. It’s great to get the comments also; we enjoy the questions and feedback. 2009 was a great year for our company, especially with the success of our project “The Hat Trick House”. It was probably my favorite renovation to date and we set personal records in several areas on this house. In the process we also were able to buy the house right next door “The Neighbor’s House” and are 99% complete with that big rehab and looking forward to an early Spring 2010 sale. Our third and last big deal this year was the purchase of a house we’ve been after for years, “The Target House”. I’m all set roll into 2010 with this big historic renovation as we’ve already handled the demo and foundation leveling so stay tuned if you like house flipping and Craftsman style homes.

I’ve somehow managed to stay busy through the Holidays and have at least some sub contractors show up at Neighbor’s House. As you might have heard from Twitter, the first attempt at the floor refinishing was a bust. The guys had to re-sand them all down again after the stain and clear coat wouldn’t dry due to the weather conditions and did some weird stuff. They really know what they’re doing but I think he was just in a rush and trying to pull it off before Christmas so he could get his final payment. This put us back a week on having the Energy Star appliance package (all stainless of course) delivered but they finally came and wow, what a Cadillac the new Samsung refrigerator is. It’s a grand more than I usually spend but we required a counter depth model for this kitchen design to flow properly. Really nice. I also managed to do most of the landscaping while the floor crew kicked us out, I threw up about 150 feet of fence and brought in 4 yards of top soil, some river rock and 4 pallets of sod. With my energy efficient theme on this remodel I decided to use Bermuda Tiff turf grass instead of St Augustine as it requires way less water and holds up to this Texas heat in the summer. Of course I know all grass is dormant this time of year and arrives brown from the grass farms but it still sucks to put down brown sod and not to get that initial “new yard” look like the summer. The A/C guy stopped by and installed the compressor but the heat isn’t on yet until I can pass finals on Electrical, HVAC and Plumbing and then have the power company come out and set the new gas meter. I am doing a killer driveway gate again this time but this one will be automatic. Should have been installed “before Christmas, I promise” but hopefully it will come this week. Land of Manana here again in good ole SA as a lot of Hispanic workers go to Mexico from Christmas to New Years to be with family. A cool old guy stopped by this week from the area, an 87 year-old millionaire investor. He had heard of me through some local Realtors and came to introduce himself personally and see my work. Of course I love listening to seasoned pros, he told me of a land deal that netted him a million bucks in 3 months time. His parting words were: “There’s one out there for you”, very motivating.

The Final Countdown

The Final Countdown

We are in the home stretch and shooting for next weekend to be completely done with the Hat Trick House. Woot Woot! As you can see we’ve made great progress this week again completing all the landscaping while the floors were getting done inside.

Front

Back

We used 7 pallets of sod, 4 yards of river rock, 2 truck loads of topsoil, $600 in plants and a yard of black mulch after lining the beds out with the metal edging. All that’s left outside is to paint the front door.

Side

The hardwood floor refinishing is done now as well so we will install appliances tomorrow and get started on the shoe mouldings on the baseboards. The floors came out nice and dark, as we planned. In fact when they first started applying the dark walnut stain it wasn’t dark enough for my liking so I had the guys mix in some black pigment. They look dark and rich now and go well with my interior colors and oil rubbed bronze fixtures.

Floors

We’ve had numerous visitors this week and early inquiries from sign calls. Additionally the neighbor directly beside us put their house on the market Friday so everyone who pulls up to see their house of course sees our “coming soon” sign and walks over to take a gander. Although theirs is in a lower price range and not updated it has enabled us to get some traffic even though we are not in MLS yet. Everyone that’s seen our house has been blown away, one well-respected local realtor predicted that we’ll get $335k. Stay tuned.