by Tom | Dec 17, 2011 | House Design
Here we go again with another San Diego house flip, I picked up this killer house right in our neighborhood of Bay Park this week. It’s a 1962 4 bedroom, 2 bath 1650 s.f. with attached 2 car garage. It’s literally less than a mile from my house and untouched nor updated, the architecture is perfect for a Mid-Century Modern renovation.
M.C.M. is becoming very popular and you don’t see many people doing them, so its going to be fun as well breaking out from our normal material choices and trying a whole new look for this project. The house is in a great area and on a culdesac, the only negative is that there is a huge private school & play ground right over the rear fence. I’m just going to have to find that buyer who works all day and loves the house so much they look past it.
Some of the ideas I have so far are all new aluminum windows and rear sliders from Milgard, they actually look real modern and I’ll use a mix of casement and awning windows where egress permits. Kinda funny, this will be the first time I actually put aluminum windows in, and don’t take them out. The front door will be frosted glass and the main facade feature will be an Amarr aluminum commercial style garage door with frosted glass panels as well.
Both bathrooms will get fully gutted and have floating vanities. In the all new kitchen I’ll be opening the wall with a peninsula between the living room, for a long bar top and the new sink and dishwasher location. That back wall where the sink is now, will be a clean wall of sleek euro style cabinets with a gas range in the middle and stainless vent hood, with no visible microwave.
I’m seeing the frosted glass backslash looking killer here as well, as much as I dislike glass accent tile. Besides opening the wall up between the kitchen and living room and taking off a few interior doors, there’s not really any big floor plan changes as I want to also stay in period and these gems have wide open spaces and great flow anyway. I’m thinking an under mount sink, possibly something other than granite for the counters, and bamboo floors throughout the whole house with no carpet.
I’ll probably keep the walls white inside and do another dark warm color on the beams, really similar to how it currently looks. Outside I’m thinking of sophisticated shades of gray with a light body color. I’m doing all of this on a pretty tight budget so I cant get too crazy. The kitchen will be flipped from my usual style, with warm wood cabinets and light counter tops.
The architecture of mid-century modern is marked by discipline. The house has such killer style, I’ll play off the original architectural theme of continuous planes of materials and keep everything clean and minimalist. The wide open spaces, big overhangs, exposed beams and tongue and groove ceilings are really going to look neat once its got all new cosmetics. The driveway and garage floor have severe cracks from the nearby Pepper tree so I’ll have to cut it down and re-pour the entire garage floor and part of the driveway and it’s also time for a new roof as well.
Call us if you want to sell your San Diego house. Escrow closes before New Years so stay tuned for some fun Mid-Century Modern fun!
by Tom | Sep 4, 2011 | Interior Paint, Painted Lady
Did you know Benjamin Moore has over 140 shades of white? Nothing is more classic than a white room and with big wide trims and good architectural details – Tom Tarrant
After all the hard work trimming out the house, its always a pleasure to start painting inside. Our floors are covered so no worries there, I went back to the well for my old favorite interior trim color Snowbound by Sherwin Williams in a semi-gloss sheen.
High-gloss is just too Brady Brunch in my opinion so I always use semi-gloss for trim inside. I sprayed all the interior doors, casings, closet shelving and baseboards with 2 coats after taping the glass up and switching out my chrome hinges with dummies.
I keep a bucket of crappy hinges that I don’t mind painting and find it easier to switch them out instead of taping the new ones off. This way also my new chrome hinges stay as new.
As you might notice I sprayed the semi-gloss right onto the drywall next to the doors and window trim with no cause for concern, my flat wall paint color will go right over that and you wont be able to see it. Also the hardwood floor refinishing will get any over-spray from the floors upstairs.
For the wall color I tried something new, it’s Cloud White by Benjamin Moore. I didn’t want to use the typical “flipper beige” and wanted to lean modern a bit without creating a full blown white box. I’ll run this color through the whole house to unify these big spaces and provide more flow.
The first few pics downstairs you can see the color on the walls already, I’ve layered the space by stacking 3 whites together; Pure White in the ceiling tray, Cloud White on the walls and Snowbound on the trims. I thought that with the huge room size anything too pure white might look like a hospital so with the soft, cream hue that this wall color offers, it will go good with the hardwood floors and be very easy to live with.
Cloud White seems to have a chameleon affect, in different rooms and at random times of the day, it picks up color around it, even sometimes almost looking a little pale yellow when the sun is coming in the front room.
Since I used good PVA drywall primer I can get away with one coat on the wall paint. I’m rolling the walls carefully with a very small 1/4″ nap roller cover because I have a high-end smooth drywall texture.
After all this work getting this hand-troweled luxury finish, the last thing I want to do is use a big nap and add stipple from the paint roller. The walls are looking amazing, probably the nicest finish I’ve ever done, I’m never going back to spray orange peel texture again.
The staircase is almost all stripped down to the original wood now as well. Once I get done painting upstairs I’m ripping this paper off the floors and its on! That’s all I got for ya.
by Tom | Jun 3, 2011 | House Flipping
Lately I’ve been fielding some great questions privately and have always kinda thought everyone else would benefit from hearing my answers so I’m taking this email public as a test to see how it goes. It’s from Steve Parry, location unknown.
Hi Tom,
First off let me say I love your website. I’ve been following it for a while now and it is the most informative, honest flipping blog I can find.
The reason for the email is I’m a young guy. My dream has always been to flip houses. I went to Columbia university, majored in engineering, minored in business. I work now for a construction management company as a superintendent so I am getting more and more familiar with construction techniques. I have the capital to start but think I need more experience to be anywhere as close to successful as you are.
My question for you is:
1) How did you get started?
and
2) What would you recommend for a guy like me just starting out trying to get the experience to successfully do what you do? Would you get involved, hands on as a superintendent so that later down the road I can act as my own contractor, or as a project manager so that I know the contracts and estimation side of the job or an engineer so I can pull virtually every permit I need and stamp my own drawings?
Any other advice you want to shed on me that maybe you would have done differently if you started over now….feel free to school me.
I know you’re a busy guy so I’ll keep my many questions to just those two.
Thanks for taking the time.
Steve
Thanks for the comments Steve and I’m glad you find inspiration here. It sounds like you have a great start to building the skills you would need to succeed in house flipping. Engineering and business will both help you tons. Having the capital to get started is also something that alot of other guys are not lucky enough to enjoy and they still make it happen using hard money loans, so here’s another strong point you have on your side.
1. I never set out to become a house flipper. Its been told, do what you love and the money will follow. I grew up around tools my whole life and was lucky enough to have a dad (r.i.p.) that took the time to teach me how to use them. He always was taking on remodeling projects around the house although his profession was a computer programmer. I always found myself helping even if it was just cleaning up. At an early age I learned about tools and I think it led me to be more mechanically inclined than other kids later on in life. I’ve had a lifetime of other careers in sales, manufacturing, construction, marketing, real estate and more. I think at some point everything just clicks and you take experiences and skills you’ve learned throughout life and they all come together and your path becomes clear.
Having tool knowledge and odd construction jobs throughout college enabled me to take on my own projects when I first became a homeowner. I was never really taught the right way to do anything (except painting) but rather just jumped in and did it the best I could, figuring it out as I went along. I always say you can learn how to do anything you want by asking questions (at home depot). In addition to growing up around tools with my dad, I was also lucky enough to have a mother who was a Real Estate Broker. I didn’t realize it at the time but I was absorbing everything from my parents that I would be using today being self employed.
Don’t quit your day job to become a house flipper. Build it up slowly and jump in full time after you’ve proved to yourself mentally and financially you can do it. After buying and rehabbing several homes for myself I took on my first official flip while still working a 9-5 job. It was a full gut 3 bedroom, 1 bath house in my neighborhood. You can find a video of it here called The Probate House. It was in my neighborhood and I new the local market like the back of my hand. I spent evenings and weekends rehabbing that house and had all my friends help me. I made more from that house in those 4 months than my job paid all year. To buy that first house I sold all my fun toys to raise the down payment and rehab money. After the first one went so well I rolled straight into 2 more. All 3 I made great money on. I had once heard somewhere If you make money on your first 3 real estate deals then you’ve got it wired. Looking back on it that was a bit naive, but it gave me the courage to quit my job and jump in full time.
2. This is a great question. You see on my site that I do alot of the work myself. This business model is not scalable however, so in theory you want to just oversee everything at some level but be able to delegate the work. Not to say that its not valuable to get your feet wet on the first few deals by doing some of the work if you are capable. There’s nothing like knowing how its suppose to be done, even if you are overseeing it. In todays market its important to produce a good product so dont compromise on quality just so you can learn how to do tile jobs yourself. I found it appealing initially that I could do alot of the work thus saving me tons of money on the rehab budget and hedging my bet for making a profit. This model works, but you’ll never be able to do 10-15 house a a year. Most of the construction knowledge you need revolves around what order to do things in. It’s really not that hard to do a big rehab if you just break it down into steps and hire qualified sub contractors for each step. Being a project manager is great but you probably wont need an engineers designation and if you do rarely need one, you can easily pay a few hundred bucks. You cant do everything yourself and thats one thing I’ve rarely had to use. I’d say being a draftsman would rank very high on the personal skill wish list. Being able to use auto-cad and draw up your own floor plans would definitely aid you down the road. If you have time I would learn this. Just about every house we do now needs floorplan changes and being able to put it all on paper is great. My last recommendation for you is to get your real estate license. Knowledge in this field is just as, or more important, than the construction side. Also, network with other local investors and investment clubs. Its great to surround yourself with like minded people. Be prepared also to hear negative reactions from some friends about your new career idea, its best to not even associate with anyone who expresses negative feelings on this because it could make you second guess your actions. People don’t like to see you make money, especially when they are stuck in their crappy low paying jobs, that they hate, just waiting for the day they are going to get laid off. What I do is not rocket science, anyone who puts their mind to it, and has passion for it, can be successful.
Good luck in your future and thanks for the great questions!
by Tom | Jun 20, 2010 | Hat Trick House, Marketing
“From the joining of two unexpected, seemingly opposite mates, great pairings can happen. How about Sonny and Cher, bacon cupcakes or Labradoodles?
Well the home design world is adding another great, albeit unexpected pairing to the list: historic home shells with über-modern interiors.” – Jason Buch, Express-News
I was interviewed this week to take part in a story that came out today called “Great Pairings”in the Express-News about local home remodelers specializing in pairing historic homes with modern interiors and features. As it turns out they were actually interviewing a realtor and another remodeler in the Historic King William area of town and they told him about what I’ve been doing for Mahncke Park and along the Broadway Corridor so they searched me out.
I was pretty excited to see who’s photos they used for the front page, especially when the meat of the story is really about another guy blending Contemporary architecture. As you can see our 1900 Arts & Crafts Bungalow built by H.C. Thorman dubbed Hat Trick House from last summer got the money shot. What made this house so special is the time we put in to carefully preserve the historic exterior of the home while gutting the entire interior, adding square footage, re-configuring the floor plan and offering a finish out to meet today’s most discriminating buyer.
While the article is promoting “uber-modern” interiors, we stayed somewhat true to the time period of this home with the renovation and material choices. This house got a lot of white ceramic tile w/subway pattern, White Shaker style cabinetry with seeded glass fronts and even a Farmhouse sink to keep the historic feel. While new materials like granite and stainless were still present, the kitchen didn’t look out of place after we were done.
Maybe Jason is trying to stir up his audience by using the terms historic and modern together because everyone hates seeing historic homes altered but at some point nobody wants to live in an antique either. If you want to see for yourself, here is the Contemporary Ikea kitchen in the other historic house referenced in the article. To check out the whole renovation video of my project with before and after shots, click here.
