>Welcome
This blog started back when my wife and I decided to make some big life changes and take on a rather big project in buying and restoring a huge foreclosed home. A lot of things happened in a short period of time after this decision was made and had we known all the work the next 5 years would entail we probably wouldn’t have bought the property, but as they say jet planes don’t have rear-view mirrors!
The posts on this site basically detail the different projects we have taken on ourselves over the years, not only with this first property but any other similar projects as well. We are not experts at this (or at least weren’t when we started), so we will be going at it with fresh eyes and probably making many mistakes.
My hope for this blog is that it will be helpful to anyone else out there looking to buy and fix up an investment property themselves. I will walk you through the steps we took, let you know how choices turned out, and whether or not we would have done it a different way if we had to the chance to do it over. If there is anything you ever want to hear more about or have comments on the content of posts, please do not hesitate to contact me. I would love input on improving the content of this blog so that it can be as useful as possible to others. This blog will also serve as a reminder for me down the road of the work that goes into these projects, and it will give me an outlet to reflect upon my choices. Enjoy!
>Latest Posts
23
2022
Disconnecting the Gutters from Sewer
Author: Jarrod
If you recall from the previous post about when we purchased the property we were required to put $3K down for use in disconnecting the gutters from the sewer. For whatever reason the quotes we got to do this were astronomical ($2K was the cheapest), so definitely something that was easier to do ourselves.
Some places it may be possible to simply cap the sewer pipe off where the gutter connects to it above ground and call it a day. In this borough; however, they run a camera up the line you and you need to disconnect it where it connects to your sewer main! I am guessing because they have problems with people simply reconnecting them after the inspection when doing the cap method. This means we had to figure out where it connected. The borough workers were able to give us a general idea but it still took some work to figure out where. The first thing we did was go in the basement and identify where the sewer line exited the house and then found the same spot outside. We dug down to make sure we found the pipe and which direction it headed. Once we did that we used a soil probing tool (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Bully-Tools-48-in-Soil-Probe-with-Steel-T-Style-Handle-and-Sharpened-Tip-99203/205348127) to kind of follow the line hoping to see where it connected.
Unfortunately we found it ran right into a giant concrete retaining wall and ran through that all the way to the main at the road. Then we started from the gutter pipe and found this seemed to head straight into the same concrete wall. So we started digging, we dug starting from where the downspout connected all the way to the concrete wall, by hand since it was only about 10 ft. Once we got that all dug up we found a hole in the concrete and a T connecting the pipe to the main.
It was old clay pipe on both pipes so we smashed it away and pulled out the pipe leaving some of the pipe sticking out of the main so we had something to attach too. Next we took one of those Fernco rubber couplings (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Fernco-4-in-x-4-in-PVC-DWV-Mechanical-Flexible-Coupling-P1056-44/100372298) and a PVC cap to cap off the end of the T. Before filling it in we called the borough worker over to make sure this was acceptable and to get him to sign off so we could get our $3K back! He was all good with it, so next we just needed to run the downspout somewhere else.
This property was right in town and had city water, but since it was so old there was still a well on site and it just so happened to be an open well right next to the trench we had just dug! So i figured the simple solution was just to dig a few extra feet and run the downspout right into this well! Had we not been able to do this we would have had to just knock some concrete out in the retaining wall above where we had disconnected the original pipe and stuck the pipe through to drain to the street. This concrete was about 2 ft thick though, so we didn’t want to go that route.
The final t
31
2018
Detour Completed
Author: Jarrod
So in the last post I told you about some news that had caused us to somewhat rearrange our plans. We were having a baby and we needed to find a stable place to live before that happened. We bought another duplex that was in much better shape and moved into the bottom unit. Although this duplex was in better shape it still needed a bit of work to be ready to go. We had a lot going on over the past couple months with work changes, summer and family stuff but we were able to get everything we wanted to done JUST in time.
The prior tenant had moved out when we purchased the place, but it just so happened that a couple of our best friends wanted to move down to Pittsburgh too. This worked out great for all of us because they could get cheaper rent, we could get less risk, we would all have friends close by, and they even helped us clean, paint, and fix things! Most people will probably caution you about renting to friends and family and all the problems it can cause, but in this case we had already lived together in the past so our concerns were minimal. They were planning on moving down near the end of September meaning we had a little over 2 months to complete as much as we could!
WindowsThe most expensive thing we had to tackle was windows. I have never replaced a window, I was on a short time frame, and there were over 20 of them to be done, so I wasn’t taking on this one myself. I think one day I would like to figure this job out and see if there is a cheaper way to do it. From the research I have done the market seems fairly restricted in that it is hard to even get custom windows to install yourself for a price that makes it worth it, but I need to learn more. Anyways we called a bunch of places and sat through all the spiels, window samples, and special deals. We kept saying that’s too much until they got down to their best offer (usually after calling a manager and agreeing your home is a good model home to put a sign at or some other made up reason) and finally decided on some windows. All said and done it was about $600 per window, not great, not awful. Five weeks later they came out and in 3 days got all of them replaced and flashed.
There were 2 unique windows in the 3rd story that they could not replace for me. I mean I’m sure they could for enough money but I wasn’t gonna do that. The original windows are shown in the picture to the left. What I did to replace these is just measured the dimensions then I ordered some custom cut insulated interior. This is fairly cheap and cost me under $100 per window. I then removed the old windows and used some of the caulk the window installers left for me and just seated the new glass against the jamb and caulked the gaps all around the glass. So the windows no longer open but they were now nice and efficient. At some point over the next summer I will hopefully redo th
15
2018
Life Happens
Author: Jarrod
As I alluded to in my last post something came up that was going to force us to take break from our current duplex project. Near the end of the demolition phase we discovered my wife was pregnant! This will be our first child, and we are pretty excited. With this news we just had to slightly reconfigure our plans. The news has not changed our saving and investing plan any, on the contrary it has reinforced them! We now want to continue even more devotedly so we can spend more time with our little one before he or she are grown up and moved out! However, with a child on the way we needed a more stable living situation than a small apartment, a duplex in progress, and driving over an hour one-way to work (for both of us).
Since we bought our current duplex with cash we had no mortgage so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to add another property to our portfolio. Yes this means delaying income production on our current duplex project, but since there is no mortgage then at least then only money loss is taxes, insurance, and the potential income. Our apartment lease was up in August and we found out the news in early April so this time we needed a place that was livable almost immediately. We decided to move right into Pittsburgh to give us more “close to home” work options as well as better real estate options. My company actually has an office in Pittsburgh and so I talked with them first and they agreed to just let me work out of that office and my wife was also able to move with her work to Pittsburgh as well. So everything was in place, now we just needed to find a house…
We focused our search on only homes that could be multi-family, so that we would essentially have a portion of our mortgage paid by a tenant increasing our ability to save and invest more of our income. To search for these I found the best method to do so without missing too many was to filter based on 2+ bathrooms and 4+ bedrooms. Much of the information in real-estate listings can be inaccurate or just blank, but I found these fields are fairly consistently correct. On a side note it continually amazes me how lazy and bad some real estate companies and/or agents are. Between inaccurate information, not responding to phone calls and emails, and rude demeanor I am not sure how some of them make a living. We actually ended up working with the same realtor as we had for our first duplex even though he was over an hour away just because of how bad many of the ones we tried in Pittsburgh were : /. Anyways, that search criteria along with an upper price limit (ours was 150K) was the best method I found. I would then just go 1-by-1 through that list marking all the potential multi-family homes (both currently multi-family and easily convertible).
Looking in a big city was sooo much nicer than in smaller ones. Even though multi-families are a bit hard
18
2018
Demolition
Author: Jarrod
Well it has been several months since I have been on here to update everything. And, besides a few smaller things I decided to put off, demolition has been completed and dumpsters have been filled and hauled off!
Every time you tell someone you are working on demolition or tearing down walls, etc. they respond with “Oh, that’s the fun part.” To which I respond well then why don’t you come do it for me because I think it’s awful. The few people I did get to come help soon changed their tune however. Demolition is dusty, dirty, itchy, hazardous, and grueling work, when people think about it they just think about destroying stuff and not all the things that go along with it. First of all make sure you look for the presence of asbestos in the house and get things tested if you’re not sure. Also I would recommend an updated tetanus shot since you will probably get stabbed by a dozen nails a day.
The house we bought was built pre-1900’s so our goal was to keep as much of the original stuff as was possible and reasonable. There are several reasons for this such as:
- Old plaster walls are waaay better than drywall in terms of quality, strength, and insulative properties.
- Pre-WW2 wood is much more dense than modern wood because it comes from older trees where the fibers had much more time to be compressed before the trees were cut.
- The custom woodwork inside and oustide of the house is beautiful and gives tons of character and value to the building.
- And most importantly, why waste the time and money doing something that doesn’t need done (A.K.A. – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it)!
Thankfully, the bank hired people to remove most of the trash from inside the place, so that did not need to be done. The first thing to do though was get all the fixtures out so I could properly get to the walls, floors, and bones.
- Cabinets and counters were pretty straightforward, unhook and pull out any sinks and plumbing so we don’t break good pipes then take a big ass sledge hammer and smash everything out.
- Toilets are also very simple, most of the bolts were too rusty so I just smashed the porcelain from around the bolt and then you can take the toilet out and slide the bolts right out without unscrewing them at all.
- Tubs I did not actually have to remove. There was only one tub in the house and it was in good shape. Tubs I have removed past homes have been a pain though. I found the easiest way to get them out of tight areas was to break them down into smaller pieces. With fiberglass tubs I just took a Sawzall to them and cut them right in half. With porcelain I just smashed them then picked up the pieces. Cast Iron…. good luck, never had to remove one of these suckers you’ll probably need a few good buddies and some patience.
- Showers were a mixed basket. The easy one was just a surround and some glass doors. I first unscre
08
2018
The Plan
Author: Jarrod
Now that we were the proud new owners of this beat up beauty we were facing down the daunting task of rehabbing the place. Before buying we had already made a list of what we thought needed fixed and also estimated the cost of doing those things. What we needed to do now was come up with a plan that allowed us to complete all these tasks as efficiently, quickly, and cheaply as possible…
Since we had to sign a 1 year contract at our current apartment only 4 months ago there was not huge hurry to make the place livable. For this reason we decided we should tackle the whole place for the tasks that make sense to do so instead of segmenting it into chunks. I mean why tear out one floor and clean up, only to mess it up by tearing out the next floor. Just made more sense for efficiency’s sake to complete each task through the whole house before moving on. After writing out everything that needed done, considering what we could do and what we would hire out, and what tasks were dependent on others we then organized our list in a way that made the most sense to avoid redoing work or slowing down tasks that could be faster by performing others first.
Here is our current plan in chronological order with time estimates (heavy on the estimate part) included:
- Demolition – Time: 2-3 months
- Electric – Time: 1 month
- Install Furnaces – Time: 1 week
- Run Ductwork – Time: 2 weeks
- Gas Lines – Time: 2 weeks
- Install Hot Water Tanks – Time: 1 week
- Plumbing – Time: 3 weeks
- Cleanup and Sanding – Time: 2 weeks
- 1 Bathroom Floor Install – 1 week
- Plaster Repair – Time: 1 week
- Drywall – Time: ? – We will definitely hire this out, I know how to do it and have done it many times, and I hate it haha.
- Door and Moldings – Time: 3 weeks
- Painting and Staining – Time: 3 weeks – This may be hired out just because the cost is acceptable for how much we hate doing it haha.
- Install Flooring – Time: 2 weeks
- Bathroom and Kitchen Fixtures – Time: 3 weeks
- Repair Finish work – Time: 2 weeks
- Garage and Porch Roofs – Time: 1
- House Roof – Time: 1 week
- Siding Clean and Repair – Time: 1 week
- Porch Repair – Time: 1 week
- Garage Fix-up – Time: 2 week
- Window Repair/Replacement- Time 3 weeks – If we decide on replacement we will likely hire this out in which case it becomes a couple day task.
This is our first time doing anything of this magnitude so all my time estimates are just best guesses and they all assume I am working only weekends, which was one of my wife’s stipulations. They also assume I have every weekend free and do not have anything going on in my life, which is not true haha. I imagine the timeline will be much longer than if you just added all of the times together due to many weekends being consumed by other plans, but this will be a good learning experience for how to better budget my