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:

1. Demolition – Time: 2-3 months
2. Electric – Time: 1 month
3. Install Furnaces – Time: 1 week
4. Run Ductwork – Time: 2 weeks
5. Gas Lines – Time: 2 weeks
6. Install Hot Water Tanks – Time: 1 week
7. Plumbing – Time: 3 weeks
8. Cleanup and Sanding – Time: 2 weeks
9. 1 Bathroom Floor Install – 1 week
10. Plaster Repair – Time: 1 week
11. 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.
12. Door and Moldings – Time: 3 weeks
13. 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.
14. Install Flooring – Time: 2 weeks
15. Bathroom and Kitchen Fixtures – Time: 3 weeks
16. Repair Finish work – Time: 2 weeks
17. Garage and Porch Roofs – Time: 1
18. House Roof – Time: 1 week
19. Siding Clean and Repair – Time: 1 week
20. Porch Repair – Time: 1 week
21. Garage Fix-up – Time: 2 week
22. 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 time in the future!  We have done most of the things on this list we plan to do ourselves at least once before, maybe just not on so large a scale.  Things we don’t like or really aren’t comfortable doing we will hire out and for some things we have friends that can assist us!

With plan in place, we are excited to get moving!  I am sure this excitement will slowly fade into “Aren’t we done yet” and “Man this is hard work”, but we can only hope it pays off in the end….