Flip Or Flop?

I have been a little slack in my posts recently- so I will make up for it by having a really long post today:)

There is a very good reason I have not been posting cute pictures of my kids as frequently: I have been busy. REALLY busy.

Several years ago I decided I wanted to try my hand at landlording. I have a dear friend who is incredibly successful and has over a dozen income properties, and for years she talked to me about getting into the game. I was willing to give it a shot, but Ben had absolutely no desire to do so- he was worried about maintenance issues, bad tenants, crashing housing markets, etc. All good reasons, for sure, but I wanted to take the risk while he did not.

For years we went back and forth on this. Finally, last year, we decided to get a place. For the most part, the house was in great condition and we literally posted the house for rent the day after we bought it. After six months, I asked Ben if it was worth it, and even he admitted it was- everything with that unit was/is going perfectly as planned.

It is a row house in a little subdivisions with 12 row houses all together.

A couple of months ago one of the other owners contacted me and said she was interested in selling her units (she has two) and she wondered if I was interested in buying one. Ben was not. I was.

I went and looked at it- and it was in HORRIBLE shape. I mean, HORRIBLE. It is a 2 bedroom, 1 bath and it had about 12 people living in it. From 30 yards away you could smell the cat urine saturated carpet. Lots of pot smoke as well. Mold, rat poo, you name it- it had it. Absolutely DISGUSTING.

I fell in love! I knew there was GREAT potential! Thankfully, Ben was not with me as there is no way he could fathom just how bad it truly was. I don't think there is any way he would have let me buy it if he had seen it before the day of closing (in fact, he didn't see it until most of the renovations were done)!

After much persuasion (and it really did take my best persuasion skills) I convinced Ben that this was a good buy.

Here's the deal: I don't want to go back to work. EVER. I loved teaching while I taught, but I don't ever want to go back. I LOVE being a stay-at-home-mom! I LOVE the options that being at home affords me.

But realistically, I know there is a possibility that I could at some point in my life be widowed- and the time could possibly come when I would need to be responsible for the financial needs of my family. That's just life- things happen. And if I never need to be financially responsible for my family, it is still really fun for me to have something on the side that doesn't require a huge time commitment (i.e, I can still be a stay-at-home-mom full time), but still brings in some fun vacation money or whatever. It's FUN for me.

With this house, I knew I would need to WORK full-time for a good three weeks before we could put the house on the market. And, three days after closing Ben went out of town for two weeks. UGH!

We thought about flying my mom out to help me out with the kids, but she works so that wasn't really a possibility. Instead, I called in every baby-sitting favor anybody owed me and relied on Ben's parents A LOT.

Basically, I realized why I don't ever want to go to work! It is REALLY hard to balance work and kids! Huge kudos to all of you who do it!!!

Anyway, I went to the house constantly and worked harder than I have in a really, really long time. Manual labor, elbow grease, blood, sweat, and tears. It all came out! I had not been so sore since forever. It was a butt load of work.

But on Wednesday we were able to post our house for rent, after 3 weeks of impossibly hard work. Tomorrow we are having lots and lots of showings (the response has been amazing so far!) and we should get a signed contract tomorrow. The Denver rental market is insane right now, which is great for us.

Ben still isn't thrilled we did this. He is still leery of the land lording business, and with good reason. It is a risk. But, as I hope you will see from the pictures below, it is a risk that I am perfectly capable of handling! Well, I will let you know in 20 years if it was all worth it or not. In the meantime, I promised Ben that I would not buy another house for at least 4 years. This one just about did me in!

Before:

 Old paint, cracked concrete, pretty DUMPY looking- right?

Their dog had scratched up the front door super bad

 The carpet was so disgusting that you could smell the cat urine

saturated carpet from 30 yards away- I'm not joking.

Would you ever want to live here? GROSS!!!!

My only thought was, "HOW can people live here like this???"

It was beyond disgusting. Pictures don't do it justice.

 You can see the dark, dank feel of the entire house- the walls are filthy and have tons of holes. The dog scratched the paint from the outside door off so you can see the medal. Every door in the house was breaking or completely destroyed.

 Mold around the tile in the kitchen (above) and filth under the laundry (below)

 The tub was surrounded by mold- the darkest, most disgusting bathroom I had ever seen:

 In several spots the ceiling was falling down:

The previous owner was a slum lord, plain and simple. She admitted to not doing anything to the house for years, and we could tell.

Ben and I have NO desire to be slum lords. We want rentals that we would be comfortable living in.

So this unit needed the Christina Touch.

I brought it- and here's the end result:

 Nice, open, bright- concrete stained floors (those took 3 days of hard, physical labor, but they turned out fabulous! Perfect for pets- because if they pee on the floor, who cares?)

 Red brick accent walls

 Updated kitchen

 Both bedrooms have access to the back patio:

 CLEAN bathroom- that was a gross job. I'm glad it's over:

 Updated lighting in the dining room:

 Fresh paint outside (oh, and I built the gate all by myself!):

 Back Patio

What do you think? Is the Christina Touch alright?

Even though Ben won't admit it, I think he is proud of what I have done. I caught him bragging about the house to a co-worker, so in his own quiet way I think he is 10% glad that we bought the house and he has something to brag about his wife about.

Hopefully we will get it rented tomorrow! Showings are the scariest part for me, but Ben is surprisingly calm and AWESOME at showings, so we make a great team. It's been really fun to get to know him as a business partner and to be working on the same team. Wish us luck!!!