Sun Bay - The "Ugly" House

In investor terms I suppose you would describe Sun Bay as an "ugly" house, ie., it's going to take a lot of work to make it market ready for the average consumer. But it just seems so mean to call it names. Just because each bedroom is a different color (lime green, electric ocean blue, and a nice neutral tan in one) with "matching" bathrooms (in that they're each a different color too... lemon yellow, bright/baby pink... with stickers all over the walls) doesn't necessarily mean it's "ugly". The kitchen kind of matches one of the bathrooms :)

I can remember a day when I was very into "country" decorating and, oh this is gonna hurt to admit, we painted the house a beautiful shade of... gulp... peach. And the carpeting was blue. We had a wonderful overstuffed couch and loveseat in a nice blue and white stripe pattern. I loved it! (Much to my poor family's dismay). But I'm not letting the kids off that easily. There was the violet purple bedroom, the dark grey bedroom, the - yes - electric ocean blue bathroom. Ahhhhh - the good ole days. We didn't have an "ugly" house at all. We had a precious home that was just the way we most desired.

Boy did that place take a lot of work when we decided to turn it into a rental 'cause, for some reason, no one would rent it with peach walls and blue carpeting! So, although Sun Bay has a definite character of it's own (and a few things a little scarier than just colorful rooms) - we will call it a lived in and loved home that needs a few changes to make it more appealing to the masses. Unfortunately, those few changes are gonna run about $25,000 :(

So please, check out the very thorough set of pictures we got of the "before" on Sun Bay (perhaps you should sit down first - and maybe you'll even want to make sure you're not alone if you get scared easily) and WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE THE AFTER!! You're gonna want this house for yourself! (Ok, maybe that was a stretch)

P.S. - you can get a fullscreen view of the Sun Bay slideshow by clicking on the title of this post... then just hit your browser's "Back" button to return to this blog :)

YELLOW BRICK ROAD

So you know how I felt all better when last I blogged? When was that... yesterday? Maybe two days ago? Well, while our contractor was fixing everything ("no problem") he came across a few more things that needed fixing. This is what you call an "ADD". The new things he found were on the outside of the house so NOW he CAN'T match the paint (as he said he would in the contract we signed). Now we need to have the outside of the house painted rather than power sprayed. Is there an additional cost for painting the outside of the house? Oh don't be silly! OF COURSE there's an additional cost. Is there a "subtract" for NOT power spraying (as first agreed upon) ... hmmm... no, I don't see a subtraction from the original price anywhere.

OK, so he says he's gonna give us "a deal" on painting the outside of the house. He's going to help us out... he's got a bunch of paint in his garage that he'll "let us have" to save on the cost of the paint and he'll only charge us labor. But we have no idea what color the paint is. He says he can "work with us"... what does that mean? He says he can mix some of it and he'll make sure to get a neutral color palette for us. We agree under the condition that we see and approve of the colors... afterall - he's saving us money! (Such a nice guy!)

So today we were suppose to meet him at Medallion at 10:00am but he calls and says he's running late. OK. (hmmm)

He calls around 11:30am and says he'll meet us there in half an hour. We get there and the "neutral palette" is YELLOW. No... not yellow ... YELLOW!!! Can you say "Yellow Brick Road"? (Ok, that might be a little harsh... still it was VERY YELLOW) And he's painting the trim brown. Talk about YICK! (Sponge says it's just two shades of baby poop) But that's not all... he's already had the guys paint one side of the house!!!!!!!!!! I was beside myself. SERIOUSLY! Me, myself and I were ALL speechless!

So I count to ten and take a breath and ask what our choices are at this point. "Well if you don't like it we can fix it". OK... feeling a little better. This is how we can fix it... WE can go buy paint but by the time we do it'll be too late for the painters to do the house today. Sooo in addition to the cost of the paint we'll also need to pay for another day's labor (because these guys already showed up on the jobsite and it's not fair to not pay them for NOT painting because WE don't have any paint for them).

You know, I don't have a lot of experience at this but somehow, scheduling the painters today and having them do an entire side of the house with paint that was not approved, and then charging us for an entire day while they don't paint anything else, just doesn't seem quite right in my head. Is it me? AM I HORMONAL???

Repeat this after me... there are A LOT of out-takes on "Flip This House" and "Designed To Sell" that we don't see!!!!!!!!

I FEEL ALL BETTER

Our contractor finally showed up on the Medallion job site today and met with Sponge regarding a whole list of items we're not pleased with. We've been looking for new subs for the last several days (that we'd coordinate ourselves) because of this and because Sun Bay is just sitting there, not having any work done at all, while our contractor has been at large.

So he finally calls Sponge and meets him there today and says he'll fix everything - no problem. He also said he'd get started on Sun Bay as soon as we say go (which would have been last Thursday if we'd been able to talk to him). And now I feel all better and like we don't have to find all new contractors (this guy coordinates all the subs himself)... am I hormonal? Stupid? Or just easy to please?

It doesn't really matter to me today... I'm just glad the work is getting done :) Wait 'til we can put up "after" pictures of Medallion and you let us know if we should stick with this contractor or not... I CAN'T WAIT!!! (It'll be about 2 or 3 more weeks)


P.S. - There are a couple of our contractor's subs that we're not happy with and neither is he - so I think we are going to find someone to replace them... plus, we're hoping to pick up the pace and have too much work for our contractor to handle so we figure finding more subs is still a good idea.

THANK YOU ONE AND ALL

I'd like to thank everyone that voted on the floorplans for your help. Floorplan #2 won by a landslide (58%) and even though I, myself, prefer the feeling of carpet under my feet, I've decided to do the tile as suggested by the majority vote. Many of you sent comments and emails explaining your choices and I have changed my own bias towards carpet because I can see the wisdom in your reasoning. Wow! Blogging is awesome!! Who knew I'd be the one getting the education by doing this :)

As I mentioned when I started this blog, my purpose behind doing it was two-fold:

First - to encourage all you new investors out there to get as much FREE education as possible. Along those lines I'm planning to begin including links to other blogs and sites that we use to stay informed as well as information on where and how to get tons of information (again, for FREE!) in your own "back yard". And

Second - to chronical the day to day adventures of actually DOING a "flip" (whether it's one you're selling or planning to rent out) so as to help with the details we, personally, just haven't seen in the "guru" packages. Along the way, we'll end up including our advantures as landlords too. Keep in mind, we're newbies ourselves so some of the information we share will be lessons in what NOT to do :)

Now... if only we could get a hold of our contractor to tell him our decision! Haven't heard from him in 4 days now - he's not returning our calls. We're trying to chalk it up to the holiday weekend and TRULY hoping he actually touches base with us tomorrow when the world gets back to "business as usual". Unfortunately, there are problems on the site (besides our contractor not knowing what we've decided to do with the flooring) and we don't speak Spanish... definitely a problem when you're trying to "Flip this House" in Texas. I think tomorrow we may have to go throw our bodies in the way of construction in order to stop any further mistakes from happening until we can get a hold of our general contractor/interpreter! (LOL)


P.S. - learning Spanish is up towards the top of our list of "things to do"!