Renovation Update

What’s going on everyone?

For me it’s been a crazy Christmas Break, I didn’t really have a break, as I was hustling and working trying to get the units rented. I’m still working on the units. With old houses, this one was built in 1915, trying to retro-fit things has proven to be a challenge. I’ve run into a few issues so I haven’t been able to finish the renovation yet. I thought I’d give a quick update. That’s why later on when I posted the income, people don’t just say that I’m lucky or if they have the same amount of money as I have, they could’ve been successful also. LOL. I really did work for the money. (Well, the units aren’t rented yet, so I can only dream of the days that they both get rented, right?! Well, after all it’s the motivation, passive income.)

To start off:

New Hot Water Heater tank replacement – Sounds easy enough, right? Nope!! Since the old tank was 40 gallons, and full of water, no where to drain it to. Luckily I had a roll of water hose in my trunk. Drain it and move it out of the way?!! Nope. It was still heavy as heck. plus the rust, it took 2 men to get it out of the back yard, and 2 men to load it to the truck to get rid of it.

The problem didn’t stop right there. We went to pick up the new one. After hooking it up, my plumber didn’t wait for the water to fill up before cutting the electricity on, the heating element is fried. I had a the machine to test the current. Lowes was closed, so we had to wait for the next day. The plumber didn’t shut the water off, so after he drained it pass the heating element, he let it sit, so the water filled it back up, he didn’t check it again …

Well, you guess it, the water was pouring down the pan. In a normal circumstance, the water would have drained to the outside or to a waste line? Nope! It leaked all over to the restaurant side.

I had to call Mr. W to come with a Shop-Vac to rescue me. Dang!!

After 5 days, we got to the ceiling to open up, finding that they did a shot job. The drain that they hooked to the waste line, didn’t connect at all, they sorta heat the line, then squeeze it into a hold of a 1 and 1/2 PVC line. Don’t believe me? Here is the picture of the “squeezed” not up to code line.

So this shot job caused me to – 1. Open the Ceiling, Make an Access Door, Frame it . 2. Rerun the Drain Line for the hot water heater 3. Rerun the Drain line for the Pan underneath the hot water heater. 4. Re-Run the drain Line for HVAC as moving the hot water heater cause the line to be broken. 5. Several trips to Lowes. 6. Buy New hot water heater twice

That’s not all.

Here is a window that they had put in and didn’t use treated wood. So it’s all rotted out. Just to fix this $700 job, one guy quoted me!

Well, the ex-owner wanted to turn the 2 apartments into 6-8 of one-bedroom units. To see how’s thing are going, they “cracked open” some holes in the wall. As the result, I had to heal it up. I don’t have the picture, as my Ipad stucked in infinite loop of recovery mode. I had lost a bunch of pictures.

One of the bathroom the floor was totally tilted. And the plywood is totally rotted out. Luckily, the wood back in the 1915 are solid. So I was able to sistered it and put in new flywood, and use the self-level compound so we don’t run into the same issue in the next 10 years.

That’s not all though, since the water was pouring down from frozen pipe, the ceiling in the restaurant need to be healed.

 

Well, it wasn’t as simple as some of the tubes and wires are in the way. It was proven to be a challenging situation.

Windows – Broken window, window couldn’t be shut, windows don’t have screen, windows have boards that are completely rotten, ya da ya da…

Decks – I have 3 stories decks – none of them are up-to-code with picketts on every 3.5-4inch. None of them has carriage bolts, so there were actually parts of it falling off. Man, what a nightmare!

Drain line – after fixing the drain line in the basement, I found more cracked drainline that need to be tackled. On and on and on…

I hope to get the majority of things done over the weekend. So, I can finally install the floor so the apartment will look good for showings.

I’m still upbeat that I will get this done … somehow, someway, I’m hopeful. LOL 🙂

Since, I only borrowed $20K from Mr.W. I totally ran out of money, so I cashed out $17.5K of principle from my Roth IRA to fund the renovation project. I hope it’s a not too big of a mistake cashing out my Roth IRA, but I don’t want to borrow too much money from Mr.W.

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I’ve listed the two apartment on Zillow.com and craigslist.com. I’ve had some interests, but I still need to some updated pictures to make it looks more appealing.

One thing is for certain, the building is better now than when I first took it over. So, there is progress. It’s certainly warm-up as I have more people walking in the building, as it has been empty for so long. I hope to bring it to its full potential in the very near future.

My next post will not be until next year! Cheers!!