Do up diary

[Gerrard]

Hi folks - I have just taken on a do up project so thought I'd keep a diary of it here. Hopefully it gives others a chance to learn from what I go though, and it is also a good way for me to record ideas for the next one before I forget them!

I'll try and post daily updates (assuming I have something interesting to say) over the next few weeks as I'm working on the project.

Gerrard

[Gerrard]

First a bit of background:

I spent almost 2 months looking for the right one to start on. Early on I selected a part of Wellington near where I live based on 3 main factors:
1) I'm close so can jump on my bike to check out properties even when my wife is out with the kids and car (yes shock horror a 1 car family!)
2) we live in the area and are pretty much the demographic so have a good idea about buyers expectations
3) avoid the 1st home buyers market and go to a market where people have more money to spend on a house which will hopefully turn into more profit per deal for us (of course buyers in this area are just as competitive as anywhere else so it wasn't quite as easy as I expected to find the first property)

I got printouts from an agent of sales for the last 12 months in the area and have used this as a comparative basis to work out what any house might sell for in it's current condition and what a done up value will likely be. To start with I was quite slaveish (?) to the stats, but by now have a pretty good feel for the market so don't use them much unless I'm looking at a street I haven't spent much time in yet or something out of the norm.

I've found 2 agents who cover the area I was looking in and have been working pretty closely with them. 1 still tries to sell me everything their agency has on the books, and the other suggests a lot of properties being sold by competitors (aiming to get the benefit of reselling it for me).

So over the 2 months we put in about 30 offers on properties (a lot is being sold by tender so this was real easy: just get the documents, fill them in, and send them off without have to go though all the sales bullshit). We came real close to buying on about 3 properties but either wouldn't move our price quite enough or just got beaten in the tender. Others we missed by a mile because a homeowner was prepared to pay significantly more then us.

To start with we were quite selective about what to put offers on, then moved into shotgun approach (the old RK "increase your failure rate"), before going back to more selective where we had a good chance of buying the property.

Most properties still sell very quickly at tender, auction, or based on their buying price. I'm still chasing these whenever there is a good opportunity, but I'm also now spending a lot of time looking at the ones that have been on the market longer than average to work out what the problem is and how I could fix it.

The property we finally bought had been though a tender process (no tenders received), was then marketed with a BBO price (no offers), and the thing that finally attracted me to it was a subtle change in the advertising to include the words "worth an offer". This caught my eye, got me to go look at it, see it was a bit tired and also empty. Sounded like an opportunity so ran the numbers and decided to put in an offer.

I'll provide details about all the numbers and my projections later, but decided it was worth buying at $450k. Offered this unconditionally. Vendor came back at $480k so I offered 2 options:
1) $451k and settlement in 7 working days, OR
2) $455k with settlement in 3 months time

I figured if they went for #2 then I would get the benefit of a few more months growth in the market and have time to do another one in the mean time, but I figured the fast settlement of #1 would be more attractive to a vendor with an empty house. I was right and got it for that.

So with the purchase secured we took the chance to get as much organised before settlement as possible. Being the first one this was really useful time to check out carpet suppliers, think about colours, and plan the details of the work to be done. In future I would definitely go for prior access to reduce the holding costs while we do the work.

Main things that we got organised before settlement were:

• General colours / style planned out
• Final budget estimated (had originally decided on a spending cap of $15k for the property so now worked out exactly how to spend this)
• Planning the details and flow of the work (the old project management skills came in handy for this)
• Carpet selected, quotes done, and date booked in
• Purchased curtains (nice ready mades from The Warehouse)
• Trip to Mitre10 to buy door handles, towel rails, roller sleeves, and all the odds and ends we need
• Consultation with landscaper

[Gerrard]

Settlement day:

Settlement day finally dawns and we end up waiting til early afternoon for possession. I truck the tools and things around there, then the fun starts - demolition. Well actually we're not demolishing anything - just replacing worn / ugly things like door handles, curtains, etc so it's not quite as satisfying as knocking out walls.

As the old door handles were piling up in the rubbish bin it occurred to me that I'm contributing to environmental problems by chucking all these things before the end of their useful life. I'm improving thins house so it will appeal to someone who likes things pretty and new so I can make a buck out of it. Great (not). Since when did I support rampant consumerism and environmental damage? This might be a source of internal conflict for a while to come.

I ended up wasting about an hour taking curtain hooks off the old curtains to reuse when I realised these things about about $3 for a packet of 50. Duh! For an hours work I just saved $9 - not a good use of my time.

Bugger my wife has a meeting at 4pm so it's a short day and don't actually get far.

[Gerrard]

Day 2 - more of taking things apart

It's another shortish day because of commitments with the kids at each end of the day, and I also duck out in the middle of the day to look at another property - good if you feel like rebuilding 1/2 the house but not quite what I want to do just yet.

In the 80's power points and light switches were screwed to the wall then had little plastic inserts to cover the screws. 20 years on the plastic inserts have gone brittle and pieces of plastic fly off when trying to lever them out. Safety goggles would have saved a bit of pain and cussing today. I was cursing the fact it would mean another trip to M10 to get replacements when I find the sparky who installed them left a new set in behind each switch. Genius! I'd buy that man a beer today if I knew who he was.

The whole idea of taking these off was to save time when painting. After about 3 hours to take them all off the wall the jury is out on whether it will actually be a time saving (will let you know further down the track). It also occurred I should have had students lined up to do lots of this stuff so I could get on with the more important things.

Ahh, finally I'm doing something constructive. No more gaps is my best friend and makes all problems go away. Don't want that door there? No worries I'll fill it in with no more gaps. Well, no, not really, but you'll be amazed at what it does fill.

[Gerrard]

Day 3 - the carpet comes up

It's Saturday and I generally don't plan to work weekends but slip a few hours in while a friend is available to help take up the old carpet. It's stretched a bit over time so pretty easy to pull off the smoothedge except for the stairs where about 1 billion stables have been used on each step. Curse all carpet layers!

Tips of the day:

• A carpet blade is so much better than a standard Stanley blade and so much more fun. I almost feel like a professional
• Unless it's really knackered, reuse the underlay. Save $$, time, and the environment.
• If you have any allergies to dust then dose up on the snot drugs a couple of days before and wear a dust mask. Otherwise it ain't so much fun.

[Monid]

Interesting reading, good luck with the renovations and keep us updated

Cheers
David

[SuperDad]

Gerrard,

This is a briiliant idea, blogging about your reno experiences. I am looking forward to the daily updates, from which I hope to glean lots of handy tips.

I find that masking power points and light switches, and then cutting in around them, is quicker than removing them.

I like your two offer strategy employed to secure this property.

Paul.

[No Regrets]

Nice one Gerrard....make sure you keep us posted

[deliveryman]

How about occasional pix?

Gerrard this is a great idea! How about one or two pix to show the "before" and "after" as well as any funnies along the way. I'm interested cos I've bid on 4 units that look like my grandma's place when I was young.....

Ramon

[muppet]

Hi Gerrald

Great idea.

Please take some photos and post.

And I have just stickied your thread so it will stay at the top.

Regards

[whitt]

awesome idea Gerrard

[Gerrard]

Hi guys - thanks for the good vibes. If anyone has alternative / better ways of doing thins I mention here then feel free to jump in with your ideas. It'll be too late for me this time but I'll be ready for next time, and I'm sure it will be useful to others too.

Paul - yep I'm thinking that masking the powerpoints would have been the way to go on this one. In the future I'd only take them off if I wanted to get the perfect finish.

The 2 offer things seemed to work well too. They weren't written - just conveyed back through the agent. It got the message across that I was ready to buy at my price and wasn't going to play lots of countersign games.

Gerrard

[whitt]

Another idea is to replace light switches and power points if budget allows.
You can get them for $8-10 and if you are painting a room make a big difference in looks.

[Gerrard]

Day 4 - arm the students!

Normally I'm against the arms race but today I would quite happily have armed some students with screw guns and let them go wild.

The particle board floor has more creaks and squeaks than I ever thought possible so figured I'd whack a few screws in to tighten it up. Good idea, but 1 box of 500 screws later and it still has squeeks. Aghhhhh!

Some were easy to spot and fix. I could see movement in the floor as I walked around and the squeak was the particle board join moving, or rubbing against a nail.

Some of the squeaks tho were completely random and I just couldn't repeat it enough to figure them out - step on 1 piece of floor and a squeak would come from a totally different part of the room. Some of it seemed to be where the bottom plate of a wall (or maybe the skirting) met the floor. These were just impossible to fix or get to. Also, since I was walking around my ears were never at ground level to listen for exactly where the squeak came from. Ah well. It's about 90% better so that will have to be good enough.

In hindsight I reckon it would probably have been smarter to get that screw gun and put in a screw next to every nail in the place. It might have taken a bit longer but I spent a fair bit of time anyway trying to pinpoint some of the noisy spots.

The other main fun of the day was filling in a heap of picture hook holes. Seems every different tenant wanted pictures in different places and loved to use different fastners (hooks, screws, nails etc). A 100mm jolt nail banged head first on top of these holes pushed back in any protruding bits and was then small enough to fill. at least these was a simple solution to this one!

After all of that it was onto a bit of sanding. The paintwork is generally in good condition - just a bit tired and knocked around. I gave the doors and architraves a very light rub over with sandpaper just to take the shine off and help the new paint stick.

The window frames had small bit of flaking but this was quick to sand out since they are aluminium frames so it's just the wood surround - no fiddly bits next to the glass. 3 bedrooms and stairwell done with the sanding. More to come tomorrow.

Given my hours of labour today with no radio (yet) to entertain me, I got to thinking about the value of cheap labour. I'm guessing A student would get pain minimum wage ($12.25 / hour now??) so an 8 hour day woulod cost about $100. This house incurs $132 per day of holding costs while I own it, so anything that costs less than this per day to get it on the market sooner is of benefit to me.

And when it cuts out some of the non-fun jobs it sounds pretty damn good to me. Will definitely plan on getting some more labour on the next job.

But even cheaper than students are in-laws! My mother in-law is going to help out with the kids for a couple of days a week so my wife can spend time with me on the house.

Gerrard

[Gerrard]

I've got some before photos but they don't actually look very bad. Well in fact the house isn't in bad condition at all. Just a bit tired.

I'm hoping that when I put an after photo next to the before photo it will be more obvious - so will do all these at the end.

Gerrard