The House Spena Flipped: The Beginning

Oh my goodness. Where to even begin!?! (As I contemplated that- I 1000% fell down the rabbit hole that are my previous house saga posts. So that was a fun time.)

Anyway. If you’ve followed along for a while, you know that we’ve talked about investment properties before. The timing was just never quite right….before now that is.

Jim has always been interested in flipping homes (he happily watches Fixer Upper with me!) and has always kept an eye out for THE property. He had a very specific checklist in mind of what he was looking for and thought that perhaps, sometime next year would be the time to start seriously looking.

But then this house appeared. And it checked all of the boxes and all of the things and just gave Jim the vibes that said, “this is going to be your first flip”. So here we go.

It was a foreclosed, auction, with a deceased owner. He won the auction at the beginning of August and was supposed to close at the end of August (while we were on vacation!) but delay after delay instead meant that we didn’t officially close until the end of September.

We got the keys and access to the house at the start of October, the dumpster arrived, and demo has begun! (As I type at 10PM, Jim is currently still at the house- working away)

So, here is a brief tour:

When you enter the front door you immediately come into the living room (this wall is already gone!). The stairs lead up to a super cool, unfinished loft area,

The carpet is gone now too. Holla!

Out the windows of the dining room is a weird garage type addition stuck on the back of the house, that Jim will be removing (yes, he’s doing majority of the work himself!) but before that, he is storing things in there- cabinets, doors, etc. (the paneling is already gone now too!)

This little half wall is gone (I posted a video of him kicking it down on my Instagram the other day!)

The kitchen. I adore that window over the sink!

It has two bedrooms and a bathroom on the main level and a space for a bedroom upstairs in the loft (we are also going to add an additional bath up there as well)

So anyway, that’s mostly that! He’ll have to hire some additional help for things like extensive plumbing and roofing, but for the most part, the plan is for Jim to do all of the work in his fringe hours. The hope is to have it back on the market in the Spring, sooooo fingers crossed 😉

It’s kind of a fun family thing and a total trial run to see how much we actually like this whole flipping business. If it goes well, maybe we’ll get an HGTV show out of it. Just kidding 😉

I’m super proud that I actually got to the house and took before pictures since I’m typically the world’s worst project photographer. I have an end result and then nothing to show from before…usually.

All of that to say, I’m really hoping to keep y’all posted on the progress as it moves along! It should be a fun creative outlet for me and I hope you enjoy following along with it too!