Changes made on the exterior of this Flip House

As many of you know my husband had lost his job over 2 years ago because the company he worked for outsourced the work to a company in Taiwan. We had started a couple of home based businesses, one of which was flipping homes. This is where you buy, fix up, and resell houses, hopefully for a profit.
This is the house we bought to flip last fall after we completed the things that we needed to upgrade in order to resell the house. IMG_0060 This is the house before we did anything. It may not look that bad, but nobody had lived in the house for two years and there were a lot of things that needed to be done. Some of the things we did on the exterior of the house were to
add Malibu lighting, repaint the coach lights, repaint peeling paint, replaced the front door (It looked as if someone had tried to break in), sealed the driveway, repaired the roof where needed, took care of the weed infested lawn, fertilized a couple of times, added a lot of landscaping, mulched and added a brick patio.
2010 028 Here is some of the peeling paint.
2010 004 The yard was covered with weeds.
2010 008 When we are done with the houses we stage them to sell. We even staged the porch.
IMG_0061 This is the front done. Wait until you see the back!
IMG_0060 This is what the back of the house looked like when we bought it. The weeds were at some points as tall as 7 feet.2010 002
If you look near the bottom right window you could see by boys young men waving their arms. We had to soak the ground and pull out all of the weeds.
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See how happy they look! 2010 010 Really, they where good sports about it.
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The people who owned the house before we did, had taken their brick patio with them. (Can you believe that?) The ground was very uneven and it was impossible to mow, as a result the weeds grew that tall.
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Now you can see the house! Before you couldn’t even get to the back door.
2010 004 We burned the weeds with a hose near by.DSCI0015 This little guy is always wanting and ready to help.
DSCI0016 Here is another before picture. After all the weeds were gone, we installed a new brick paver patio. That is another post in the making.
2010 001  See what a difference! One of our main objectives in flipping a home is to make it “Turn Key,” which means when the new owner turns the key they have to do nothing but move in.IMG_0036
Staging the patio with furniture allows the new owner to visualize the extra entertaining space and actually makes the patio appear larger. Although this patio is very large (18’x28’).DSCI0184 We even added a walkway to the side load 3 car garage.
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DSCI0188 This was the way the side of the house looked. Ugh!
2010 027 And now it is very welcoming.
DSCI0153 This is the before and after view from the kitchen.
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We also think the lighting should be updated.
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I really liked this house. We thought about moving into it and selling our house, but ours needed to many repairs and updates to it before we could sell it. I always have a list of things to do. It is the never ending list! lol! It always seems to get longer,  even if I am doing the things on it.
Do you have an on going list?
Does it ever get done?
What have you done to sell your house?

5 comments:

  1. That house has certainly improved. It must be gratifying to see how it looks now, after all the work you put into it. I really like how you staged it as well.

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  2. That is an amazing transformation! Great project for the family to work on together!

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  3. That home looks amazing. If you don't mind me asking, where do you live? It's amazing to see so much green around everywhere, and it looks like most of those houses don't have enclosed backyards? Here in Arizona it's becoming rarer and rarer to see a home with even a little grass in the backyard. This is amazing!

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  4. Wow, I can't believe the transformation to the exterior of this house! It looks really welcoming and fresh now. I sure would have hated being a next door neighbor to this property before you got a hold of it. You worked a miracle. :-)

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  5. How do you go about staging a house to sell it? Do you use your own furniture or have some access furniture stored somewhere that you can use? It's amazing what you have done and how you seemed to have taught your children that family helps out always and they find paying jobs as soon as they are old enough and have driver's license..I'm impressed and pat yourself on the backs. You deserve it. Do you ever go online at Craig's list or go to estate sales and buy furniture used and refurnish it to use for staging purposes?

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Thank you for your comments!