Our lives have been pretty crazy lately.
With the explosive housing market and the tenants moving out of our rental, Mindy and I thought it was a good idea to put the home on the market. We did that in January and had multiple offers within 48 hours. At the end of this week, we close on the deal, but in the meantime, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. Busy, busy, busy!
Selling this home makes me a little sad. It was the last project I worked on with my dad before he died. I had hoped we’d be able to work on one more, but that’s how life rolls you sometimes. I also poured lots of love (and blood) into this home. It turned out pretty great. But it was time to move on.
At the same time, we’ve been wrapping up projects in our current place. We recently completed a load of work on the basement and installed about 1,500 square feet of luxury vinyl plank flooring:
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but at the same time, the work has consumed my life. I vowed to never do the Live-In-Flip Death March again, but lately, I feel like I’ve arrived there again. So, I’m going to stop most work.
We had originally planned to have the home ready to sell by April of 2022. At that time, we would have lived there for 30 months, long enough to avoid all capital gains. We probably wouldn’t have sold at that time, but I like to have my options.
But, trying to get the work done in a pandemic has proved too difficult. Construction is hard when Mindy is podcasting or the girls are attending a class online. A house full of people which is also a construction site is tedious for everyone.
I’m unsure if we would have bought this home if we knew how COVID would disrupt our lives. Living in a construction zone is trying, but knowing that its temporary helps you look past the dust and debris. Now, it’s not so temporary, so we’ll tie everything up and make the best of it.
I hope I don’t sound like too much of a Mr. Complainy Pants. Life is mostly good. Even great. However, chaotic environments have a way of messing with my mental state that is probably mostly unique to me.
Random
I hope to get back to publishing more articles and also producing more videos. Regarding the latter, I have a ton of footage that I just need to sit down and edit.
In the meantime, I’ll mention a couple of random appearances on the internet and some other things I’ve been reading lately.
Earn & Invest Podcast: I first met Doc G at Camp FI Midwest and liked him from the start. He’s a wise human and a gifted speaker who I’m thrilled to call my friend. Mindy and I recently appeared on his podcast to talk about home flipping. Listen here.
Doug Show: Doug is a Longmont local and whenever I see him, we have great conversations. I always come away having learned something. Listen to my chat with Doug where among other things, you’ll learn why there are dinosaur bones on the moon (it’s crazy, but true!).
MMM/Interactive Brokers: I first learned about InteractiveBrokers (IB) ridiculously amazing loan rates through a friend. MMM knows the same guy and used an IB loan to help another friend. His write-up on IB convinced me to move my post-tax holdings over. I haven’t borrowed any money yet and have no plans to do so, but it’s nice to know the powder keg is there. Again, options.
TicTocLife: Sometime in 2020, a new blogger started commenting on 1500 Days. I initially dismissed this person/blog because I thought it had something to do with the TikTok social network, something I have zero interest in. When I finally clicked over, I was surprised to find that TicTocLife had nothing to do with TikTok. Even better, the writing and quality of their posts is amazing. If you haven’t yet, go say “Hi!” to Jenni and Chris.
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How do you like the LVT flooring? We are planning to do this in part of house. Worried it would be hard on feet to use every where. Parents hard floors kill my feet when we visit.
So far, so good. I’ve never been a fan of carpet and we had cement underneath in half of the home, so LVP (Lifeproof in this case) worked well.
To make them slightly softer and to dampen noise, we put cork below. They are still pretty hard though. Our solution is to use rugs strategically around the home to make things a little softer and also absorb sound.
Let me know if you have any questions!
We put Lifeproof in our basement and I love it. So durable and it just looks slick. When the time comes to redo the main floor (carpet and real hardwood combined), I’d definitely consider it.
Yep, Lifeproof is great! We’ll see how it holds up, but bases on my experience so far, I’d do it again in a second.
“However, chaotic environments have a way of messing with my mental state that is probably mostly unique to me.”
Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re not alone there. I remember when our neighbors (shared wall) were having a major gut and reconstruction for a bathroom and kitchen…on one side of us…and an entire roof replacement on the other side.
This was around mid-2020 and I thought I was going to lose my mind. I could *feel* the impacts after a while. Weeks of it.
It’s probably the only time I thought twice about our living situation. But, that’s passed..and they’ve got some lovely improvements.
Now if only we could join in and wake my neighbors up with our own renovations 😉
Thanks for the call out! I’m pretty sure you guys have been intramental in “getting the word out” for us, which also helps us reach new people and have a positive effect (however small) on others’ personal finances. And maybe a little more limelight on giving.
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I’d find living in a construction zone very mentally challenging too, no matter how good everything else in life was. There’s something about having a cozy home environment that isn’t chaotic that is so crucial to keeping mental balance for me. I can overlook a certain amount of mess, I have to with a dog and kids, but there’s mess and there’s MESS.
How much more do you need to do to just wrap up your ongoing projects?
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“There’s something about having a cozy home environment that isn’t chaotic that is so crucial to keeping mental balance for me.”
Yeah, I wish I figured this out sooner in life! It’s especially important now in the age of COVID where we’re all spending so much damn time at home too. I think I’ll be able to get the current stuff mostly wrapped up by the end of March.
Even when you first started the live-in flip, I thought that schedule seemed pretty aggressive. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years of working on home improvement projects, it’s that “life gets in the way.”
It certainly seems to have bumped into your way on this project. Good to see you being realistic and dialing things back! It’ll be better for everyone from the sound of it.
Cheers!
I can relate to your feelings of anxiety. We did a major renovation on our home while we lived in it. We have brick and mortar homes so there was dust everywhere in an open-plan home. What should have taken a few weeks took multiple months, and we had nowhere to hide, can’t use the lounge, the kitchen or most of the rooms. It was also raining by the bucketload. So I feel your pain on the project! It’s good that you’re realising you don’t need to rush the project, but I’m sure you’ll be glad to have some rooms complete so you can at least hide out somewhere.
Maybe because of Covid and needing to all work from home it would be better to focus on smaller subsections of the home from start to finish? Or to ask everyone to work from the neighbourhood coffee shop, assuming you can?
Good luck on the project! Time to enjoy the journey again =)
Charlie!
Yeah, breaking it up into small bits is a good idea. I’ve tended to resist that in the past because it’s a bit more efficient to do all of the flooring or trim at once, but not at the expense of my sanity.
The dust is what gets you. Nothing like having a laundry basket or clean clothes or just-washed dishes on the counter covered in a layer of dust. Been there, done that. More than once.
We’ve been in the same, and our only, house for forty years. We’ve done nine construction projects, all of them while living in the house, most of the largest while we had three kids at home. One was installing a second floor to the original single story house. So we got used to the noise and sheet rock dust and it was kind of cool to watch the progress as it went along. Of course I didn’t work from home so I missed a lot of it, but my stay at home wife/mom actually became the crew when the second story was going up and the carpenter’s assistant got mad and quit. The original 1,400 sq ft house is now close to 3,000 sq ft and has more bathrooms and bedrooms than we need with the kids grown and gone. But houses are cheap here so there isn’t enough equity in the paid for house to recoup anything meaningful by downsizing.
Good to know others are willing to put up with living in construction zones! Is your wife for hire? 🙂
smart move scaling back, especially if it’s just gonna be cosmetic stuff. you do a helluva job when you dive into these construction projects i must say. you know what they say? “the ox is slow but the earth is patient.” that work will be there when you’re ready for it.
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Chris and Jenni are good people. I first learned about them through their guest post on financial mechanic. Their story was really fascinating for me as well and I believe I will be a regular visiter of their blog 🙂
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I remember clearly when you said “no more flip”. Then you did a major flip.
It is a drug. My sister has the same addiction.
Good choice to slow it down. Until the next one. 🙂
Haha, you’re totally right! I’ve thought about this comment a lot and came to this:
Every home I ever buy will probably be a flip in that it will need some work. I just like doing it this way knowing that the home will work for me financially; forcing some equity via my sweat.
In the case of this one, I thought I’d have time to work on it while the girls were in school. Then, COVID. Sigh…
The key is that I enjoy the work. If I ever hate wielding the nail gun, I’ll quit!
Good on ya’! It is hard to live in a flip. Especially with everyone home. We did one and my husband refused to ever do it again. We just flip and pay the capital gains. Although I have snuck in all our flooring and a fully redone kitchen in our current home. Christmas Eve we were up until 3:00am desperately installing cabinets and countertops so we had somewhere to Cooke the next day. What an adventure.
“Christmas Eve we were up until 3:00 am desperately installing cabinets and countertops so we had somewhere to cook the next day. What an adventure.”
This is tenacity and hustle! This is grinding it out! This is awesome! And this is how you get ahead! Nothing great happens when you stay in your comfort zone. Nice work!
Yeah I don’t think I could take on that large of a construction job right now. It would drive me crazy living in a construction zone with the kids! I have stopped alot of our smaller projects just because of the price of materials (especially wood) freaking $8 for a 2×4 is crazy. Did covid kill your construction budget?
We got so lucky with construction projects. I bought most of my wood for the deck and basement in February and March of 2020 right before it all went nuts. I saved myself at least $5,000. Purely luck, but I’ll take it!
I feel like I’m already living like that. My kitchen has been torn out since May 2019 because the insurance company has been a pain in the ass. I don’t think I’d ever want to do a Live-In Fix n Flip.
“…I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but at the same time, the work has consumed my life. I vowed to never do the Live-In-Flip Death March again, but lately, I feel like I’ve arrived there again. So, I’m going to stop most work….”
It’s not your only choice.
Find a contractor and just pay to get the job done.
You had a goal to get to $1MM+ to achieve your version of FIRE. You are now over $3MM. FIRE isn’t just about retirement but also about having the resources to handle adversity or things that you just don’t want to do. OK, things didn’t go as planned … Covid crashed a lot of dreams and plans across the country. It happened and your burn out and disruption is real. But you don’t have to delay the rest of your life in an attempt to retain your sanity.
Taking one or two percent of you savings to complete the work without your effort is something you can do. You really don’t need to save the construction dollars and a permanent loss of this money isn’t really going to matter.
Hire a contractor and pay the money. Your situation today is different from what it was 5 or 6 years ago. You don’t need to do it yourself.
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Nothing wrong with some DIY as a recreational activity. I have done some just to show my self I could or because I found a particular task ‘interesting’. This is way different from the early days of our marriage when I did a ton of rehab because we had no money to do it any other way. Your situation today is different from what it once was …. you just haven’t recognized it yet. Consider that you have an additional choice available because of your financial success.
All the best. /Bob
Hey Bob! How are you? I hope the weather is treating you well on the beautiful Atlantic Coast of Florida. Wish I was there!
Rereading my post, I could have written it better. The thing I failed to convey is that I really love to do the work. Not being able to do it makes me sad. This may sound a little nuts, but the thought of living in a perfectly done home with nothing to do gives me a little anxiety. If you ever meet Mindy, she will tell you that she has to yell at me so I quit working. I never want to buy a perfect home. As long as my body allows, I want to be playing Bob Vila with some of my waking hours.
For the time being, I’m going to transfer my time to other pursuits. One of them is the piano. I’m trying to master a Chopin piece by the end of November. Good thing I didn’t cut a finger off doing any of the construction!
“…Construction is hard when Mindy is podcasting or the girls are attending a class online. A house full of people which is also a construction site is tedious for everyone….”
Even if you put it aside until later, there is living in unfinished space now and future disruption. A quick contractor fix eliminates the ‘unsightly now’ and reduces the future disruption time (contractors are faster in their work). I’m sure you can find future modest future DIY work for yourself that would be a contained disruption and still be a value add. What do Mindy and the girls think of the decision to ‘pause’ in construction site mode and future disruption? Did they get to consider a contractor ‘finish this all right now’ option? Your anxiety over a ‘finished home’ might not trump their ‘needs’ or desires.
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The Atlantic coast is quite nice but cloudy and chilly (occasional 50’s) this time of year. We are not there! We spend much of February in Marco Island FL every year. We have a nice place there and it’s in the high 70s and 80s with sunny days. Back to Amelia next week.
Hope you are ‘surviving’ the normal cold Colorado winter!
All the best to you and family. /Bob
I find that trying to hire work out is painful and infuriating. For example, at our last place, I made a list of about 50 contractors to contact to frame out an addition. Less than 5 returned the call, 2 showed up to meet me, and 0 bid the job. It took me 6 months just to find someone to nail the sticks together. The demand for workers here was crazy back then and it’s much worse now.
And if you can find someone to do the work, they often do a shoddy job. Even if it’s not bad, it’s still not up to my standards. One example is travertine tile that I installed. Check out how I carefully cut the hole out of the middle for a heat vent: https://www.1500days.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/PXL_20210219_200624973-scaled.jpg I’ve never seen a contractor do work like this. They would have just cut the tile in a couple of different places to get it in quick and easy.
Another example is the deck I completed over the summer: https://www.1500days.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/pergola-1.jpg It was complex and I had to come up with unique techniques/design for a lot of it. I doubt I could have found a deck builder to do it and the pergola.
A lot of the work I do is custom and unconventional. I’ll build angled bookshelves suspended by stainless steel cables at one point. It would be difficult to find someone to do this.
But, I get your point and last month, I tried to bail on this house/project completely. I told Mindy that we should sell this place in its mostly-finished state (a flipper would have snapped it up and completed the work) and move back into our rental house which was completely done. I told her we just don’t have time to work on it, but she said she’d rather stick this project out and just suspend the work. To appease the girls, we’ve redone their rooms.
With all of this said, most of the heavy lifting is done. A kitchen remodel is next and that’s easy! But it won’t be for a while…