Real Estate – Making Diamonds Shine
We bought a rundown house with the floor boards rotted in the laundry and kitchen. The house smelt of wet dog, and the kids’ rooms had the windows painted black. The house had been a haven for drug users and every inch of floor space had a filthy mattress on the floor.
The grass outside was thigh high and odd plants remained behind the garage. The garage door was all burnt. Even with all of these defects, the house was mine. I ordered one of the biggest dumpsters there was and we started (my sister and I) ripping cupboards out and then knocking down the wall between a tiny kitchen and a huge laundry. I wanted a European-style laundry in the kitchen that you could just close the door and all would hidden. We worked from daylight to dusk at every opportunity to rip down or throw out the garbage from inside.
Methodically, we ripped down and then cleaned out the debris. I wondered how people could live like this. We painted the place ourselves and it came up really nice and my sister cleaned the windows while I helped install the new compact kitchen. The tiler was laying down the floors in the kitchen and bathroom areas. It took shape gradually. Finally, the carpet was down in the hall and bedrooms. My sister worked the broom so that the vacuum wouldn’t get stopped up. We called more family members together for the yard work, to first slash the grass where we found syringes and other drug user appliances. We cut, mowed, trimmed, mulched and landscaped.
I then decorated the lounge area with a rug and then a sofa with other decorator items. The room looked fantastic. And then we opened the doors for people to inspect, because this was our first “flip house”. Within forty minutes, we had two buyers trying to outbid each other and we sold the home within the first hour. We were actually stunned that some hard work and a bit of planning had paid off.
When we sat back and congratulated ourselves I was working out the figures and after all our costs were taken out the diamond that we had gotten to shine, had actually made us $40,000 from our sweat equity. So, go back to the agent and ask to see the worst house he has on his books and one that’s been on the market for months. Who knows, you might even find your own diamond. diamond painting tiere