Newbie Investor: What I learned from first reno project

[Tyler Fischer]

I bought my first house in June 2019 as a fixer upper and wanted to write about some of the things I have learned over the last year. The house is a 4 bedroom 2 bath, built in 1957. I was able to get it for a good price because the previous owners had not taken care of it and ultimately didn't set up the house to show well.  It needed far more work than I originally expected to even make it live-able. when I moved in the house was infested with roaches and smelled terrible. I've done quite a few improvements to the house over the course of the year. I painted the main living spaces and the master bedroom, rehabbed the kitchen (painted the cabinets, replaced appliances, replaced the counter top, and installed new flooring and light fixtures), gutted the master bathroom, and closed in a window that looked into the foyer(I could never figure out why someone put a window there).

After doing a little bit of reflecting, I wanted to share some of the biggest lessons learned throughout this process.

1. Know yourself, and your capabilities

Originally my father and I were doing all of the renovations and I was relying on my dad to know how to do things correctly. What I realized pretty quickly was that while I can do any renovation project myself some things are better left to someone else. I spent time and money having to go back and do rework because something I did turned out to not be correct. For example, I decided I was going to buy Ikea laminate counter tops and install them myself, which would save me tons of money because the counter tops were roughly $180, which is substantially less than other options I had looked at. After spending an entire day, cutting, and reinstalling, everything looked decent enough. That is until I went to have the backsplash installed. The contractor pointed out that the seams I had were causing the counter to be unlevel, and it wasn't square in the corners. I ended up replacing the counter tops with a far nicer material and had it done, mostly right. 

2. Your initial feelings about someone are probably correct, Trust your gut

I realized that when you meet with someone about potential work if they are unreliable in your initial talks that means they are unreliable. I like to rationalize and work with people I like but I am trying to treat this as a business and simply liking someone is not a reason to do business. I will give you an example, when buying my counters that needed to be replaced, I liked the salesperson I worked with but in my dealings with the office manager I could sense the lack of management. I proceeded on with the purchase and consistently ran into headaches, delays, and lack of communication. Some of this is probably unavoidable but if i had listened to my gut and moved on to a different company, maybe my experience would have been different.

3. You need to be hyper focused on communicating with the people you hire

Overall I have had good luck with the contractor I am using. I have noticed that I don't always do a great job of being very specific about what I want done.  The contractor doesn't know what I am picturing so I need to do a better job of listing out exactly what I expect to be done on a particular project. The standard I have in my head wont get executed that way unless I communicate it.

Last but probably my biggest lesson

4. Some things are better to spend the money to have it done right. The final product will be so much better.

This goes back to my first point. After knowing what you are good at also think of the final product and will spending the extra money to have it done right make the difference. I learned it makes a world of difference. I'll share another story, I had to option of taking my kitchen flooring down to the beams, replacing the subfloor(water damage/unlevel) and laying down vinyl flooring over it, or for $500 less I could pour self leveling cement and lay the vinyl over that. I went with the cheaper option even though it was really just covering up a problem. The final product looks good and I have no issue with it, but there are spots that are unlevel still. In hindsight I should have spend the extra couple bucks to have it done correctly.

I can't wait to take what I have learned so far with me to my Master bathroom remodel and eventually into the other properties I buy. What are your thoughts on my lessons learned? What have you learned in your journey?