Adding Stairs and Wall Texture

[Ben Morrison]

Hello BP group,

Looking at buying a house to rehab and flip and have a question for you experts. Currently, it is a ranch home that has a basement with only exterior access. It would technically be a walkout basement, but it's probably only ~6 feet tall. All the mechanical is in the basement (electrical panel, furnace, water heater). As part of the reno, I'm leaning toward adding a set of stairs inside the home to reach the basement from inside - seems very odd to me to have to go outside and around to access primary mechanicals. No quote from a contractor yet, but expect this to cost around $2k, total reno cost looking around $30k right now. Does this seem like a worthwhile reno to you?

Secondly, the walls in this home have texture on them like I've never seen. I'm talking peaks of probably an inch? I don't have it in the budget currently to tear out and replace all of that, but we would be reworking the floor plan and adding some walls (while removing others). It seems to me this amount of texture would be too much to skim coat and I'd be concerned with adding 1/4" sheetrock in that it wouldn't sit very flush over this extreme texture. Anyone experienced something similar? Thoughts or options here? Home is about 1100 sf.

Thanks!