The cinder block house that prepared me for everything

[Sam Erickson]

Hi everyone, so I'm reaching back into the archives of my brain for this deal as it happened about 5 years ago, and was my first rehab.

The rehab took place in Janesville WI and was the first house my wife and bought after we got married. It was located in the best location, I have yet to find a property in a better one. It was on a circle road with only one way in and one way out. It was a 2 bed, 1 bath ranch ~900 sq ft. The average house on the circle was probably 2,000 sq ft, and were selling for 4-5 times what I bought this one for. The circle was lined with houses full of character, not one looked the same. To give you an idea of the circle it was the type of neighborhood that when the city wanted to come put light polls in all the neighbors got together and petitioned the city to allow them to put in the classic light poll at the end of the drive rather then the tall yellow light, light polls the city was going to do. Keep in mind the only reason they got to do this was because all the home owners paid for and installed their own light polls.

I purchased the house for ~$50,000 and was doing all the rehab work myself. I closed on it in the morning and went right from the closing to the house to get started. I promptly began ripping out carpet, trim, old kitchen cabinets etc. It didn't take long and I learned that the entire house was cinder block, the exterior walls, interior wall even the floor. The house had a full basement so yes it was a cinder block floor that was suspended over the basement with 3" of concrete poured on top of the cinder block.

As you can image it was a nightmare doing anything. The plan of easily moving the kitchen sink over there and and switching the bathroom up had become 10 times harder and nearly out of the questions. The house was constructed in a way that the plumber and electrician were on site when the blocks where being laid and all the pipes and wires ran through the center of the blocks. We ended up having to remove entire walls to get at the plumbing and and put new 2x6 stud walls in so the thickness would match the other walls.

The windows and door frames where set in place and concrete was poured around them. When we went to replace them we had to saw cut them out of the walls.

I purchased the house for $50,000, and put about $12,000 into it. We listed it for 89,900 and had a full offer the next day, I learned a lesson in under valuing with this property as well. Probably should have listed it for 10-15K more then we did but I was nervous about holding it for a long time.

So we ended up making just shy of $28K. The cinder block turned my original 1 month timeline into 3 months, however it didn't effect my budget, obviously time is money so it did have an effect on my bottom line with the extra holding but I didn't come out of pocket any more then what I budgeted.

I had no extra money to come out of pocket so I learned how to rehab a cinder block house. I say in the title it prepared me for everything and it has. I have not done a house since that hasn't been ten times easier.

You will never appreciate how nice it is to be able to cut drywall back, move some plumbing and then patch it, till your forced to remove walls just to move a sink.

Hope you enjoyed, good luck.

Sam