Just got my first house hack!

[Danielle Campos]

I'm running to BiggerPockets because no one else understands what I'm doing or how excited I am. I closed on my first home/first house hack last week! It is a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathrooms single family home. My plan is to convert the dining room into the 5th bedroom and the 1/2 bath into a full bath and ultimately make this a 5 bed, 3 bath home.

The home is exactly what I wanted with light renovation needed. I've never done anything DIY so this will be my first attempt. I am planning to put in LVP, paint the kitchen cabinets, and add some tiles to the bathroom. Unfortunately, it seems that I may need to replace all the carpets upstairs since it has black lines on the edges due to soil filtration (previous owners didn't clean their air filters often).

I'm feeling very optimistic right now, but have spent a whole week just trying to decide on a good value LVP so I can replace the 1st floor... I still need to pick a carpet, get it installed, and find a contractor who can do the bathroom conversion (I definitely cannot do that).

Would love to hear other's experience diving into doing DIY for the first times. Any tips?

[David Liu]

@Danielle, awesome to hear you got your house hack property. It sucks that people in your circle don't understand or can appreciate what a life-changing decision you made by buying an income producing property! 

So for DIY, I used to be a construction engineer(managed contractors), my wife and I also renovated our own house hack with LVP, repainting tiles, walls etc... 

I have two pieces of advice for you. One is practical and second is mental. 

On the practical side, try to look for an LVP flooring that has sound blocking properties. With 4 other roommates, the more sound proofing measures you can take the better experience it will be. So flooring, insulation etc... should have sound proofing thought out. Use HomeDepot's flooring calculator to calculate how much flooring you'll need (it includes a 5% extra flooring buffer because you will mess up some cuts)

On the mental side, whether it's a big construction project or a simple LVP flooring project, you will encounter set backs, problems etc... you're going to want to give up, take a deep breath and push on. It'll get done. 

We just completed a triplex renovation in Charlotte that took 1.5x longer than it should but we pushed through and we were able to double rents and improve the living quality. 

Let me know if you have any specific construction or house hacking questions