The Norwegian Investor - The Wall

When I bought the flat with my wife, we understood that in order to maximize the profit with our project, the best idea would be to add another bedroom. And the layout of the flat really facilitated such an idea.

 So our plan was to pretty much convert the living room in to a second bedroom. And because the two bedrooms are quite large, we could appeal to students who just need a bed and a desk, while sharing a kitchen. So the solution we decided to go with was this:

So never having done anything like this before, I expected I could have the job done in 3 days, and that it would cost about 20.000kr (2500 USD). And I thought that in the future we could redo the kitchen by flipping it horizontally to create a larger living room. Like this:

So day before we were scheduled for taking over the flat from the previous owner, the owner gave us the go ahead to put the building materials in the flat, and for us to start the renovation. (THANKS!)

Often in the BP podcast, they talk about knowing your unfair advantage, and one of my unfair advantages is my family of great house-builders/renovators. So I asked my stepfather who has built two houses by himself, and my brother the carpenter, to come and help me for a few hours to help me get started! They both came for about 3 hours each, and it was a huge help! Thanks guys! It would have taken me much longer without you!

I received lots of help the first day putting up the two by fours, and at 02.00AM finishing my first day it looked like this:

Day two: Applied the plaster, installed the ceiling lamp and fitted the door frame.

Day 3 - 5: By now I had realized that my timetable of 3 days to finish this project was not nearly enough. I had not taken into account how long it can take for plaster to dry, when you apply layers that are too thick. The advice I got was to put on enough, and then some, so that i could just sand it down later. Clearly I didn't know how much less that actually was. after 48 hours, it was still wet, and I decided to remove it to put on a thinner layer. The problem was primarily where the wall is angled. To make it smooth, a large amount of plaster was needed, and I put too much.

By the end of day 6 I had finished the third and last stroke of paint. And only the molding remained.

On day 7, by extreme luck I found all the existing molding in a local shop, even tho the old ones, were from 1995! Getting the angles right proved to be a headache, but the end result turned out pretty nicely!

The whole experience was such a rush! And seeing things are made were incredibly rewarding! And another big high was that the renovation that I expected would cost 20.000kr, only ended up costing 10.000kr! It should be said that I used another unfair advantage, which is that my aunt is the store manager of the local equivalent to Home Depot, and the total discount I got on all the tools and materials came to over 3.000kr! 

The total project needed very close to 100 hours, in which 20 of them was hours I got from others helping out! Thanks guys!

Another major thing was that by looking at the comparable units in the area, this 10.000kr wall, increased the flats value with approximately 100.000kr, and the monthly rent by 1.000kr!

Big thanks to my wife Lina which was home with my newborn for the majority of this project, but somehow find energy and time to help me paint at midnight to get things ready! Thanks to my brother Robin and my step-dad Terje for helping me out alot! To our maid for helping with the plaster and the cleanup! To my aunt for giving the great discounts!

Thanks to you guys, we managed to rent out the flat the same day as the renovation finished! One week after we got the apartment!

More information about the numbers in the next post