I bought my first house straight out of college in Seattle around 2004 with absolutely no experience and a had a partner who was convinced we could pull off a major overhaul on a 1920's house near the University of Washington. Location was, and still is, great. The initial plan was live in the house and house hack the remaining rooms to grad students. We came up with a grand plan of taking the roof completely off the top of the house to make the dormer style roof into a full third story. In order to avoid a bunch of pesky setback rules we also had a deck system that was over the top of some living space on the second floor. Did I mention we were going to do this all on our own to save money?
With our grand plan in place and permits in hand, we started our bold journey into construction. We promptly ripped out the interior cabinets and kitchen, and began the process of knocking out the top of the chimney to remove the roof. If you have never seen a person being dangled down a chimney to dangerously remove the chimney piece by piece, you are really missing out. The roof was removed and replaced with the best tarp money could buy. The neighbor's call at 2am during a snow storm should not have been a surprise...but somehow it was to these two idealistic laborers that decided to rip the roof off of a house at the tail end of fall. At 3am we were on top of our roofless house with shovels and buckets literally removing snow from (what should have been) the inside of our house because the tarp was somewhere on the other side of the property. After hours of removal, we did our best to visquine the interior of the house to prevent further damage. Upon our return the next day, the snow had melted and turned our giant visqueen into a "stairwell water balloon" which was threatening to burst. Out came the buckets again. We did the best we could before the visqueen gave way and sent a wave of water cascading through the house. (Think The Shining when the elevator doors open.) For those that have not had the pleasure of working in a 1920's house...the drywall is actually strips of wood with plaster over the top. Well, the water took care of a lot of the plaster for us, and our project expanded to replacing the lathe and plaster with drywall. Since the walls were open, we opted to replace the knob and tube while we were at it. Despite numerous other incidents like almost losing an eye to a flying hammer, nearly losing a member of our trusty team to a fall off the second story while attempting to hand lift a 20 foot steel I-beam, and failing relations with my partner over the next year, we finally got the place dried in. Our project continued for a total of almost 2 years, and lives moved on...as they do. The day before I got married I finally received a pay out from my former partner for just the money i put into the project as I sold him my interest in the house. My sanity was worth it, as was avoiding another 2 years of poor decision making from my partner. The 2 years of work I put in was an Master's Degree experience in construction, real estate, psychology, and hard work.
All was not lost though. After licking my wounds, my wife and I did a complete (well planned) remodel of another 1920's house which made a nice profit. We moved on to BRRRR process remodels in Pittsburgh and are now involved with multiple Syndication and partnerships in apartment complexes around the country.
For all those newbies...you may make mistakes but they make for some good stories you can eventually tell down the road when your ego has recovered. But if I hadn't jumped in, I would never have earned that Master's Degree though. If only I had Bigger Pockets in 2004!!
