All Forum Posts by: Lee Fahy

I mean we are just getting started here. There's a kitchen upstairs and downstairs, the downstairs one had been receiving Minnesota's finest summer of rain pouring through the perforated roof, upstairs Room 2, through the hardwoods and onto the counters. Lower kitchen, total loss. 

So here comes Fred, the city water man. We turn on the water main and realize, hmm.... seems like the flow indicator is spinning like crazy AFTER I closed all the faucets.... AAAAND now the floor in the basement kitchen is FLOATING up. Enter sharkbite fittings, try to picture putting your finger in a single leak and watching three more pop up. That's how this went down.

Four shark fittings later we have WATER! 

And now the artist quarters aka the basement............

I don't even know here..... Skull game.... I'm sure thats fiiiiine. 

I've got 99 problems but magenta....not one. It's EVERYWHERE. 

Kitchen

Laundry - entry way, SMILE. 

When I purchase a house it's about the craftsmanship, the quality of build..... I give it a 7 for creativity. Haha.

A tour of the property, a 5 bed, 2 bath, one stall located in central Minnesota. 

Roof was ventilated when we took position and had developed an organic skylight (added features). 

The living room had a palatable funk to it, most likely due to the 10 pounds of cat littler and what have you. 

Every day when we left the property we smelled so badly of it we had to shower immediately upon arriving home, the car would smell like it for at least an hour after we got out. 

My wife and I had been interested in purchasing a rental property for about a year with the intent of making this a business. She's a teacher, I'm an engineer and we have little faith in the future of Social Security / 401k stability. So bring on the house viewings! After many viewings we decided to look at a 'slightly' downtrodden 1954 ranch with the right square footage. 

Notice the fancy red-white-blue spray painted garage windows! Seems like we may have an artist on the premises (more on that). After viewing the place twice, researching the rent comps and recently sold comp values for the area we decided to purchase it.  Here is my wife after closing...inspecting her snazzy new $60,000 purchase (so much better than an escalade). 

And after she hears me laughing without control:

Derek Flora I completely agree with you, I ran the numbers on whether money I have saved out weighs the rent I have lost. It's very close at this point and if I don't finish the upper half this month it's a complete wash. I ran numbers based on the idea I could have finished the upper unit in half the time using contractors. My wife was a trooper throughout the renovation but the moment I caught was a perfect capture of "buyers remorse" aka "holy sh$t we are in deep now". Haha. I laughed at her reaction. Classic.

@Mary White; my wife's reaction on the possession "What have we done....." 

My wife's notes from the first visit just had the address, "It SMELLS" and "NO!" next to it. 

Thank you @Mary White; I'm a fairly handy person but I didn't realize how much I would learn doing the house without help. They didn't winterize the property correctly so i fixed burst pipes, redid the plumbing in the bathroom, they put in GFCI outlets without actually wiring them to work correctly. It's amazing what an art pulling and fishing wire to outlets can be. Sheetrock work, mud and tape, refinishing hardwood floors, wiring ceiling fans and switches. Not to mention fixing dog destroyed vinyl siding and repairing fascia trim/garage doors and on and on and on. 

Just a taste of what I started with:

@Mark J. needs to start a podcast for this information