All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional plumber.

Make sure you have turned the gas valve off as well.  Usually there's a big red knob on top of the temperature control that is marked "ON - PILOT - OFF".  There should be a sticker on the tank right next to the gas valve that explains how to turn the gas valve off.

There should be a sticker on the tank with the model number and date of manufacture.  Usually it's on the side of the tank, above the gas valve.  If you don't have a newer receipt, the manufacturer will use the date on that sticker to determine if the heater is in warranty.

I know it is possible to buy water heaters with a 3-year warranty; I don't know if shorter warranties exist, but they might.

Even though you shut off the water valve on the input, it might still drip a little due to the water remaining in the tank.  If there is a drain pan under the tank, and if all the drips are landing in that drain pan, you don't really have to worry.  If you can make the drips land in the drain pan (plastic trash bag taped to tank?), you don't really have to worry.  If you really want to get all the water out, there should be a valve on the side of the tank near the bottom, either plastic or metal, with garden hose threads on it.  Connect a garden hose to that valve, put the other end of the hose in a tub or out the window or something, and open that valve to drain the rest of the water in the tank.

My $0.02:

Keep the interior door arches.  Maybe add trim as you suggested, but I'm not exactly sure how to get trim around the curve at the top.

Keep the fireplace; scrub the bricks to get rid of the soot.  Find out about the hearth, as has been mentioned.

Probably lose the aluminum awning out back.  If it's all aluminum, take it to the local scrap yard; around here at the moment it would be roughly $0.35 a pound, which helps out the rehab fund and/or the beer fund. :)

If you lose the awning in back, you might consider making a small awning or porch roof - like 4 feet square - and putting it right over that back door.  Or even 3 feet wide (over the door) and 2 feet out away from the house would keep a little rain off the back door.  This sort of depends on how easy it is to attach things to the back wall or under the eaves.

It looks like there's kind of a large step down from the back door to the patio.  Check your local codes on stair rise and tread depth, but it might be nice to put one step between the patio and the bottom of the door.  You might even be able to get this as a pre-cast piece of concrete.

If it doesn't have a back porch light (under the awning), you might add one.  Maybe also add a GFCI outlet for that back porch.

From experience with a house in Tulsa, Oklahoma and one in the Kansas City, Missouri area, the lenders required a termite inspection in both places.

These were both houses that I lived in, not ones I was going to flip or rent out.  The Tulsa house was being sold in good condition, while the KC house was bank-owned and known to need work.  Both times, the guy that did the "general" house inspection also did the termite inspection.  I'm pretty sure that in both cases, if I wanted just the termite inspection for some reason, I could have paid a lower fee and gotten that.

Keep in mind that I'm very new to this, but my thinking goes as follows: If you know the house needs (say) $50K of rehab otherwise, and you have to open up enough of the walls or floors that you'll probably see any damage that is already there, then skipping the inspection and maybe having to spend another $2K on treatment if you find damage is probably not such a big deal.  If the house only needs $5K of rehab otherwise, and you won't be looking at very many places inside the walls or floors, it might be worth getting the inspection, as an extra $2K is a large addition to the rehab budget.

Another piece of the puzzle is that it's easier to do the treatment when the house is being worked on anyway.  They may have to remove flooring in the basement to drill holes, etc, and it's noisy and a little dusty.  If the house is vacant, the termite guy can do his thing at any time without annoying the tenants.  If there are tenants, you may have to ask them to move furniture/stuff, maybe find a time when they aren't home so the noise doesn't bother them, etc.

If a lot of the traffic turns at that intersection, will the house get headlights in the bedrooms at night?  You might drive by there at night and see where your lights shine on the house.  Sometimes it's not a big deal because the bedrooms are in the back of the house, away from the street, or they are on the 2nd floor and the car lights only shine on the 1st floor, etc.

A workaround is for you to supply dark drapes instead of mini-blinds on the affected bedroom windows, if any.

I used to live in a house that was one house over from a "T" intersection.  I didn't get the lights when cars were driving up the stem of the "T", but I did get them if they turned in one direction.  Heavier curtains fixed it, but it became something on my list to look for in the future.

All I can say is, for the few times I've hired a contractor to work on my own personal residence (I'm new to this)... I feel your pain.

For the "detailed instructions" thing, there's a demonstration you can do.  It works best with a small handful of other people, like 4 to 8 or so, who are all there in the same room.

You are the PB&J sandwich contractor.  Everybody else gets a piece of paper (or an email or instant message or whatever) that says, approximately, "Write directions that explain to someone else how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Assume that they have the following items: one loaf of bread, one jar of peanut butter, one jar of jelly, and one butter knife."  They each write up their own set of directions, and then hand them or send them to the PB&J contractor.  The contractor then reads each set of directions and follows them.  Exactly.  If a particular step doesn't give specifics, do the weirdest thing you can think of that still meets "the letter of the law".

If it just says "put peanut butter on bread", set the jar of peanut butter on top of the loaf of bread.  If it says "open bread wrapper", tear the wrapper open with your hands.  If it says "put knife into peanut butter", put the handle end in.  If the peanut butter or jelly jar is brand new, and has an inner seal under the plastic lid, and the directions don't mention the seal, either stab the knife through the seal, or just tap the end of the knife against the seal and look confused.  If you really want to throw them off, get an unsliced loaf of bread from the supermarket, and apply their directions exactly.

Once you've gone through a couple of the sets of directions, you will find that a full set of directions, that actually produces a normal PB&J sandwich, takes about three or four pages when typed and printed out.  This is a good reference for what you have to supply when specifying jobs to other people.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional electrician.

GFCIs work just fine without a ground attached.  Get yourself a cord and plug off of an old appliance or something, and a new GFCI from the hardware store.  Wire only the hot (black) and neutral (white) wires from the cord to the "line" terminals on the GFCI; if the cord has a ground (green) wire, just let it hang in the air.  Plug this whole mess into the wall and carefully press the "test" button on the GFCI.  It will trip and the "reset" button will pop out.

I am not a professional painter, but I've done both interior and exterior painting on the houses I've lived in before.  Also, I realize the original post is kind of old.

To reiterate something many other people have said: when you think about painting a room, you see yourself standing there with a brush or roller, putting the new paint on.  That step is maybe 25% or less of the work, and comes fairly close to the end of the whole process.  You will spend a lot of time before that cleaning, fixing cracks, and other prep work.  You'll wonder why you're doing all of that work, but it helps you to spend less time actually painting, and get a better result.

Another kind of psychological thing is that it will look worse before it looks better. Right now, that interior wall is an out-of-fashion color, and maybe it's a little dusty or cracked in a few places, but it's more or less all one color - you could picture somebody living in that room with the wall the way it is right now.  But once you dust it, fix the cracks, maybe scrape a peeling spot - it will look worse than it does now, with spackle over the cracks, and "bare spots" where you scraped it.  It's easy to feel like you're going backwards.  Once you get the first coat of new paint on it, this feeling will mostly go away.

For the interior, if you have anything else to do to the walls you are going to paint - like hanging up a curtain rod, or replacing an electrical outlet, or anything like that - do that before you paint.  9 times out of 10 this doesn't really matter.  The other 1 time, when you drill holes for a curtain rod, you find an old nail or drywall anchor you didn't know was there, and either make a big hole, or have to move the thing over 1/2" and redrill.  Or, when you tighten the screws down that last little bit on the new outlet, the drywall cracks under the "ear" on the outlet.  Then you get mad because you have to fix the hole or crack, and get the paint stuff out again and fix the new paint.  If you do all this stuff before you paint, the new crack or hole is easier to fix when you're patching the rest of the wall too.

For the exterior, if it needs an extension ladder, and you haven't used one before, look up some "how to ladder" videos online.  Also, try to use the ladder when there is someone else around.  You don't have to have someone else there at the house you're working on - it can be a nearby neighbor that is home, or the city street crew that is working down the block, or even the (older) neighborhood kids that are riding their bikes around.  Their job is to call for help if you fall off the ladder.

Hello, all!

I am a new member from Blue Springs, Missouri - an east suburb of Kansas City, Missouri.  I grew up in Independence, Missouri, lived for about a year in Dallas, Texas, then lived in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma for about 11 years, before moving back up to the KC area.

I've never been on the investor or owner-of-rental-property side of things.  I've done some of the usual things on the tenant and homeowner side.  I grew up watching and helping Dad do normal maintenance things on a house.  I've been the new roomie that was added to the lease on half of a duplex.  I've rented an apartment in Texas on my own.  I bought a single-family house in Tulsa, lived in it, and then sold my half of it when I moved back to KC.  In KC, I bought a fixer single-family house and fixed it, doing some of the work myself, and contracting some of it out; I now live in that house and own it outright.

My two main ideas for real estate investing include 1) buying a single-family home or a duplex in good condition, and renting it out, and 2) buying a single-family home that needs rehab, doing the work, and then selling it again (fix and flip).  I'm leaning towards #1 at the moment, but some of the "tenant horror stories" on BP are making me think about #2.  :)  Either way, I am mostly interested in properties that are relatively close to where I live, and where I think I have some knowledge of the area - Blue Springs, Lee's Summit, south Independence.

My goal is for real estate investing to make enough cash flow to cover my regular bills.  That way I don't have to work so hard at a "real job".

I am lucky in that I have some funds I can use for investing that are separate from the funds that pay the bills and the groceries, so even if I completely screw up investing, I don't have to live under a bridge.

Thanks!

Matt R.