All Forum Posts by: Ryan Judy

Do you do your own interior design for flips or hire a designer? 

Finding it hard to justify hiring a designer where I will basically be telling them to design the most bland / mass market appeal space. 

Usually I will choose materials by just sorting home depot for the most popular items, but I have terrible style so they don't always come together. 

Do any rehabbers have a mood board materials list type thing that they just use for all of their builds that way they can just buy quantity of x material whenever it is on sale. 

I'm specifically looking at things that could be coordinated once and used for multiple projects

Same white shaker cabinets throughout

flooring laminate/lvp

paint colors

backsplash

lighting / bathroom hardware

I don't believe so but I guess you might have some debate if you could argue it had been a 3 family for a significant period of time. 

But as Dan said - conversion to a 3 family is a change of use, and would require sprinklers. 

If you end up going that route let me know how you do with the sprinkler installation - I may have to do same for a property I would like to convert sometime in the future. 

Biggest issue is probably fire sprinklers - many towns require them for conversion to a 3 family. 

Well congrats on getting the conversion approved! Figuring out if it will pay off will be easy once you get a quote for the sprinklers. 

My contractor recommended Rob Agusto at Agusto Sprinkler in Worcester 508-795-3900 however I have not personally used them or even gotten a quote as I have yet to get to that part. 

@Kainne Hansbury - Not all that great, I ended up running in to other zoning issued with the addition that I needed to increase the space to become a 3 family and am still working through those. 

The conclusion of my research on the matter is that because changing from a 2 family to a 3 family was considered a "change of use" by my town (Marlborough) it would require the installation of sprinklers. I suspect many towns in Massachusetts have similar code as @Brian J Allen pointed out for Worcester. 

There does seem to be a lot of variation as to if it is enforced because I have heard from people that have not had to install them. 

This was my thought about an addition at first. I'm sure a lot depends on the actual situation and amount of work done. 

My project was to do a dormer & addition to a two family that would add 3 extra bedrooms. I had budgeted 120K and 3-6 months. Due to permit issues with the town about height restrictions on the dormer and a dozen other things + covid it has been one year and still no permits + budget coming in closer to 160K.

In the long run it will still be worth it, but I was in a tight situation where I left the unit vacant because I had expected to start major construction on it. This was a costly mistake. 

If its currently rented I would defiantly get a contractor or architect or if its simple enough to do yourself draw up your plans and talk to your building department and get an idea of what will fly. 

@Dan K. I’m afraid something must have changed because code now states that 3 units and above follows commercial building code (R-2)

I had hoped the case you cited Robert vs Holyoke was relevant to my case and it may still be but the wording in that is very vague , “not less than four units” is what they state. 

Looks like you got lucky if you didn’t have to install them!

@Brian J Allen  spot on it’s the change of use from 2-3 that is going to get me . 

Now on to seeing if I can find a way to get them installed reasonably . (Haha) 

@Socrates Jean-Baptiste I know this thread is a year old , but I would love to hear if you went through with your conversion. Did you have to install sprinklers? 

Looking at doing the same with a two family in Marlborough. 

Dan K - I think you would not have had to install sprinklers because a 3 family is already R-2 (commercial) so maybe it wasn't a conversion of use per building code. Going from a 2 family to a 3 means it becomes a commercial property, but yours already was. Agreed however, sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get the project done. 

Dan, 

Thanks for your advice I think that is spot on. I was too busy concentrating on things like the % of renovation / walls opened when really the real trigger is simply the change of use from R-3 to R-2, which would happen regardless of any other changes. Looks like I have another item to work in to the budget. - Have a great weekend!