WE’RE FINISHED-AGAIN!

This work is not for the faint-of-heart! This is back breaking, grueling, never ending work. It’s hard enough to have finished two units and have them rented out. Then to experience flooding, causing you to renovate them fully-AGAIN is deflating!! In addition, nothing was covered under insurance and no assistance was offered to small business owners like us. We also have another unit that is now vacant that also needs renovated – IN BLOOMINGTON!! Before we can begin that one, we have to finish out the neighboring unit within the next week or two. We are tired and weary, but we will continue and complete these tasks as soon as we can. We pray we have enough funds to cover all that needs taken care of. Starting any business is not easy, but being four years into this and not experiencing any real, passive profit hurts. We took a large financial hit on this but we were lucky to have enough reserves to cover renovations (we think!) Everything we are doing is coming out of the business funds! I guess this is what they mean by the term bootstrapping.

When we started this journey over four years ago, we had so much time to work on one house that we thought, “we can continually do this and obtain possibly twenty properties!” As it stands, we have less than ten and cannot catch a break or get caught up. We have had to pass on spending time with friends, hanging out at their pools, parties, family reunions, and RELAXING!!

We have tried to finished this property as fast as possible so we can start the next one. Once we complete that one, we have ANOTHER one behind it!! We are currently working on the second unit and hitting it with the same resolve and tenacity we have used for each of our renovations. We strive to have the sharpest looking properties in our area and we want our tenants to feel like they are home every time they walk in the door. Yes, we are feeling a little winded and yes, we are a bit tired. We will get this work done and get back to normal! For those that are patiently waiting for one of our units to open up, know that we are pushing to get you in as soon as we can! For those that have invited us over for dinner or to get together on a weekend know that we miss spending time with you and we will see you soon!!

A list of what we had to do:

• Remove all of the wet personal possessions and property so we could start drying everything out.
• Clean up all of the silt and dirt and mud inside the units.
• Rent a pump to drain out all of the water in the crawl space.
• Get as many fans and dehumidifiers running inside to start drying everything out.
• Pull any vinyl flooring up (the other unit was 100% covered in vinyl flooring).
• Remove any doors that were damaged by water.
• Pull the baseboards (trying to NOT break them and keep track of where they were originally installed).
• Cut out two feet of drywall and remove insulation.
• Install new drywall and insulation.
• Clean up after drywall install.
• Prime and paint the walls.
• Paint the baseboards.
• Re-install the baseboards.
• Install new interior doors.
• Paint interior doors.
• Re-install door hardware.
• Prep the floors for top coats.
• Apply four coats of polyurethane.
• Clean the house to move in standard.

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