Flip House Before & After
We bought a flip house in November and finally finished it 2 weeks ago, so I wanted to share a blog post with all of the before & after photos mainly for our memories to look back on and see what we did. But, one of my biggest pet peeves about blogs is that there is way too much text at the beginning without getting to the meat quick enough so I’m switching things up and showing y’al pictures first and our full story with all the drama after.
So without further adieu…
Here she is in all her glory- our hoarder flip house before & after photos of the upstairs.
Exterior
For the exterior, I knew I wanted to do the modern farmhouse board & batten for the siding and then paint the existing brick a creamy white to bring in a little touch of traditional.
I also knew I wanted to bring as much light as possible into this home so we swapped out the existing front door with this gorgeous glass paned door and painted it a gorgeous taupe color (BM Revere Pewter) And to tie it all together, I added these big black traditional outdoor sconces for a statement piece and I absolutely love how it turned out.
We were planning on painting the garage door and adding some trees and flowers to the mulched area, but ended up listing it as is while we wrapped up other things and it went under contract before we could even do any of it. I even actually already bought garage door paint so I am little bummed I didn’t get to finish it (I was planning on painting it Revere Pewter to add some contrast) but at least, it sold!
PAINT SOURCES
Exterior Brick & Siding: BM White Dove
Front Door & Trim: BM Revere Pewter
Main Living Area
We knocked down the wall that was dividing the kitchen from the living room and it made such a difference in this space. This is controversial, but I’m all about big open spaces for entertaining and to also not feel so cramped in your own home. Although, I still do love cozy little spaces when they are called for. It all just depends on the home and for this space, I think it’s exactly what it needed.
I chose a light wood LVP with warm undertones to go along with the white wall color with slightly warm undertones to balance out the cool white color of the kitchen island and cabinets. Overall, it just feels so bright and open!
We also knocked out this pony wall to the left of the front door when you first walked in. It just closed off the space and made you feel cramped walking into your home. Now you can walk right in and see this gorgeous inviting grand space.
Here is the infamous couch on the stairs that I referenced earlier. They had so much junk in this house, it was honestly shocking.
PAINT SOURCES
Walls, Ceiling & Baseboards: BM Simply White
Front Door & Trim: BM Revere Pewter
Kitchen Island: SW Extra White
Kitchen
This might be my very favorite transformation of them all. We knocked down the upper cabinets and drop down ceiling in the kitchen and the existing island/bar area to add a custom stand alone island and it completely changed the entire look of the kitchen.
I went with all brass fixtures and hardware to really warm up this space with the cool cabinetry color and then added this gorgeous warm taupe Zellige tile backsplash and brought the cabinets and backsplash all the way up to the ceiling to draw your eyes up and trick them into thinking the ceilings are taller than they really are!
We widened the existing doorway and increased the height to be able to accomodate an arched walkway and this sealed the deal for me. With so many straight lines in this home, it was begging for some curves and this arch did not disappoint. We also designed the island to be able to put a pull out microwave in it so that we could do a vent hood and pot filler to really make a statement since kitchens really sell the house and it’s the very first thing your eye sees when you walk in the door and I could not be happier with how it turned out.
PAINT SOURCES
Walls, Ceiling & Baseboards: BM Simply White
Kitchen Island & Trim: SW Extra White
Dining Room
We removed the fireplace and surround and existing wall paneling and created more space for a dining room, where you can now seat 6 people comfortably with 4 at the island.
PAINT SOURCES
Walls, Ceiling & Baseboards: BM Simply White
Main Floor Bath
I wanted each bathroom to feel custom and thoughtful but was on a limited budget, so I had to get creative with vanities and this navy blue vanity is stunning and so unique!
PAINT SOURCES
Walls, Ceiling & Baseboards: BM Simply White
Doors & Trim: BM Revere Pewter
Primary Bedroom
We chose to continue the LVP flooring into the Primary Suite and I’m so glad we did. It’s the perfect touch to make this space feel more luxurious and more like a master.
PAINT SOURCES
Walls, Ceiling & Baseboards: BM Simply White
Primary Bath
We had to get creative with this bathroom because it is extremely small for a master bath. It only fits a 24 inch vanity but we wanted to make it feel as much like a master as possible so we knocked out the bathroom shower wall and brought it all the way up to the ceiling and added glass shower doors instead to make it look and feel bigger. And since storage is low in this bathroom, we added a medicine cabinet mirror above the vanity.
PAINT SOURCES
Walls, Ceiling & Baseboards: BM Simply White
Doors & Trim: BM Revere Pewter
Main Floor Second Bedroom
The pink bedroom now turned into a calm and serene nursery.
PAINT SOURCES
Walls, Ceilings & Baseboards: BM Simply White
Linen Closet
We actually kept the existing linen cabinets, painted them and then ordered some custom cabinet door fronts and new hardware and it looks like a million bucks!
PAINT SOURCES
Walls & Ceiling:BM Simply White
Cabinets & Trim: BM Revere Pewter
It’s still hard to believe this is the same house. There was so much stuff on the inside and outside of this house and even just clearing it away made such a difference. But once we painted and wrapped the columns, it looked like an entirely different house!
PAINT SOURCES
Exterior Brick & Siding: BM White Dove
Back Door & Trim: BM Revere Pewter
This house was honestly one of the craziest experiences of our entire lives, but it was one we wouldn’t trade for anything.
Overall it took 21 dumpsters to get all of the junk off this property and demo the barn (8 for interior and 13 for exterior). I think it’s safe to say, we will not be touching another hoarder property for a looooong time. It was a little too intense for our very first one. I am so proud of how this house turned out and can’t believe how quickly we were able to get it done, all things considered, and how quickly it was able to go under contract, especially in this market.
Aerial View
Quinn and I spent the early years of our marriage watching a whole lot of HGTV & Fixer Upper and became pretty obsessed with the idea of buying a flip house one day to fix up and sell, but just never imagined it would be possible. We were thrifty college students with minimal savings and had no kids at the time. Fast forward to 2021, we welcomed our first daughter into our family in October and then bought our first home in December. It was a townhome that needed a lot of TLC and we got a taste of home renovations and quickly became obsessed with turning every inch of our home into a space we loved for as little as possible. Quinn installed all new LVP floors on the main level, painted all the walls, painted our kitchen cabinets, installed wainscoting, remodeled both upstairs bathrooms and then finished our unfinished basement including a murphy bed and a fireplace with built-ins.
Fast forward to 2024, we had just finished our very last room in our home (our laundry room) and two months later, put an offer in on our dream home 20 minutes away. We found a perfect renter for our townhome and we closed on our new home in September of 2024 and moved in mid October. Right in the middle of closing on our new home and trying to find renters for our existing townhome, an opportunity to buy a flip house for an amazing deal came up. We were introduced to a friend who has flipped homes for several years but has now transitioned to building new-builds and subdivisions but offered to share his contacts with us for lenders and wholesalers. Our brother-in-law also has experience with construction so we decided to just go for it and flip this house!
The buying experience was unlike anything else I have ever experienced or heard of. With these wholesale house deals, you get 2-3 days advance of the “listing” with the pictures and/or videos and then you get 1-2 hours to walk through the house, crunch your numbers and decide whether or not it’s worth the investment for you. And then if you decide you do want to put an offer in, you have to submit your offer within the same hour of viewing it, and if accepted, you need to bring them a check with your earnest money that same day. Your earnest money goes hard and you have about 1-2 weeks to gather the rest of your money to close.
Everything went smoothly until a week before we were supposed to close, the seller’s realtor called us and let us know that some important information had fallen through the cracks. The seller had 2 sets of renters in the home and the upstairs renters’ lease was still valid until the end of November, but we were set to close November 1. The paperwork had already been signed by both parties, but we were now in a tricky situation. We could either back out completely, or renegotiate the deal. We decided to renegotiate and move the closing date to the end of November to align with the current tenant’s lease agreement. Luckily for us, this worked out perfectly because we had only moved into our new home 2 weeks previously and were pretty overwhelmed trying to get everything settled before starting this flip house.
Fast forward to the end of November, the realtor called us again in a panic because the date we had agreed upon was Black Friday and most of the banks and title companies were scheduled to be closed that day, so we shifted our closing date, once again, to the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The only catch was that the upstairs renter was not going to be out until the Sunday after Thanksgiving so we were only permitted to work on the basement, even though we owned the entire house starting Tuesday. But we decided to be amicable and agree to the deal knowing there was plenty of work to do in the basement alone.
We successfully closed on the house on Tuesday and had originally scheduled a home inspection to be done later that day so that we could get reports back as quickly as possible to know what we were dealing with, but once again, the sellers couldn’t get us the keys in time so we had to reschedule the inspection for the following week because they were already booked up. Wednesday morning we got word that the basement tenants were supposed to be leaving their keys for us but we still hadn’t heard from them and we ended up never getting the keys from the sellers so we had to break into the house just to access it on Wednesday afternoon. That day as we were walking around the house getting before pictures and videos, a truck came barreling in the backyard with a guy claiming that he owned all of the boats and trailers in the back so we made a deal with him that if he could clear it all out in the next two weeks, he could have it.
We officially started work on the house on Black Friday. Quinn and our brother-in-law got started demoing the basement and it took them all day Friday just to clear out all the junk. The crazy thing about this house is that the sellers left EVERYTHING. Junk and all. Everything you see in the before pictures is exactly how it looked when we took possession, which meant that we had to get rid of everything they left. Old mattresses, couches, food, everything!
The first thing Quinn did was change the exterior locks on the basement doors just in case anyone with a prior key tried to get back into the house. There was an interior basement door that lead to the upstairs that had a lock on it, but Quinn didn’t feel like it was necessary to change that one since there was a couch blocking the stairway and you could only access it from the inside. They took a break on Saturday and came back on Monday to find that the house was broken into, the couch was moved from the stairs and all of their tools were stolen. Luckily they didn’t bring all of their tools the first day, but we estimated that probably $1k worth of tools were stolen. We filed a police report, but nothing could be done about it since we had no evidence. We still hadn’t received the keys for the upstairs part of the house so we called the sellers realtor and were told they left the keys on the counter for us on Saturday night with all the doors unlocked, but we were not made aware of this until Monday morning after we came in to discover all of the tools stolen. It was like something from a movie. We just couldn’t believe it.
We immediately changed all the locks on all of the exterior doors and installed cameras. Lesson learned. We will never make that mistake again. Once all the drama was over, we were finally able to start demoing upstairs and removing all of the junk from the inside of the house. Demo day turned into demo week. It took us 8 dumpsters just to remove all of the stuff that was inside the house.
At the end of demo week, we also found out that we had about $15k in unexpected costs. To make matters even more stressful for us, we got a call the same day from our tenants in our townhome that the water heater broke and flooded the basement. So we had to spend $2k to replace the heater and fix the carpet. Luckily they didn’t have any furniture down there so it could have been a lot worse.
Luckily for us, that turned out to be the worst week of the entire project and although it was one of the worst weeks of our lives, at least it didn’t get any worse. We had little things come up here and there, but for the most part, it was what you would expect from flipping an older home with a lot of land.
A few days before Christmas, Quinn received an ultimatum from his work at Amazon Robotics that he either had to relocate to Boston or quit so he was forced to quit his job on December 23, 2024 but luckily he received a few months of severance to get us through. At the time, it seemed like terrible timing, but looking back, it was a blessing in disguise. From January 1 until April 12, Quinn worked 55-60 hour weeks at the flip house every single week (and a 100 hour work week the very last week of the project) plus our brother-in-law working 10-15 hours a week and we barely got it done in time. If he would have had his corporate job plus this flip house, we would have been 3 months behind schedule, which would have meant finding another loan halfway through the project, which is near impossible for flip houses, or possibly having to sell before it was done.
Overall, this flip house was a long time dream come true for us and we are just so happy that we got this experience and can’t wait to see what the future holds!
This is only Part 1 of the flip house reveal, follow along for Part 2 to see the basement before & after’s along with the backyard.
Follow along on Instagram, to see our next flip house project and our new home projects. Thanks for stopping by and supporting this small business of mine. It truly means the world. I hope you’ll continue to follow along as we renovate the rest of our home and others in the coming years.
