Doors, Siding, and Dinner - Oh My!

A lot of progress on the house in the last week! It's been really fun seeing the changes as they come.

Cory got all the concrete from the floor of the garage removed so that he could install the walk-in door. He worked long and hard in between rainfalls wearing away at that concrete. He finally bought a diamond edged blade and that did the trick. It cut through like butter, he said. In no time flat, he had the concrete removed and the door was in. Chad helped him get it installed, and it looks beautiful! It works, too! :) That door is Cory's pride and joy so far. We were all very proud of him as he did the whole thing all on his own. Way to go, bro!

Last weekend Mom and I ran a rummage sale while the guys worked at the house. Dad, Cory, and Chad took down the basketball hoop on the garage, peeled off the gutters, and removed the old siding. They installed the house wrap, and the garage already looked better than it did at the start! That old siding was pretty bad.

This week, the three guys got together on Wednesday to work more on the garage. I don't know all the technical terms and what they mean, but I know J-Channel, fascia, and soffit were installed on the garage. And...drum roll please!! Two of the walls of the garage are now sided!! WOW! It looks so awesome! We went with a basic sandstone color for the siding, which was actually very close to the color of the house already. However, the difference is remarkable. It looks great! Tomorrow the guys will be working to finish off the rest of the garage siding, and then we are ready to shingle and the garage is done. Yay!!

After all this hard work together, you may be wondering what we all do when we're finished. Well, we have a lot of dinners together! Sometimes we grill out and sometimes we go out. This last Saturday, Uncle Gerry came from Sioux Center to see the flip house for the first time. Chad, Cory, and Gerry went to check out the house, Dad took a nap, and Mom and I cleaned up the kitchen. Then we all headed out for a yummy dinner at Cherry Creek. I got a quick snapshot of us waiting for our table (Cory was in the restaurant checking out the Twins game). Oh, and one final thing... Anyone reading this who knows Gerry should ask him about the good things in Alaska. That's a shout out to you, "All Night"!! :)

Rainy Day Fun

Will the rain ever stop today?? It seems that it is bound and determined to rain all day and night. Even at this very moment I am being greeted by more sounds of thunder and rain pouring on the windows. It makes it rather difficult for the guys to get anything done at the flip house! Even so, they have been working hard all day.

We had Lambert Heating and Cooling at the house today to replace the furnace. We are now in business with a new energy efficient furnace and programmable thermostat. Cory had to rip out the wall that was blocking the front of the furnace, as code requires a two foot clearance. We'll now cover it back it up with a door so that it can be accessed again in the future.

After the furnace was installed, Chad met the electrician at the house to get everything "plugged in". I guarantee you, it will not be the last time an electrician will be at the house...haha!

This afternoon, between downpours, Cory and Chad went to work on getting the walk-in door cut into the side of the garage. The door is nicely cut out, but now they need to get the concrete cut out from the bottom of the doorway. That is a tremendous job that requires much patience I am finding out. Cory has been going through blades rather quickly. The guys have described the smell of the concrete dust as a blend between firecrackers and the drill at the dentist's office! :)

Cory is bound and determined to get the door in before he goes home tonight. Hopefully they can get it done...it's already 9pm and they're still chopping the concrete, so we'll see. It feels like 11pm already, with it getting darker sooner now, and I'm sure the guys will be tired when they finally do quit. Tomorrow they will be back at it.

On a side note, I heard on the news tonight that at 10pm this evening, autumn offically starts. We are now waving good-bye to the last hour of Summer 2010. Happy Fall, Ya'll!!

Gettin' Going on the Garage

Today was Dad's first day at the flip house, and Cory and Chad were both off of work to be there too. Unfortunately, I didn't get to be there because I was slaving away at the bank. Okay...now those of you who know me to NOT need to snicker at that comment. The guys were blessed with a beautiful day weather wise, and they got a great start on the garage!

We decided to put in a newer and bigger garage door for more wiggle room when parking inside. Hopefully the future homeowners will like that! In order to put in a wider garage door, we needed to move the walk-in door to the side of the garage instead of the front. We also needed to replace the window that was in the garage. We made it a little smaller so we could get a standard size, and it now opens!

Tomorrow Dad and Mom will be coming to town and Dad, Chad, and Kyle will be putting in the walk-in door on the garage. Hopefully the day will be productive and fun! Chad has told me a number of times already tonight how much fun he had today. I hope we have a lot more of those kind of days to come!

On a final note, I had to laugh when I arrived at the flip house with supper for the guys. The driveway was filled with a nice assortment of CHEVY trucks! I thought it was pretty cute. Way to go guys on a successful day - even though you wiped yourselves out...;)

Making Progress!

The last few days have been steady progress on the flip house. The entire kitchen is now empty aside from the refrigerator we have given to Mom to replace her old spare fridge...with the stipulation that she needs to stock it with Mountain Dew...haha!! I ripped off the paneling in the kitchen under the guidance of Cory. Chad and I also got a bunch of the trim removed in the bedrooms. Cory got the sink and garbage disposal unhooked, and Chad fixed an electrical nightmare we encountered in the kitchen. It's amazing to me that this house never burned down with the way they rigged some of the wiring. Absolutely insane. Cory and Chad had a hayday with the remaining cabinets in the kitchen. Here was their chance to finally do some "real" destruction, and they had fun knocking down and ripping out the counter top and cabinets.

Chad and I also did some Saturday afternoon work at the house cleaning up the mess in the backyard. Apparently, the lovely renters who lived in the house were too lazy to dispose of their grass clippings each time they mowed the lawn. So Chad and I took a rake and a shovel and scooped the entire pile into the bed of Chad's truck. We also trimmed some overgrown weeds and cleaned up the pile of junk behind the garage. We filled up the entire bed of the truck with grass, weeds, and bush clippings. These we dumped out at Chad's parent's farm. The back of the house looks much better now! No pictures of that yet, but I will post some soon. I will leave you with a nice picture of myself...working very hard...hehe! ;)

And We're Off!

Last night was a fun night at the flip house! Chad and Cory got to work right after they got home from their full time jobs. I stopped over after I got off work, and we made a lot of progress! Chad and I pulled all the weeds in the yard and on the driveway and sidewalk. Cory and Chad went to town removing the unfortunately fake fireplace in the living room. We ended up scratching up the ceiling a little bit, so that will need to get fixed when Dad tapes and textures. But, it is now gone, so that is good.

Once that big project was taken care of, it was time for a little silliness. Cory had his MP3 player going, and the Cupid Shuffle came on. All work was dropped while the three of us took a few minutes to dance around the living room. Hopefully no one saw us through the windows as we're doing the shuffle all over the floor...;)

We also met the neighbors last night. They seem like nice people and asked us to make sure we sell it to good people when we're done. We told them we'd do our best! Chad toured one of the neighbor's houses and they both toured ours. One of the neighbors had a great idea of something fun to do with the opening left behind by the fake fireplace. We are going to take progressive pictures as we go along, put them in a little photo album with the dates on the back, and seal them up in the wall! What fun for someone someday if they ever decide to do another remodeling project! :)

Steph stopped by a little later in the evening and she and I chatted away while the guys proceeded taking down some of the cabinets in the kitchen. What a surprise the guys found when they opened up the cabinet above the fridge! Steph and I thought they must've come across a pile of cash with the way they were going nuts. We jumped up and ran in there to find them pulling bottle after bottle of liquor out of the cabinet. It looks like we have a remedy for those days when the work gets a little stressful...ha! :)

We ended up calling it a night shortly after that and home we all went.

Today Chad took the day off from work and decided to take care of a few things at our house and the flip house. He now has two lawns to mow, so as he was at the flip house working on that, he encountered a couple of guys from Wright Tree Service who were trimming trees for Xcel Energy. Chad discovered that they were the ones who had trimmed the nasty cluster trees in the backyard and left the remnants behind the garage. After striking up a conversation, he was able to have them chop down the remainder of the trees for us (we wanted them to go anyway, and they were interferring with the power lines besides) and it didn't cost us a thing in money or labor! I love when things turn out like that...:)

Tonight is a rainy night, so we are taking the evening off to snuggle up at home, make some spaghetti for supper, and watch the Twins game on TV. Life is grand!

Ready, Set, Go!

Chad and I decided spring of 2010 that we wanted to get into the real estate business. Thankfully, the Sioux Falls market has not taken the tumble that other areas of the country have, so we are hopeful that this will be an awesome business venture for us! Chad has really done a lot of homework and research to get ready for us to start. We chose a realtor and began the house search. We looked at a lot of doozies. It is really sad to say that there are people in the world that choose to live in filth and stench. We chose to avoid those homes for our first flip. We retained the expertise of Dad and the wise wisdom of Mom, along with Cory and Steph and, they looked at a lot of houses with us. Finally, Chad found one on the MLS that he thought might be a winner. We scheduled a viewing with our realtor, thought about it for a couple days, took another look, and decided to jump in!

What an experience buying a home is. We negotiated back and forth with the homeowner and finally got a price point settled on. We scheduled the home inspection, decided to go forth, and set our closing date for September 2. Chad has done a lot of running around between credit unions to get all the financials squared away, and then with the closing date approaching, we decided to do a lot of legwork before we could even start any physical work. We got bids on a variety of work and chose our vendors for flooring, cabinets, etc. Our most favorite vendor of all is DAD! His construction knowledge will be running the show on a lot of the work. Cory is our next right hand man. We have been finding out how incredibly smart he is regarding remodeling/tearing down walls/removing cabinets, etc., etc., etc. He has obviously learned a lot from his days working with Dad!

Chad is looking forward to learning a lot from Dad, Cory, and Kyle over the next couple of months. We know there will be a lot of opportunities for that! In the meantime, I will be helping with the "light" work...hehe...;) I get to pick out paint colors...flooring stains...counter tops...all the fun stuff! I will also be doing some landscaping and a lot of painting. I'll leave the big stuff to the guys with the muscles! :) Mom and Steph have also offered to help us out, so I think we are going to have a lot of fun family times as we work on this project!

So now that we have closed on the house, we are ready to get rolling. Stay tuned for more updates and pictures of our progress!