I did a virtual showing for our Somerset house, stopped by the McCarty House to meet with our electrician, and swung by the Dougie Fresh Duplex to look at getting the Ring doorbell properly setup for one of the tenants.
It felt good to be on the ground doing real estate related stuff again.
The virtual tour went well. If this pans out, it will be the second time I’ve Facetimed a prospective tenant and have them move in without stepping foot in the home before. She seems great, and her background and credit check both came back positive. Promising.
The (no longer moldy) McCarty House is coming along. We’re definitely not as far along as I’d hoped, but I’m happy that we’ve made some progress while I was away. And we hit some speed bumps, too.
We’ve been mostly focused on the main level, because we’re doing some serious changes there. Here is a shot as you enter the home, looking in the the living room. There was a “bonus” room with an arched doorway to the left. Ms. McCarty was using this as a makeshift bedroom.
We blew out the arch and framed it with a real door so we could turn this into a real bedroom. The problem is it’s a small room with not much squarefootage to add a closet. So, after lots of back and forth, we decided to close up the doorway you see on the right hand side (in the photo on the left), blow the wall back all the way into a half bathroom that sits a few feet lower than the main level.
Here’s a better shot at the make shift door that led to the “bedroom”:
The half bath is accessible from a landing on your way to the basement. So we’ve raised the floor of that bathroom to accommodate a small master suite. Here’s a shot from the landing on the way to the basement. You can see how we raised the floor to be level with the first floor:
Also notice the rotted out floor of the old bathroom. This has been an ongoing theme in the house.
Here’s a shot from the opposite side, standing in the new bedroom:
We decided to put a pocket door in to save space. The bathroom is quite small, and I think I’m going to try putting in a wall hung toilet to make it more comfortable.
The basement is also coming along nicely. We’ve at least got it mostly removed. Getting this done cleared up 90% of the stench throughout the house. All the mold is now gone:
Don’t mind our electrician, Gene, relieving himself in that last photo. We don’t have a working bathroom in the house yet. I kid.
It’s definitely some progress, but I want to move faster. We likely have a tenant that’s already going to jump on this house, and I’d like to get her in sooner rather than later.
After leaving the McCarty House I headed to the Dougie Fresh Duplex. I haven’t written about that one yet, but it’s one of my favorites. The tenant that lives in the lower unit is also one of my favorite tenants. She cracks me up.
I looked at her Ring doorbell that isn’t set up, and it turns out I need to call customer service to get it transferred to me since I’m not on great terms with the previous owner (long story). She also had a light fixture that wasn’t working that I managed to fix.
All told, I was home by 1pm and it was only about three hours out of my day. But I enjoyed it. Funny how people think being a landlord sucks. Or maybe I’m still too green.