Sigh, The McCarty house. This one has been a journey. If you want to go back and read a bit more in depth about this house and some of the highlights, most of that lives in the tag here.
This home was left for dead when we picked it up in the Wayne County Tax Auction for $43,000. We (way) overpaid.
I thought it had 3 beds and 2 baths, but it had just 2 beds and 1.5 baths. Not a big deal, right? Well, the house was also a complete disaster. For starters, there was mold EVERYWHERE. I mean, the kind that lives not just on surfaces, but in the air to the point where it hits you and makes you take a half step back when walking through the door.
The roof was failing, the upstairs bathroom was leaking, and we later discovered a pinhole leak below the main water shutoff in the basement. To make matters worse, the basement had been fully finished in the past. The genius that did the work covered every single floor drain with tile. The only exposed drain was clogged and backing up.
The previous occupant told me they’d pump the water out a basement window every time they did laundry. But the basement still held about an inch of water at most times and the floor tiles would squish and shift as you walked across them.
It took us about three months to remove the occupant. That, in itself, was a saga. And to this day, Ms. McCarty is a household name at our home and running joke.
The rehab officially began on February 6th of this year. And it officially ended today, nearly six months later. Oof.
Here are the before and after photos. If you want to see some of the in between ones, check them out here.
This is the entryway. You can see the bonus room with the makeshift doors on the left side of the far wall. 
We reframed the bonus room to create the third bedroom. 
Notice the mold on the baseboards on the left. 
Much better! 
There was hardwood under the carpet but it need a lot of love! 
Here’s a shot of the bonus room after removing the makeshift doors. It’s small, but we made it work. 
Bonus room now bedroom. 
Here’s the dining area, or crash pad… 
Dining area redone. 
The kitchen was not only ugly, but a complete mess. The subfloor was completely rotted from water damage. 
Everything new. In hindsight I don’t love the LVP color choice, but it works for now. 
This was a nook in the kitchen (left side of previous photos but not pictured). We turned this into a laundry area. 
The nook, now with a door and laundry hookups. 
This is the half bath on the landing between the main level and basement. Notice the floor was collapsing here. We raised this, knocked the back wall out, and connected it to the bonus room (now bedroom) to create a full bath. 
Here’s the new full bath. The wall you see here is the old doorway from the previous photo. 
The sink from the half bath in the previous photos. 
To create a shower in this new bathroom we had to shift the door to the kitchen to get the space. 
Upstairs bedroom with junk in it, but in decent shape. 
Nicely painted and refinished. 
Upstairs bathroom demo’d out. 
And all redone. 
The subfloor needed replacing here in the upstairs bathroom as well. 
Done with new vanity and toilet. 
The basement was a hot mess. I’ll never forget the squishing tiles beneath my feet. 
Here it is mostly demo’d out. 
And all fresh, painted, and clean. What a journey!
What was originally a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath home is now a 3 bedroom, 2 full bath house. Getting there wasn’t easy.
We turned the bonus room (off the living area when you walk in — first photo) into a bedroom (photos #7 and #8). We relocated the doorway to the kitchen to another wall and took over a small pantry to create the bedroom closet and part of the shower stall.
Finally, the half bath that originally sat off the landing on the way to the basement shared a wall with the bonus room (now bedroom), so we raised the floor and busted open the wall to adjoin it with the new bedroom and create a (small) ensuite.
That gave us the third bedroom and second full bath we were hoping for. The other big change, beyond general aesthetic updates, was sealing off the small eating area in the kitchen (photos 13 and 14 above) to create a pantry or first floor laundry. You can barely see the laundry hookups in the wall in photo 14.
The idea here was to force some equity by creating the third bedroom and full bath, obviously. But we also wanted to make the home more appealing to someone who didn’t want to climb stairs and could live on the main level if they chose to.
I think it worked out well.
Beyond that we completely rewired the entire house, did a tear off roof replacement, and updated the plumbing. Those are things you don’t really see but hurt the pocket book quite a bit.
I’m still tallying how much we spent on this rehab, but I know it was in the $50,000 ballpark. That number makes my head hurt.
We’re also still waiting on the financing and appraisal, so I don’t have those numbers yet but I will soon. I didn’t think we had a shot at getting our money out previously, but comps have come up strong in the last couple months, so you never know. At this point, I’d be happy getting most of it out. But with the way this one has gone, I’m not holding my breath.
On to the next!