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Tag Archives: Blue Ridge

Happy 2018 from Us!

Hermann says don’t forget us if you have a deal!

It’s a new year, and we are full of renewed energy after a little break. We want to send all of our readers good thoughts for the coming year. May all your projects go smoothly, and may you make a profit! We wish that for us, too.

Our projects are marching on, of course! Here are a couple of quick updates:

Chaparral: We had someone Carol knew come in and quickly repaint the “pink” walls on the second floor and power wash the driveway to get rid of plants growing in the cracks. He also put in some nice perennial plants where the flowers had been in the fall. That’s good. But even BETTER is the full-price offer we received last week! Of course, there are interesting features to the offer, but we are working on getting a family with ten kids into this big house. They are a great fit!

Oakridge: The exterior color is better, and the trim should look great when done.

Oakridge: The exterior painting is complete and they’ve moved on to the interior. We have an in-progress photo to share right now, but will add a finished picture later today, so come back! Carol is busy on a marketing plan for this house. Know anyone looking to buy in Round Rock? Let us know!

Meadow Arbor 2: That should close any day. We put on a new roof, which of course had a permitting glitch, but we’re dealing with it. And we are waiting to hear on the insurance for the roof.

Taylor: It’s on schedule to close. Yay.

Chaparral: That is NOT pink. Ahh.

Blue Ridge: We are negotiating the replacement of the HVAC unit with the renters who would like to buy it.

Saint John: Still looking for the ideal buyer for that one.

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How’s Our Year End Looking?

Well, it’s a bit of a strain, actually. But like Lee has been saying, you need a plan to get through the rough times, so you can enjoy the good ones. We have positive movementum, though, and there’s actually lots of GOOD stuff in here. It’s time for the weekly update.

This is just a teaser for a more detailed progress report on the Oakridge house.

Oakridge

As Russell said, “lots of good progress” on this one.  We have a plan for the remodeling of the kitchen, and lots of pictures to share, which you can look forward to tomorrow! This one’s moving right along. It certainly has a lot less mess in it, and we are even on the second dumpster of junk. There was a barbecue pit inside a room. That’s not legal. The plan is to get rid of the walls and make it a nice open patio.

Saint John

This one has the most news. First, Carol has made a new virtual tour for the house. It’s really pretty, and we think we will be able to use it to market it on the MLS and not just on the ListingSpark tool we’d been using.

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Rental House Horror Story: The Case of the Wrong Filters

The beautiful floors are all bubbly.

It doesn’t take much to cause a real disaster, especially when it comes to air conditioning systems. Heck, Mandi accidentally tilted the window unit in the rental house she’s staying in the wrong way, and was frightened by a big ole puddle on the floor. At least that was easy to fix.

Unfortunately, not all tenants are so quick to report an air conditioning issue, nor are all easy to fix. Today’s horror story is a case in point. You, too, can learn from it!

Blue Ridge Blues

Our Blue Ridge house is one of the first ones we did as a company, and it’s one we learned a lot of lessons on (such as, sometimes a contractor delays a project because he is secretly living in it with his large dog). It’s been a rental property for the past year and a half, and that also taught us a lesson about property management companies (that they will charge you a LOT for minor things).

Oh my, that is NOT what you want to see on recently renovated walls.

Well, they were in quite a panic because suddenly their floors were flooding. They had no idea what was causing it, and were quite upset. Well, when we saw it, so were we. Carol went over there and took the pictures that accompany this post. She was not pleased, as you can imagine. Our nice floors and carpets are looking bad, and worse, they waited so long that there is mold. MOLD. We hate mold.

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Lakeland, Practically Perfect!

The white is primer. The brown is the original color. The finished color can be glimpsed at upper left.

The white is primer. The brown is the original color. The finished color can be glimpsed at upper left.

Some News about Lakeland

You may remember that the Lakeland house that Russ and I have been living in for the last two months was pretty darned great when we got it. We just wanted to do a few little upgrades before releasing it to the world (right now we think some lucky families may get it as a vacation rental this summer!).

So far I’ve added a window and new light fixtures in the gorgeous kitchen, and painted it to blend in with the rest of the family room area. And there is an exciting new master bath that I can’t wait to show you, as soon as it’s all clean and shiny! It has some custom features you won’t see anywhere else! It’s fun to fix up a house that’s not entry level every once in a while!

Here are some pictures of the current work, which is to repaint the dark entryway and family room a lighter color that still has the Mediterranean feel of the rest of the place. We just love how it reminds us of a villa in Italy! The color is “puce,” we’ve decided. That’s a greenish color to those of you who aren’t quite as into color names as the women on our team are. I’m “obsessed” (like the California lady on “Flip pr Flop” keeps saying) with this color. It makes me smile every time I go up and down the stairs.

Now the entryway and this family room are all the same pretty color.

Now the entryway and this family room are all the same pretty color.

I was also really happy with the painters, who are guys Russ and I have worked with before in our earlier days before Hermit Haus. They were in and out in a flash. These are the kind of folks we will use again and again–they followed instructions and met their deadlines! A welcome change from our recent experiences!

But, What about the Deck?

Faithful readers may remember earlier posts about the two-story deck we have planned to really make this place an oasis of fun. It got delayed for the usual reasons for our projects: waiting for permits. This time it was the local village, who had some pretty funny requests (like I had to personally draw a picture of the project, even though we’d sent in engineering drawings). The good news is we have permits! And Russell and I have fled town to go be with our families for the holiday weekend so that the deck team can power through that second level. We have been promised that it will be done by the end of the weekend.

We plan to have our company weekly meeting at the Lakeland house next week. We hope to share pictures of us hoisting an adult beverage and looking out at the beautiful Texas hill country from our new and lovely space!

Blue Ridge finally has someone to love and take care of it!

Blue Ridge finally has someone to love and take care of it!

But, Where Will You Be?

Well, since that last buyer withdrew from the Blue Ridge house, we decided to buy it for ourselves! We are empty nesters now, and the location is really convenient for all our work. Having a finished house to live in will give us more time to find and locate the “fixer-upper” we really want to get next–and any big repairs can be done without us having to live in the house. In the end, we all think it’s worked out for the best. It’s SUCH a cute house, and we’ll love all the work space in the garage, as well as the beautiful pergola out back.

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Picking Your Battles

You know how folks often tell you to “pick your battles” when it comes to dealing with children, coworkers, or postal workers (just an example—many of them are great)?

You also have to do that when it comes to the many different types of people you work with in the real estate redevelopment biz. Sometimes even when you’re right, it’s best to let things go and hope logical consequences will follow and make your point for you. Today’s examples:

That Darned House

Once again, the sale of our Blue Ridge house didn’t make it to closing. This time it was at the very last minute. The potential buyer had asked for some additional repairs, which we indeed took care of. We even pushed back the closing for the buyer’s convenience. However, today, one day before scheduled closing, the buyer backed out, stating that that more repairs weren’t needed might be needed. Blue Ridge is more than 30 years old. Yeah, at some point additional repairs will be needed. We fixed everything we knew about, but….

Sigh. I’ve bought houses that old before, knowing there were issues, but figuring, hey, it’s 30 years old. Apparently some buyers today think that when you fix up a house to sell, you know every single issue and fix them all…but some hidden things you just don’t know! So, good luck to this buyer in finding a house with zero current or future issues (including a brand new house—builders are human and do make errors). Those homeowner warranties you can buy are a good idea, just for these reasons. In fact, we always include one with every house we sell, just in case.

But, well, we’ll just choose not to battle on this and let that one go. We like the house so much that one of our team plans to buy it and live in it.

As for the buyer, there will most definitely be consequences from treating sellers this way–we certainly won’t work with them professionally again (and there was a chance we would have).

Coloring St. John’s House

That's a nice contrast. Just not the requested color.

That’s a nice contrast. Just not the requested color.

St. John’s house is the one we are partnering with our friends with in San Antonio. We showed you what it looked like all scraped off a couple of weeks ago. It came time to paint the house. We sent the contractor a photo, numbers, and color name of the colors we wanted to use. The contractor came back with, “I have a lot of another color and I’d like to use that. Is it okay?” We said we would prefer the color we chose.

A few days later we got the message that our color was too light and showed all the flaws in the wood on the house. Also it was “brown” (actually it’s a brownish gray). That concerned us, since our choice was a pretty dark gray. We said it was fine to go with one of the even darker shades of that color, and to do that.

Crisp colors. Much better than before. But not what we asked for.

Crisp colors. Much better than before. But not what we asked for.

We got some pictures. They are the ones you see here. The house is indeed dark gray. A dark bluish gray. We’re pretty sure that was the leftover color the contractor wanted to use all along. The one we didn’t want to use because it was close to the color of another house on the street. Sure, it looks all right. It will do. We won’t argue and insist on the color we asked for in the first place. We need to finish the house and sell it.

Detail of the porch.

Detail of the porch.

If you are doing this kind of work, this is the kind of stuff that happens often. You just can’t sweat the small stuff and argue over every detail. But you can reward people who work with you, listen to you, and treat you with respect.

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