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Tag Archives: renovation

Finding Stability: Growth and Leverage

Growth curve

Most pundits seem to believe that growth equates to success. Be careful when anyone focuses on only one metric.

Growth is the goal you have almost absolute control over. You get to decide if you want your business to make $10-thousand, $100-thousand, or more each year. You get to decide if you want to grow your business, shrink it, or shutter it.

That’s one decision I’ve never heard discussed in a business text or class. Everyone assumes growth is good, or at least necessary for survival, but that’s only true to a certain extent. Growth is only good when you need to grow or want to. I’ve seen many entrepreneurs get into trouble by growing their companies too fast and outstripping their resources.

One the other hand… Continue reading →

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Take a Tour of St. John!

The whole house is gray and white, which makes the interiors look huge.

We are thrilled to announce that the updates are complete on the St. John property, and it’s ready to be listed in its new and shiny state.

Here’s the link to all the photos and details!

With all the improvements we’ve done in the past couple of months, its really shining now. We extend a huge thank-you to our partner Russell, who has supervised the completion of this project, and who did a lot of the work himself. Quality shows!

One good thing about waiting a while to re-list this property is that the neighborhood has really turned around since it was previously on the market. There’s now a really nice house next door, and the street is full of nice-looking rehabs just like ours.

Marble counters add a nice contrast in the large kitchen.

The new fence really makes a difference, too. It reveals how big the space behind the house really is. Someone could easily add on to the house and make it much bigger, yet retain its 1920s character. And there’s already a pad for a shed.

There aren’t many houses of this age and condition available in San Antonio for under $200K, so if you know of anyone who works in downtown and wants a short commute, let them know about this gem.

The house is on a very large lot with a nice lawn.

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The Roadrunner Is Ready to Fly

Lee didn’t have time to do the weekly updates on the Roadrunner house for a couple of weeks, but that doesn’t mean things weren’t done. In fact, other than a missing piece of glass in the shower door, a few knobs, and repainting bathtub fixtures in the master, it’s done. I’d say it doesn’t look bad at all, given the budget we had. It’s certainly a huge improvement on its previous scary state!

The beveled subway tiles make the counters look fantastic, and the white cabinets are a great change.

The house is on the market for $300K, which is very reasonable for its neighborhood. It’s SUCH a great area of Bryan: very quiet, yet right near all sorts of schools, shops, and main roads. And on a cul-de-sac! Please share the listing with anyone you know who’s looking for housing in the Bryan/College Station area.

At our open house yesterday, visitors thought the good-quality vinyl plank floor was bamboo. I am very impressed with the flooring, myself. I’d have it in a house, especially with children or dogs. It looks like wood, but will hold up better. Consider it for rental homes!

The other part that went over well was the kitchen. It doesn’t even look like the same house. The dark, sad room now appears bright and spacious. There are so many cabinets, and two pantries!

I made a video tour of the house, as the front-door lock mechanism was being installed. This gives you a good idea of all those closets and storage areas:

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Bathrooms Sell Houses

Ruben shows off a new toilet. It has the water-saving dual flush feature and a soft-close seat. And it cost less than $90.

“Bathrooms sell houses” is a bit of a truism in our business. But now that I have your attention, I want to talk about something a lot less sexy: Toilets.

I see a lot of renovations where people reuse the existing toilets. Okay. You save a few dollars, but not that much when compared to your overall renovation budget. And think of your buyer’s reaction to walking into a beautifully redone bathroom, lifting the lid, and seeing a toilet ring from a decade of limestone accumulation.

That’s why we always budget to replace every toilet in every one of our projects. When we catch a sale—like we did with the Roadrunner project—we come out ahead. But even when we pay our regular price, new toilets make a good impression on buyers, and we come out ahead.

But toilets aren’t always inexpensive, as we found out on the Ash House. The architect who designed that house used modern wall-mounted toilets. Both bathrooms in that house had beautiful brick floors, which we wanted to keep. Replacing the wall-mount toilets with freestanding ones would have required jackhammering out the brick floors to rerun the drain lines. Worse, it could have required replacing the drain lines throughout the house.

I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture of the fancy wall-mounted toilets we used in the Ash House. Luckily, they are still available.

Still, we didn’t have a choice. The toilets in the house when we bought it looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned in more than a decade. No way they were coming clean!—no matter how hard we scrubbed. As you can see if you follow the link on the picture of the toilet, the replacements were expensive, but I believe they were well worth the price when you see how beautiful the bathrooms ended up.

So the bottom line is simple. Budget to replace the toilets in all your renovations. They’re not sexy, especially not like a jetted tub is sexy. You’ll never hear a potential buyer exclaim how excited they are about the toilets. But old toilets can kill a deal. Spend a few more dollars to make your buyers happy, even if they don’t know it.

 

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Roadrunner Update: Week 6

Wrap-around window sill connects all of the windows in the bay.

This wrap-around window sill is a custom feature our craftsman Armando created just because he could show it off to me when it was done. When painted, it will wrap seamlessly around the bay. I love when our teams take pride in their work.

Roadrunner is a big house, and big houses take time to renovate. But we’re nearing the finish line. This week’s update focuses on flooring and one more “invisible repair.”

We used a vinyl plank flooring system throughout the ground floor with the exception of the sunken family room. There we are echoing the carpet we used upstairs for a couple of reasons. First, carpet is more comfortable for kids to play on and lay on while they’re watching TV. Second, we wanted something to visually tie the ground floor to the stair case and second floor. The carpet serves that function very well. Continue reading →

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