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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Update on our House Flip

Terry and I bought a foreclosed house in Knoxville in May with the idea of "flipping" it to make some cash. It's a cute little Craftsman-style house (probably built in the 20s) with lots of nice features (my favorites are the large kitchen and porch). Rebecca and her brothers helped their Dad with demolition work back in June (she blogged about this here, here and here). Then several times during the summer one or more of the boys went to Knoxville with Terry to work on it.

Now that Terry has started contract work at Eastman four days a week, he has less time to work on the house. We took advantage of the long Labor Day weekend to all go down there and help out (sans Rebecca, who is now off to college).

A few days before we came, about $700 worth of power tools were stolen as well as the heat pump (stealing someone's AC in the summer ought to be a federal crime!). Terry suspected a guy that was working for him, and on Saturday he was arrested.

From Coker


Terry had grown to care for the guy and hoped to work it out with him without turning him in, but it just wasn't happening. We learned some things in the process. While we want to help out folks that need work, I think we're going to start doing background checks. Caleb was fascinated by the process, though, and has at least temporarily decided that he wants to go into law enforcement.

Here the boys are hanging out in the kitchen. I took the wallpaper down in this room this weekend. Don't worry - the purple color will not stay.

From Coker


Here Terry is doing some foundation work -

From Coker


While Nathan helps from underneath (he loves crawl spaces!):

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Noah helped me with the wallpaper:

From Coker


And Caleb helped with painting:

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When he wasn't goofing around:

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And Terry's Dad (aka "Papa") was a great help. Here he is doing some electrical work:

From Coker


Here are some views of the awesome front porch:

From Coker


From Coker


From Coker

2 comments:

heritagemom said...

Wow, you sure have a project on your hands! Great to see the young guys working. And that front porch is amazingly huge!

Christine

Kristal said...

What a project! Sorry about they guy that stole from you.