Category — Fixer-Uppers

BLOGGING AND REAL ESTATE are sedentary.  I became the blob blogger.  As a Blob, I huffed and puffed to tie my shoes.  It was horrible.  The day of realization came.  It was time to get the spare tire off; get healthy.  What better way than a construction project!  Yeah.  Up and down ladders all day long; pick and shovel work digging post holes, and scrapping paint hour after hour!  Whow.  So I volunteered to repair, scrap, sand, and paint a friends Craftsman rental in Willow Glen.

For two weeks I have not blogged.  Sorry, I was getting in shape the FAST way.  The first day I could hardly move after 4 hours.  After a week, 7 hours with only light pain… all over.   And today,  after 14 days of all types of construction and painting work, Whawallaha!  After 8 hours up and down ladders, I’m ready for a 5 mile jog.

Now I can do it all!  Construction in the morning, real estate in the afternoon, and blogging in the evening!

Its a new me!  And I have new posts about “how to” fix that weathered barge rafter, repair redwood lap siding; with step by step photos to make a Craftsman redwood home new again.

I have vowed to blog every night for the next two weeks.  Lots of exciting stuff coming!

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I’VE NEVER DOUBTED that women are perfectly capable of digging post holes, pouring concrete, and nailing up rails and boards. But I’m surprised when husbands watch wives digging post holes. I’ve noticed this phonomea here on my block with three wives out building fences this month with husbands standing by.

Curiousity overwhelmed me. So I asked. The answer: no, women do not prefer to weld picks, shovels, trowels, and circular saws! What is going on?

The age of equality has arrived. All three of these pick welding women are stay at home moms. Husbands and wives have agreements, and the agreement is wife takes care of the house, all of it, while husbands work for family income. I don’t believe my neighbors are that different from couples in any other neighborhood.

Is this a good deal or a bad deal? What do you think? Leave a comment or email me.

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MY GARAGE has many storage features. Sixteen feet of cabinets with workbench on top; all pegboard walls with 40′ of storage shelves above; metal cabinets, and storage in the rafters, and yet it is full! If your garage is in chaos, you might want to call in a garage storage expert to get all those storage items off the floor.

Here is my garage:

Here is what I’m going to do: reorganize all existing storage, throwing away 10 types of tile I have just in case I of something; taking to Goodwill the five pieces of extra luggage I have not used in five years; 10 fishing poles might be too many; there are bazaar kitchen appliances like the instant ice cream maker, the universal juicing machine, the deluxe bread maker, the wizbang unused turkey oven, two countertop electric skillets, and the calfragalistic crockpot, all of which could go somewhere along with several discarded coffee makers. Then I’ll throw out a couple of unused exercise machines I should use, but don’t.  And note the miter saw on the workbench that could go.

You can call an expert to organize your garage, and pay several thousand dollars to have it done for you.  But there is a less expensive way to do this.  Call a kitchen contractor and see if he will install a set of recycle kitchen cabinets in your garage.  For under a thousand dollars you can have a $10,000 set of kitchen cabinets. Install shelving above eye level all the way around the garage wall.  Prices in the $2500 range for the cabinets and storage shelves is about right.  More storage can be added, or pegboard.  This is a less expensive way of curbing the chaos in the garage.

If you are handy at all, an organized garage is a prerequisite to efficient jobs around the house.  Start in the garage first.  If you need a list of tools, all the tools a handyman needs, send me an email me for McMurdie’s tool list!  A basic set of tools, list A,  runs about $185 including handy dandy bucket.  The complete A&B list of handy tools costs about $850 today, including circular saw, jig saw, and cordless drills.  These are all the tools handy owners needs.   The supercalifragilistic woodworking tools in List Magnum XX,  including band saw, table saw, router, nailing guns, super sawsall, laser beams, and the fun stuff costs about $14,000.  And they’ll all fit in your garage with the cars!

See ya at the hardware store!

Realtor remarks from a recent new listing in Morgan Hill, CA:

Builders dream, fixer upper w/ very little to finish, Endless equity.

Folks, if there’s very little to finish it ain’t a fixer-upper. Give me a break! That’s the whole point of a fixer-upper—to have quite a bit to fix! But I’m biased here. I love fixer-uppers. I love the fun of restoring something back to beauty and seeing my progress unfold. I love getting sawdust all over my clothes while cutting baseboards and crown molding. I love driving by true fixer-uppers and immediately have the project plan blossom in my mind. And let’s be economical for a moment: I want a lot to truly fix because that’s how I can separate the bargains from the rest of the apples and oranges. And isn’t having a lot to fix one of the best ways to add direct value? According to the remarks, there’s “endless equity” in this property. How?! With little to finish, you’re relying on remodeling over fairly current upgrades, and that’s expensive.

Another reason this quote caught my attention is because I just spent the day helping a friend remove acoustic texture (a.k.a. popcorn, cottage cheese, worst aesthetic idea ever) from her ceiling in her recently acquired condo. By the way, she just got the keys yesterday—a great way to get active on the place, start right away! I wouldn’t call her condo a fixer-upper by any means, but I might call it something of a “fix-it-up” perhaps. It’s absolutely habitable and wouldn’t require a single thing to “fix.” But it certainly has plenty of room for fixing up and adding value, character, and charm.

So here’s what I plan to do: In the next week, I will find and take photos of 5 real-deal fixer-uppers (judgment to be based on exterior only unless I can get inside for a showing). I’ll post the photos and you’ll be the judge…and of course I’ll share my ranking as well. Side note: If I can find pics from an old fixer I saw over two years ago, I’ll post those too; that one in Cupertino was a gem!

Hmm, I wonder if the realtor meant many remodeling projects have begun in this home and now there’s just “little to finish.” I doubt it.