December 29th Update

So now that you know how and when we bought the house, you might want to know a little about what this house actually looks like.

It's a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house; about 780 sq ft. And it needs a lot of serious love and hard work.
Due to the area and market rate of the houses in the area, those details won't change, but this house will be a great starter home in a few short months.

Since buying it a few short weeks ago, we've put in new windows, ripped up flooring, put down new flooring, scraped paint, and moved some doors.

Here's a photo of our before door (with a hole for the new doorway):



And a photo of what it looks like with the new door:




It's amazing how something as simple as a door really improves the room.



We'll keep you posted with new pictures as they come!

History of the Buy.

Dana and I recently purchased a house on Parnell Drive in Raleigh, N.C. and here is the history of how it happened.

We had been looking for another place to rent and were not coming up with any decent places that had the space that we required and also the space for me to park my truck and trailer.  You see, I am a partial owner of Craft Construction, along with Scott Shackleton.  Some of you may be following his blog, Oakwood Cottages.

So anyway, Dana was looking for a place to rent and happened to come across a listing that had the Parnell House listed as a foreclosure.  We contacting Scott to go with us over there to look at the property and mainly the neighborhood.  Since Scott has a lot of experience in being able to judge a good flip from a bad one and also the ability to know what kind of neighborhood the house is located in.  He thought that it was a great find and suggested to us to move forward with the buying and flipping process.

With the Construction experience that I have, this house really intrigued me.  I love to flip houses.  Just working around Scott for a few years now has taught me a lot and also I have really grown to love taking something that is run-down and bringing it back to life.  Check out Craft Construction's website; this is the website for the projects that Scott and I have going on.

After Dana and I decided to move forward, we signed with Van Fletcher to be our real estate agent.  He immediately started moving forward with the buying process.  Now if you have ever bought a house and especially if you have bought a foreclosure, it is a hurry up and wait process.  We signed the contract with Van then submitted an offer to the owner.  They returned pretty quickly with a counter offer and some stipulations that we had to check out the house a little more before we countered their counteroffer.  So Scott and I, with a couple of other tradesmen, checked out the property again and decided to counter, and the owner accepted.  We were supposed to close on December 1st, per the owners request.  Well, the hurry up and wait process kicked in, and it was not until December 1st that the owner signed the offer and then we moved forward with trying to get the deed signed over to us.  This happened a week or so later and after many hours of frustration, Dana and I were homewoners.

We are starting on the remodel process with great advice from Scott and help from my dad, Benny (you will see him in some pictures very soon).  This house has a really good structure to it, however a lot of other work needs to be completed before we are able to move in.  We are hoping that the process will not take us past the first of February.  It would be an awesome gift from me to Dana if I can do what ever it takes to get her in our house by Valentines Day.

Please stay tuned as we continue to update this blog as we continue to remodel our first house.