The Chicken or the Egg

            I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg. However, I do know that you need to complete the flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms before you install the base cabinets. Yet I can remember a time when this was a personal head scratcher.

Although I was a novice in home renovation, I had a diverse work history before I became the owner of a condemned home, including a lot of experience in construction. I’d always loved to build as a kid—hours in the sandbox, Legos, giant houses of cards—so while I was on deck to renovate my own place, I gravitated toward jobs building things for other people. Along with this experience, I read a lot about construction and real estate in my free time, more because I was interested in the topic than in preparation for any type of notable career fixing up old homes.

With the book knowledge and work, I was not exactly starting from square one. In reality, I was only adding to a minor base of construction know-how. I was well aware that I still had plenty to learn, and when I reached the point where I felt like I was ready and able to take the leap, I jumped in… not too far from the deep end.

Initially, the sequence of doing things on my rehab really stumped me. I had a pretty solid handle on the fundamentals and various scopes of work, but I didn’t quite understand how they fit together.

Adding to this, was my tight budget and schedule, and I was ever mindful of the fact a wrong move could have a consequential ripple effect that I was in no position to endure. I have working class, blue-collar roots. There was no safety net to save me if I messed up. I wasn’t going for a perfect renovation; I just didn’t want to my mess up so severely that I couldn’t finish within my budget and on the twelve-month timetable dictated by the bank backing me.   

It may sound odd, but this confusion with sequencing on a self-managed renovation is common since a home rehab has lots of steps. It can be hard to know where to start and what to do when.

With each of my projects, a pattern began to emerge. I found myself doing certain things in a specific order, and the proper sequence started to become clear. In some ways, renovating my own home was like any job, and things just started to click.

There are some initial steps that need to be done if the house has been condemned or vacant for a while, but after that, my process can be applied to any renovation. I found my approach safe, practical, and enjoyable. And more times than not, it was profitable in the end when I sold, and in the worst cases, I simply broke even.

My pattern of activities and scopes is certainly not the only way, but it works for me, and I never get tired of sharing it when curious people ask, “How do you go about saving a house this bad?” There are too many great homes out there, properties in gnarly shape eagerly awaiting rehabilitation—aka pig’s ears. For me to keep my triumphs and tribulations all to myself feels like bad rehab karma.

When I buy a pig’s ear that’s for sale by the owner, I have forty-one steps that I typically follow. If your project house is not a total wreck, you can skip to Step 9: Creating a Sketch of the Floor Plan. Some of the stages, like Step 20: Rough-In with the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC scopes, are broken down further. But plenty of them are straightforward and more or less self-explanatory. For example, Step 38: Appliances. I hold off on these units until the end of the project and just prior to the final inspection since they take up a lot of space, and I don’t need them slowing us down on the way to the finish line known as the Certificate of Occupancy.

The appliance step is a good example of something that can be done much sooner. There’s nothing stopping someone from buying the refrigerator even before they find a house and bringing it on day one of the project. I’m sure plenty of folks have done this. But who wants to work around a fridge or stove and move those heavy things throughout a rehab? Not me, that’s for sure. If you do it my way, you’ll be good to go.

In conclusion, I love chickens and eggs equally. They’re both delicious.

How Did Calling My Houses Pig's Ears Happen?

    The personal dream to own a home to renovate was lingering in my head for half of my life before I bought my first project house. I was ready and willing to roll up my sleeves and be hands on from beginning to end, to invest plenty of sweat equity. I was anxious to swing the sledge hammer, schlep debris to the dumpster, hammer nails, paint and do whatever else in order to transform a Plain Jane home into something special.

    Besides knowing what I wanted to do, I had a strong sense of how I wanted to do it. I wanted it to be my plan. I wanted to decide how to paint it and I wanted to choose the cabinets, counters, and appliances myself and to make all the decisions on the landscaping. I just wanted to buy a house and have my way with it.

    In truth, I was past ready to get started renovating after I graduated from high school. But a college education was very important to my grandmother and something I had to do first. It was at the University of Cincinnati that I read a real estate investment book laying out the reason for an aspiring home renovator to buy “the worst house on the block.” This book helped me begin to understand the financial upside of rehabilitating a home with potential.

    Soon after reading this book, I came up with a plan that had me working on a home rehab instead of a part-time job after class. The math made it clear that this would be more lucrative, and I found three people to go in with me on a house in rough shape to fix up in the evenings and on weekends. It was a great plan until it fell apart early on. The others bought me out, and I was happy to get my investment money back. I still kept watching This Old House on TV each Saturday Morning, but I placed my home renovation goals on the back burner. Although I wanted to buy my first home as soon as I graduated from UC, paying back my student loans became my top priority after commencement, and I owed too much money to qualify for a mortgage.

    Eventually, I was in position to take my shot on the worst building on the street. It was a condemned home, devasted years before when a dryer fire grew out of control. I saw past the smoke smell and stains from the flames and was excited about this solid, brick, ranch-style house with plenty of room for improvement. Along with that, I felt I had a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone; renovate a house of my own and use the proceeds to erase some of my student debt.

    My parents visited and were concerned, convinced that I’d made a major screw up, and were reminded of the negative idiom: You can’t turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse. To them, I’d invested in a self-appointed mission destined to fail. Yet, when I finished a year later, the worst property had become the most valuable, and I won a contest on thisoldhouse.com, the website for the TV show I’d watched all those weekends while I was in college. Eventually, after I sold this first project house, I paid off all those student loans, proving to myself that I was not too shabby at idiomatic stone throwing.

    Although my first project went better than planned, my parents were just as unimpressed with my second rehab. Again, they thought I’d made a major blunder, that the two-story cottage was a lost cause. They pleaded with me, “Please cut your losses and find someone to take that thing off your hands.” Yet that wasn’t really a viable option. My money and reputation were tied up in that thing. I simply had to work my plan. Like the first house I saved, number two surpassed my expectations, and my mom said, “Well, you did it again. You turned this pig’s ear into a silk purse.” The icing on the cake came on the day I walked into the book store, flipped open the current issue of Restoration Style Magazine, and saw my house featured inside.

    So, to be clear and accurate, I didn’t start calling my projects pig’s ears as a way to be clever or unique. If I’m being honest with myself, my own use of this uncouth tag came from the mixing of two ingredients; disappointment and bitterness. The thing is, without me being totally straightforward as to how this pig’s ear description came about, folks are often left wondering, “What’s the real story?” Well, that’s it. It came from my own family.

    I think it’s fair to say I worked hard to disprove that pessimism, and I’ve turned more than those two pig’s ears into silk purses. It hasn’t been easy. It’s required a lot of planning, hard work, and passion, but I did what my parents and others predicted was impossible. I wasn’t trying to prove a point or show anyone up. I was just a kid with a dream and then a big debt to pay off. I wanted to do one thing, I had to do another, and along the way, I found a career getting paid to do something I really loved doing: buying and saving houses that other people didn’t want.

    To be fair, as I’ve already alluded, my parents weren’t the only ones who let me know they thought I was being foolhardy. Others were just as doubtful. But it was my plan, my investment, and the student loans were mine to pay back every month. I wasn’t asking for approval, opinions, or any type of charity. I was content just doing my thing and felt like I was being polite giving people tours of my project while I answered their questions and explained what and how I was going to make it happen. Mom always told me it was impolite to invite yourself over to someone else’s home. The thing is, most of these naysaying visitors invited themselves over, and once they were there, too many of them started trying to pour cold water on my plans. If I do say so myself, I was a good sport, but I’d have been fine if all those cynics had just waited until I got my certificate of occupancy.

    Rather than sharing this story from some dark place, I’m explaining where the pig’s ear moniker came from, but it’s worth noting that I’m letting you wannabe rehabbers and flippers know that people might be tactless, and most won’t apologize after you get your hard-earned CO. Just keep in mind that in most cases, what they’re really telling you, in a backhanded way, is that they can’t do it themselves. And that’s okay. If it was easy to turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse, more folks would be doing it, and that would drive the price of unwanted houses even higher. So, in a way, it all works in your favor.