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.