Beg, Borrow & Sales

The family & friends you choose to spend your time with should never be based on what they have or what they can give you, but when flipping a house, if your family or friends DO have things or CAN help, it makes a difference. Ty and I have seriously counted on anyone we know to get this house finished, here are just a few items you may see in our house that we did not necessary purchase ourselves and a few tips on how to make extra money when you actually do have to buy things yourself.

1) Borrow: When Pauline (our Realtor) came over to list our house it is typically standard that window coverings are included, but not with us, no, we have wood blinds in our master that CANNOT be sold with the house because they belong to Mom and the bamboo blind in the kitchen was free because it was a miss-measure at Mom's store.

2) Beg: The Dining Room chandelier was free; Mom had found it in the clearance bin at Home Depot and never used it, so we did.

3) Sale: We were really good at finding deals, for example, Rona was closing in Perth so we went in (BEFORE WORK) and bought our patio door, bathroom window and front full-glass door, what we didn't know at the time was that the only thing we would actually use was the patio door, the front door we didn't measure and the bathroom window we never replaced.

4) Borrow: There is a gorgeous, huge painting in our River Room that really fills a wall perfectly and makes it warm, that we actually took from the Boat House at the Cottage..... we promised Jan we would return it once the house sold.

5) Beg: Thankfully Ty's Dad, Gord, is a wiz at anything home repair, he has done everything from build us a counter top to frame in our bathroom wall to squaring up our walls, and likely should have charged Ty by the minute for phone advice! We also enjoyed that Blair, his Carpenter and "partner" of "Bypass Construction" would come over often too.

6) Sale: Something not a lot of people know - Home Depot Online has a daily item that they put on sale, one day only, under "Hammer Drop" and then they also have one item each day that they put a few of up under "Auction" - and let me tell you, you can get awesome deals, the massive tv stand in our living room was purchased at 40% off on HD online so we thought we were getting a good deal getting it for $600 +tax & delivery, but a few weeks later it went on the auction and sold for LESS THEN $300! I almost died!

7) Beg: So not everyone has a Mom that owns a paint and decorating store, but I do, so we used 50 gallons (approximately, we lost count) on the interior and 15 gallons on the exterior and got a great deal on it - I love "family discounts" - my Mom is awesome, she also painted the majority of a two-storey, four bedroom home (I'm talking ceilings and all walls) in 4 days, she is a MACHINE! And she sews, although she seems to have caught on that I can sew as well......

8) Sale: When you buy things or have things you no longer need or want (like a bathroom window that you didn't use, a front door that you didn't measure or a tv stand that you have replaced but can still lie and say it is less then a year old) you can sell all of these wonderful things for free on websites like usedottawa.ca or craigslist or kijiji - all of these websites allow you to post for free and find buyers for your used stuff, and it totally works - we actually sold the door for more then we bought it for - because we got such a good deal on it originally!

9) Beg: Uncle Scott is his own company (shout out to Athabasca Home Solutions) and does awesome work as a general contractor, and because he loves his niece so, on several occasions he came over and helped us! And although they are not professionals I still believe they deserve an honourable mention - Uncle Rob for helping with the flooring (when we almost killed him with no AC), Brad & Megan for telling (because if they asked we would have said no) us they were coming to help cause Ty threw out his back and they wanted to help, D & Claire for, once again, telling us they were coming to help us move and allowing us to us their SUV to pile 4 mattress on top and Ty carrying over our dining room table from the apartment and Claire getting covered in Melamine paint so she had to almost bathe in paint thinner, Jon Jon and Brian for destroying our little one car driveway and making it a spacious two with his skidsteerer, and the array of friends and family that came that first week to do whatever they could to help.

10) Sale: If you are in the market for windows, and you do NOT require specific sizes (usually because you are making the cut out) just go to a window store and ask if they have mis-measures or windows that were returned because the customer didn't want them, our local one had trailers full that they auction once a year, but throughout the year they will sell them to you, usually at cost (cause the purchaser has already had to pay 25% to return them) and it works PERFECT!

11) Beg; Again, not everyone has a Dad that lives in the country with 100's of acres of bush, but I do, and so we have a house that has a wood stove and a Dad that cuts wood for us, and we love him for it, he works too hard and he will not take money from us for anything..... he is the best.

12) Sale: When having work done on/around your house consider hiring students, luckily for us I work at a trades school and know which students are top of their class and when students learn certain things and so, for example, in the week after the Masonry students had learned how to build dry-lay stone walls, we hired two of them to build ours on the water, and it looks beautiful, it gave them money and it cost us so much less for a wall that could not look any better, we also have Carpenters at this Campus, I am still waiting for a job for them.

So the moral of this entry is that, if you are patient, and if you can look to those you love or what is available in your area, you can find great deals, learn alot and complete a house for atleast half the price it would cost to have paid professionals do it!

However, I am not sure everyone will be so willing to help on the second house... the first house has an excitement about it that you lose in the second house, especially the parents, they all did ALOT!

xo,
S