And Everything Nice

And now for an important part of The Flip House story:

We have three girls who are all so very different but all wonderful. Raising them is hard work sometimes, but I consider them our most worthwhile investment. In February we will be adding another girl to our family, bringing the grand total to four!

New Baby Girl

 

Usually I just get one ultrasound to check for medical problems and gender, but this time I got an early gender ultrasound before I told people. (And I just went in for my full one today). When I told people I was pregnant with Charlotte I had to endure a lot of annoying comments like, Family member: "Let's hope it's a boy!" Me: WHY, DON'T YOU LIKE GIRLS??? or Family member: "We need a boy!" Me: WHY, DON'T YOU LIKE OUR GIRLS?? I didn't actually yell these responses, although I probably wanted to, but as a pregnant woman I am a little more on edge emotionally and sensitive to things such as gender comments. Earlier this week I saw the first leaves of autumn falling and it sent me into dry-heaving sobbing mode.

Anyway, I figured I'd dodge the annoying comments by just telling people it was a girl at the same time I told them I was pregnant. (Or that it was a boy, but that was always a slim possibility). This wasn't actually 100 percent successful, but it did go better than last time.

I had to wait 4 months to find out the gender so we kept the pregnancy under wraps for awhile. My brother Ammon was actually the first to guess, kind of. We were sitting around chatting talking about clothes sizes for kids I think, when he suddenly joined the conversation, "Wait, are you pregnant?" Me: Ammon! You can't just ask women that! Him: "Oh, I thought you were talking about pregnancy clothes." Me: No! We were talking about kids' clothes! (Or a similar topic, I can't really remember now). Notice how I sneakily didn't answer his question?

Me getting ready to skydive at 4 months pregnant. I was horribly nauseous on the way down because my dumb instructor thought it was cool to do loop-de-loops and flip upside down even after I told him it was making me ill. I didn't tip him. We also had to pull over a couple times so I could puke on the way home. I was denied the satisfaction of sharing this with people at the time so I'm sharing it now.

My pregnancy is an important part of The Flip House story because it's one of the reasons we decided to move out of our cute old house into what shall now be known as the New House. The extra room, (Charlotte can move out of her closet!) absence of stressful problems, (What's going to break next?) and financial wisdom of moving (Good-bye money pit!) are/will be great things about our new place, but I am still really emotionally conflicted about moving out of our old place. I'm pregnant. I can be emotional.

More on that and the After pictures of the Old House later.

A week before I told people about the new baby my sister Charity called to chat and asked me if I was pregnant. (Not sure why? Because we were moving?)  Me: "Charity! You can't just ask women that! A woman's age and if she is pregnant are the two forbidden questions!" Unfortunately sisters are not put off as easily as little brothers...she seemed to think that she could ask me that because she was my sister.... It was nice to finally be able to tell someone the exciting news.

 

So the upshot of all this is, I still can't tell you if flipping a house is everything I thought it would be, because we are no longer flipping a house. (Austin's devious master plan? He's never really liked our old house...) Now we are redoing it to live in ourselves, which is a different beast entirely. I know this, because guess what I was doing last year at this exact same time? Yes, renovating a house to live in. Aaargh. Can I just live in a house for a while?

HGTV and The Flip House

One of the big things going on this summer has been The Flip House. I've always wanted to flip a house...ever since I started watching HGTV, that is. Back when I had cable I watched this show called Flip or Flop, (they almost always make a ton of money though, go figure) about a husband and wife who buy foreclosed or underpriced houses in California, have their contractor fix them up, then sell them a couple months later for a big profit. The wife's role seems to consist of dropping their child off with the babysitter, walking around the disgusting house they just bought and going "Ewww," shopping for pretty new flooring and cabinets to put in it, and then looking good for the open house. Sometimes she mops the floor with a Swiffer mop before the open house starts.

I'm sure she is more involved then that, after all it is only a 30 minute tv show, but the point is: I want to be that woman. What she does looks really fun and easy.

Long story short, Austin found a house down the street from my parents that he thought would make a great flip house. (Little did I know about his devious master plan...more on that in a later post.) It has good feng shui, is in a great neighborhood, my parents wanted to go in on it financially with us, and best of all it was a blank slate, totally gutted--a plus after spending a lot of time ripping things out of our charming colonial house. So we bought it and there went my relaxing summer/fall. But I was secretly excited because at last I would get to see what it was like to flip a house!

Not much to look at. Pretty bad actually.

 

 

Front entry

Looking into kitchen from entry. Note walls.

Fireplace and ceiling hole.

 

So the story is, the old-timer guy living here died and some relatives(?) moved in and let a huge leak in the middle of the flat roof develop. The whole house got water in it. The man's son took over the property and put a new roof on, ripped out everything, I mean everything except the fireplace, and ripped off and open pretty much every wall to check for mold. Then I think he ran out of money and it went into foreclosure. That's where we came in.

The kitchen and other side of the fireplace

Garage

Master Bathroom

Basement

 

 

I have a lot more "before" pictures but without walls or fixtures it's really hard to tell what the room is...all the pictures kind of look alike.

Next up will be "during" pictures and a report on if flipping is everything I dreamed it would be.