Rental House Updates - Before and After Photos

Sometimes I wonder "What do I do with my time?  Where has the year gone?"

Thankfully, I have a blog and a camera and can glance back over my year to remind myself that I do not sit around all day doing nothing! 

A large portion of my time the past few months went into manual labor.  We finally evicted our latest non-paying tennants from our rental home at Labor Day.

So, I spent my autumn driving the 90 miles back and forth to the rental house and put in many, many hours of sweat equity at our rental home- trying to update the 1996 home to put it on the market.  Lots of painting, scraping, cleaning.   It is finally listed "for sale," but is still vacant!  ugh..  Fingers crossed - maybe it will sell, soon.

I am not whining - I know we are blessed to have the property to sell - I am just recounting my physical and financial efforts that brought the house from where it WAS in September to where it IS, now. 

Here are some before and after photos of our projects at the home. 

First, the exterior. 

I did not take good 'before' photos - I was too overwhelmed by the condition of the home and the work that needed to be done.

'before' we arrived with our hedgeclippers (immediately after the non-paying tenants were evicted)

rental house 'after' we spent time in the yard

After we took a houseful of trash to the dump, we were able to start repairs on the inside of the home.

My son and I added board and batten to the entry hall, detailed here....

rental house hall 'before'

rental house hall 'after'

We added beadboard and fresh paint to a powder room....

 

 rental house bath 'before'

rental house bath 'after'

And replaced the old appliances in the kitchen.....

rental house kitchen 'before'

rental house kitchen 'after' (looking other direction)

My husband removed the wall-sized mirror in the master bath ......

"Before" photos of master bath mirror

"After" photos of master bath mirror wall

I bought two new mirrors at TJMaxx/HomeGoods and my husband installed new faucets and lighting.  Welcome to the new century! 

The rest of the updates involved painting every inch of the interior of the home, hiring someone to repair over $1,000 worth of electrical sabotage* and buying new carpet and linoleum.  Not a fun way to spend money.  *The electrician discovered that the tenants had rigged the electric panel to widen the connections on the air conditioning circuit breakers to lower their electicity bill.  This is a dangerous way to save money - they almost burned down the house and actually destroyed one of the air conditioning units in the process.  The tampering was not evident until the electrical panel was removed.  Then it was obvious that a screwdriver had been used to separate the metal connections and reduce the amount of electricity flowing through the breakers. I am sharing this information because the various air conditioning repairmen did not know to remove the electric panel and look at the backs of the breakers.  The electrician was the one who had seen this sort of sabotage, before.

The updates at the rental house took time and cash away from our main home - the one we live in!  Hopefully the rental home will sell very soon!  Do you know anyone who needs to buy a home in the Kennesaw, Georgia area?  Offered at a 1999 price!  Here is the listing.

Have a wonderful New Year!!!

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