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31 Oct Ep. 58 An Update on Shannon’s Rehab

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In this episode, Realtor Adam Kruse gets an update from Realtor Shannon St. Pierre on the progress of her Tower Grove rehab. Find out how hard it was for Shannon to take over someone else’s unfinished rehab that wasn’t up to code. What happens when you have to cut down trees and move the stairs?

Email questions to PODCAST@HermannLondon.com

WHAT’S INSIDE?

0:40 Adam introduces Realtor Shannon St. Pierre

1:15 Christmas decorating life hack: Buy color changing lights, put them up in October when the weather is nicer, and set them to Orange until November 1st when you can change them to red and green

2:03 Hermann London update-You missed out on the company picnic!

4:06 The business planning event is in January

4:25 It is party season! One of the mottos of Hermann London is “Go to the party!”.

5:18 It’s time to get an update from Shannon on her shotgun style Tower Grove rehab

6:30 Shannon took over someone else’s project and the framing was not up to code

7:40 Shannon bought the house in September of 2018 and she is now in the home stretch

8:50 Shannon started with the roof including taking down some trees which was a huge hit to the budget

9:50 Shannon was struggling with the layout in such a small space so she hired an architect

11:00 How hard and expensive is it to move the stairs in a home?

11:50 Shannon had a falling out with her contractor 

12:10 Can you pay a contractor less money if they don’t have the project done on time?

14:49 Shannon became her own general contractor

16:40 Is Shannon keeping a diary or notes for next time?

17:28 Shannon had to remove a sunroom that wasn’t up to code but a bunch of bricks came with it so there was a big hole in the house

22:05 Shannon had to finish the basement. Did it have to be dug deeper? 

22:50 Shannon added a bedroom to the basement and had to add an egress window

23:50 Shannon had to dig up some floors to add a bathroom to the basement

24:25 Some leveling was needed to get the basement floor level

25:48 Shannon used Thumbtack to find her carpenter and electrician

26:00 Shannon is still waiting on the front windows to be installed

28:00 Does Shannon think she will end up making money on the rehabbed house when it sells?

29:16 When will Shannon be officially done with the house and when will it be on the market?

29:40 What is the big main thing Shannon learned during her rehab?

30:15 How has Shannon’s husband dealt with all of this rehab stress?

31:28 How did Shannon’s kids like going to the rehab?

32:50 How did the inspections go?

34:15 It’s frustrating to get plans reapproved by the city

35:24 Is Shannon too attached to the home to sell it?

35:40 Will Shannon get more for the home because the market keeps getting hotter?

37:15 The house was so tiny that HVAC, plumbing, and electrical lines were all competing for space

38:15 The main reason the project is taking so long is because Shannon is also killing it as a Realtor

 

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Live from the rooftop of the Hermann London real estate group in beautiful downtown Maplewood it’s the St. Louis Realtor podcast with your host Adam Kruse welcome welcome everybody to the St. Louis Realtor podcast live from the rooftop of the Hermann London real estate group a beautiful downtown Maplewood missouri i’m your host broker owner of Hermann London Realtors Adam Kruse I’m here with my fabulous co-host Shannon St. Pierre hello thanks for being here Shannon and you’re a Realtor – yes and an investor we’re gonna pop into that a little bit today yes today is October 15th 2019 Shannon said she needs to get her Halloween decorations up and I want to tell you something Shannon yes my neighbor the other day was putting up what I thought were Christmas lights which they say that Halloween is the only thing keeping Christmas from inching for October but here’s the deal they have those kind of Christmas lights now that change colors and you can like program the colors oh no no they put them up now and they just put them on orange and then so come I guess Thanksgiving or whatever they’ll just change them to red and green I think that that’s brilliant I think – you know October tends to be a pretty fair weather month so instead of trying to put up lights for the holidays yeah in December or late November yeah well what is these color changing LED lights programmable gonna do to our holiday decorations Shannon well see I don’t have a LED lights so what you’re gonna have to get I just have the big spiderwebs than you know oh yeah well then you’re gonna have to put those up and then take them down and then put up Thanksgiving stuff yeah and I really do Thanksgiving just kind of an update on Hermann London we just had our company picnic this weekend it was amazing how was it I’m sorry I missed it yeah it was great we had a really good turnout we had Chesterfield title brought a ton of meat we had endeavor capital mortgage bro a bunch of drinks and a bunch of our agents really stepped up and helped plan it and we you know we always like to have fun events and little contests and stuff so you go to the picnic and it’s like oh man I can’t even talk to anybody I’m just constantly doing these different did you have that arm wrestling we did have one arm wrestling ladies armwrestling yes yeah Kristi can watch one this year good for her Congrats Kristi and added in Denver bring the axe-throwing they did not bring the axe-throwing thankfully didn’t really need that but we had a bags tournament we had our zestimate contest actually we were it was dethroned this year who won the Zestimate contest like a bish won it this year good for Erica girls on it absolutely so the Zestimate contest is where we as Realtor’s just try to guess prices you’ve always pick out who picks out the houses on Zillow I find I find I go on the MLS I found I think this year was eight houses that have sold within the last couple months and I just sort of choose random ones across the you know the area and then I print them out and I do all this copying and pasting to try to make them fit on a sheet or whatever and then I take off all the prices and the price per square foot and then you have to go through each house and guess how much it sold for tally that up and then it’s kind of like whoever gets the closest number to the total number that’s the person who wins okay and so Erica won but it was interesting going through and it was like oh she was a hundred thousand over on this one but then she was a hundred thousand under on this one kind of thing so but it’s really interesting it’s fun to see how close you know people there was people there were a million dollars off but it’s tough when you have no almost no photos barely any information but it’s just a fun thing to do it is always really fun so the company is gearing up our next big like sort of company event is the business planning event which we do every year in January we’re always gonna be trying to make that new and fun and interesting and just kind of you know get people sort of engaged in their business for the year going forward but what’s really exciting Shannon is we’re getting in a party season I know it a new love party Susan I do for more reasons than one or two well one of our you know we have a bunch of different kind of mottos at our company and one of them is go to the party and encourage your agents like get out there meet the people you know kind of show up to the event yes and this is the season for it you can probably go to a party every single night do you want it – yes number it’s yeah yeah and so for anybody listening you should follow this motto to go to the party I always talk about you’ve had a long day it’s kind of drizzling out it’s getting dark what do you want a colder you want to go home throw those sweatpants on right and just watch some Netflix but what we want you to do is go to the party yes go to the party branch out meet new people yeah so what we’re what we’re planning on talking about today listeners is we want to get an update from Shannon on the rehab that she’s doing in the Grove and then if we have time we’re gonna also kind of talk about just this not specifically necessarily this winter market but the winter market you know we’re kind of in that last quarter of the year and kind of we’re in the last quarter of the year right yeah last quarter the year and talking about you know different people’s perspectives on that so we did a podcast I don’t know how many podcasts ago where we went over to Shannon’s rehab that she’s doing and it was pretty much a year ago it was at least two years oh it was at least a year ago and it was gutted at that time I think it was no it wasn’t getting it um it still had up the framing from the previous so that’s right so you brought we have her from the beginning you bought this building in the grove it’s kind of a what is it like 900 square feet or something yeah it’s a shotgun style so it’s 720 or something on the main floor you know they did not have the basement finished it did not have electric actually going to it they had some of it some of it plumbed out I guess and they have they had it framed out so someone had bought it kind of gutted it started framing it stops for whatever reason you bought it and then you took down all their framing you didn’t let the layout well yes so they got in a little bit in a their heads so I took over the project and it’s for one it didn’t work they weren’t going to finish the basement and the bedroom that they had framed out didn’t even have a window in it and it’s important to note that you have to have a window you have to you have to yeah it’s not a one thing I mean I know there’s some people who think that would be very desirable to have just black out you know but you do have to have a a window because you have to have two points of exit out of every room for it to be considered living area so it wasn’t even a one bedroom house so you gutted it so we took down all the framing kind of just started over and firm scratch and that’s where we we went there before you took down the framing yes and so it was literally a shell of a building so I had four brick walls so what was the timeline do you remember what roughly what even year you bought it in so a year ago it was about it whether you bought it yes it’s September 18 ok September 2018 and what have you done now so we’re actually in the homestretch now and so initially we I started with a contractor and I struggled with the layout because it’s I think it’s extraordinarily challenging because it’s so small every inch of that space counts and so trying to figure out how to put a bedroom in there that made sense that you get a double bed or a queen-size bed in there plus two nightstands you know with the positioning of where the door was for the back of the house the back door was it important to you that it had an actual bedroom and it wasn’t you know how when you go to Ikea and they have all those little spaces like this is four hundred square feet like I can live in here right but yeah I think you wanted to find bedroom where you can actually close the doors I think that that yes assuming there’ll be more than one person living there I suppose correct um so we I think struggled with that for a couple months and you know I started with a contractor who started the roof who-who did some of the clearing out you know took down the framing and stuff like that and we all some take down some trees I think the one thing that people always forget about are the trees when either when you’re buying a house or you’re buying an investment property that’s the one thing I didn’t take into account that was a huge hit to the budget okay well I don’t want to know the number because I am getting quotes now to trim a tree at my house and I’m like this is the worst expense of homeownership it’s like having to pay to trim a tree yeah I don’t think you remember yeah enjoying it right value to me right yes yeah but the tree is dead it’s got to go so you had a big treaty I’d have we had a couple of them plus there was some that were in the space where we wanted to put a parking pad okay so they had to go external expensive I will say that and I think we cross the holidays get through the holidays of last year came into January February or my husband’s like okay we’re still struggling with this layout this isn’t making sense let’s go get an architect like the contractor you know like it’s come up with some layouts but I’m like it’s not he’s not taking any of my feedback into consideration either so so we go and we hire architect that I’d worked with before and we had plans within a week Wow bamboo and wood oh yeah oh and yes and made sense so he took the back door and he moved it to a side window we had a couple windows on the side so we made one of the windows on the side of the house a door and closed in the back door so that the whole back space of the house could be the bedroom okay I’ve been obviously I’ve been there so that back of the house is now the bedroom yeah and the door is on if I’m standing on the street is the door on the right the side doors gonna be on the left the left side where it was the side with all the windows right side actually has no windows okay okay and put a door where there was a window yes so open that up closing and the back door made that the whole back space that wind a master bedroom moved the stairs as well whoa no one ever moves the stairs you move the stairs we move the stairs was it crazy expensive why do people never move the stairs it wasn’t that expensive I think it’s a really ski prospects for sure you do but it wasn’t that expensive to have someone come in build a new set of stairs which a lot of people have to do anyway and we did have to put up new joists or beams what is it about the support and stuff that makes people never want to move this day yes but it wasn’t that expensive I always want people to turn around the stairs you know like okay we enter the stairs here now and you walk down the basement into a wall like let’s turn him around and then you walk like into the basement yeah as long as it works with the joists and stuff like that okay okay go on yep so once we had the plans then I had a little bit of a falling out with the contractor not showing up and working or getting completing what he had already even started so so did you have like a contract with this person I did not really necessarily have a contract I think I was hesitant just because I wasn’t sure how it was gonna work out and I wasn’t exactly super excited about the initial work okay and so also then you definitely didn’t have like the kind of agreement in there where that they weren’t done by a certain date then they get less money right would you would you do that okay so I have had an investor that has had the contact with a contractor and so the investor themselves tried to put that clause into the contract and the contractor came back and said okay fine you can put that in there and then I get to add my own clause as well the if we complete early then you pay us for every X amount for every day that we got done early and what what’s wrong with that well I don’t like that I mean it’s like what are you gonna slap some work up then what are you right I think that there’s two things wrong with that is one they instead of saying that the project was going to take four weeks we were now looking at 16 weeks what huh like I think it was like a 12 we it was like you’re we still turn about your house no on the investors that Clause because you’re asking about we as add that clause of if you aren’t on by X time Contractor like maybe we’re not a good fit first of all but also I’m I asked you how long this is gonna take mm-hmm you told me how long it was gonna take I’m making all sorts of other plans around that so I need it to take no longer than what you’re telling me it’s gonna take you gave me the date so I’m just trying to hold you accountable to the date that you gave me right but I also think there’s also some really unforeseen situations that come up all the time when you do rehab totally I mean it’s almost impossible I mean the one thing that I try to work I mean investors do when they’re doing a rehab or fixing up a place is that it’s almost impossible to predict a timeline don’t you think I mean they never work out and there’s a reason for that it’s because the unanticipated item yeah but ideally there would be communication happening you know and maybe like I mean I know we’re doing kind of a normal rehab here but like oh you want to change things well let’s do like a sort of a change order and let’s talk about how much longer that’s gonna take and how much more it’s gonna cost you know and there’s to me there should be sort of a lot of communicating and really you know paperwork going on yeah whole time so that we are all on the same page when do you have problems it’s when the the job is done and then you get the bill and it’s way different than you thought right I think communication is the most important aspect okay so you chose finally chose the contractor you liked no I just decided to act as my own contractor you’re the GC yes okay well this is I think that when you bought this prior no we’re kind of jumping around sorry but when you bought this property am I correct to think that you looked at it like this is us going to go to rehab College and so we may make money let hope we want to make some money here but we’re also gonna learn a lot of lessons so our next one will go some more smooth did you have that kind no I think you’re pulling from another conversation yeah that we had on another that it I had with an investor okay and that was an investor and I think that that’s still a really great philosophy so you and I do kind of talk about this because people pay exude it amounts to go and take these classes for to learn about investments somehow that yes these seminars that costs thousands of dollars but then they’ve never done a deal so instead of just being so afraid and about jumping in and losing money jumping in and actually doing you I think learn so much about the process and how to get things done so the positive thing about you now being the GC is that’s I know it’s more burden on your shoulders it’s more work right it’s more communicating the subs and stuff like that but you probably really are learning more and more and more every day extraordinary little bitty things they never even would have ever thought about like the ground wire for the electrical because we’re ended up was like right in the middle of my sidewalk so you really needed to be over there like nitpicking almost every day but I would not haven’t picked that I would never have thought about it I don’t think in that way because I was just like well just pour the concrete are you making any sort of like diary or notes to yourself about things to remember for next time um not necessarily that that’s something I’ve intended to do in a way as well as timeline because it would say this is by far the biggest project I’ve ever taken on I mean from a shell of a building with no plumbing no electrical and making something from scratch and really taking it all the way to something that’s habitable all work was done I said pretty much everything I mean we got it it started with a brick house we’re like just the bricks and the foundation so the foundation was completely retucked pointed and tons of tuckpointing on the outside we took off there was a small addition that they had put on I guess it’s like it’s it would think of it as an enclosed sunroom I don’t know what it was really you’re supposed to ever be but it was an 8 by 8 little room that they had thrown on well it was so far from code that the architect is like that there’s just it’s you’re better just to take it off I mean so we took it off and we didn’t anticipate all the bricks going with it so in the back of the house on the center like all the bricks pretty much came with it oh my gosh would you take it off of the bulldozer no no no no just kind of took it one by one but apparently the boards that were holding the Edition on we’re really kind of holding up the bricks as well oh so then you had to have them rebuild the back wall yes so we had that so this is a real learning so there was this big hole in the back of the house at what point was this did you already like have flooring in and stuff no we would still at the very beginning where it is still very much gutted I mean we had sub floors down but so it’s one of those moments where you stand there you I walk up to the house I walk inside and they’re like hey Shannon can I come and we talk to you for a minute so we walked through the back of the house the top corners are there my carpenters are there as well they were doing some other work and then so we’re all sitting in the back of the house and you go back there and you’re like oh it’s just one of those moments that you’re like I don’t even know what to do I kind of want to cry I just want to run away and I just stood there because you go okay how are we going to fix this what do you suggest and everything’s fixable everything’s fixable so the Carpenters was like well we could frame out a wall for you and I’m like what and even the tuck point is like what do you mean because in our heads we work so much in the city and our life is all about brick we just think we have to rebuild a brick wall so the frame the carpenter is like we just build you a wall like a frame a wall like you would any exterior wall and you’ll put the brick on the outside I’m like that’s brilliant I never would have thought of that so it was as big of a problem as it seemed it actually had a pretty easy they just put the brick yeah so he came in and he framed the wall at that section it was just a section of it and then the tuck pointers came in and did a brick exterior any reason why they couldn’t have just put siding on the framed wall who’s that just for looks did you have to put the brick back I think it would because the brick was still intact all the way around the corner so the back of the house so you would just have this back of the house the center section with siding so it looks good there’s so many LRA properties were like the back wall of the property has fallen off no I was wondering can’t you just put like a framed thing there with siding you can but you’re saying they would have either had to take down a bunch more brick and like and very neatly yeah just build the brick back up yeah he had all the brick anyway right we had all the brick and it wasn’t like the whole wall was gone I’ve seen those and there was no foundational issues either so I’ve seen those where the whole back wall comes out so that’s where you have to make sure that all is still good with the support of the house the structure the foundation well so you went home that night like today was interesting yet I buddy I felt like that that was a constant that was probably one of the biggest but that was a continual thing throughout and has been throughout the whole process but you just deal with it you figure it out you ask for suggestions and I think that that’s what holds people back from doing investments or rehabbing is not knowing how they’re going to get through it because they don’t have all the answers you’re never going to have all the answers you don’t even know what the questions are yet right so it’s the unknown but I think it’s about having the confidence of just knowing that you’ll just figure it out when you cross the bridges so then you kind of got the outside buttoned up the walls are done you put a new roof on I think right yeah that contact that I started with yep put a new roof on and so then you start it inside and I pop either one time for something and there was plumbers over there and you’re you’re you’re finishing a basement did you have to dig it deeper or no we didn’t take a deeper it was code so it’s 7 feet 2 inches okay and so by the time you bring me out put it up the drywall we’re down to one seven inch or seven feet one inch I think I’d still have plenty of headroom and since they were opening it or since it was all open like that were they able to sort of like hide the air ducts and stuff or will I have to like duck down right so there’s a soffit that runs along the entire north side yeah so along the side in the basement so I only have one soffit running along the side of the hop along the inside of the house you know long so it’s kept into one location okay and then we did runs in between the floor joists for the upstairs vents did you finish the basement for more space or did you add another bedroom down there added another bedroom so we did do an egress window where we had to cut the stone in order to end up down the stone too but yeah it’s a strong foundation so you have to cut you have to go down pretty Wow to get that egress the other thing that’s I always wonder why more people don’t do that was that really expensive no so I did end up finding a guy and I think the egress uh the whole thing was about twenty-five hundred bucks so the window the cutting the digging the like little half circle thing the outside yeah the well the window out mm-hmm I think was around 25 or 3,000 but it was not absorbent even call it 3000 you’re saying hey it’s worth 3,000 to have another bedroom yes I mean talk about tremendous value a second legitimate bedroom okay and then we so we had another bathroom in the basement as well so it’s a 2-bed 2bath house so they had to dig up some floors and stuff the concrete floor yeah yeah there’s a little bit of a you know you’ve seen I when they put in sewer laterals in basements I mean they have to dig up pretty much the whole the floor it always looks worse before it looks better yes it was yes and plus we did do a sump pump with the drain tiles around the perimeter holy cow so the whole thing was pretty much dug up what kind of flooring you’re gonna put down there or did you put down there we did a deluxe waterproof luxury vinyl luxury vinyl plank yes but on that old floor you never see like a nice flat basement floor now is it you had to be pretty flat if you put down a flooring like that I guess no we did some leveling okay we did some leveling I still find a little spot so I’ll walk along I’m like oh that’s not the most level spot but it’s not gonna affect the flooring it doesn’t affect anything it just isn’t the mo you know so it’s it doesn’t affect the performance it doesn’t perfect the look you know affect the look or anything so it’s that’s all so now you have a 2-bed 2bath house yes two full baths and then where’s the kitchen is it kind of in the middle you walk in yes you walk in to the front of the house you have your open living room and it’s open to the kitchen oh my gosh I think you saw it right no oh no I haven’t seen it with any drywall up or anything that okay yeah you should come by and take a look I’d love to come by it’s a crazy transformation I even have to say yeah I do take a step back and go wow I can’t believe I did it I think because there’s that how do I do this without contractor I think there’s that that initially that insecurity of thinking I had to have a contractor yeah and it’s not like I had all the context I know people always go your real-estate agent you must know all the plumbers all these electricians and that really not ones that do these kinds of projects so I actually used thumbtack and that’s how I found my carpenter my electrician and then so I I have had the same plumber for 10 years on that I used for every project okay and so what’s next we have to paint is it painted yeah yeah the countertops are in everything’s all the tiles done it’s almost done I mean we are waiting for the lot the front window so I do have a window guys that put in all the new windows and that very large front window that’s a half circle yeah yeah he went to go put it in I guess it’s the wrong size oh and that takes like four to six weeks and so you know and I’m going well how short is it can we just you know build it up yeah I’m thinking a couple inches I guess it was 14 inches too short oh my guess I mean it wasn’t even something you could modify yeah you know – okay so that’s really the last major thing and I had the plumbers there doing all the finish work and this past week and so we’ll once we have that large front window and then we can finish up the drywall on the front of that living room so just recently you had to hire a roofer a plumber an electrician a drywall company HVAC guy back flooring installer carpenter do all the framing drywall the carpenter did the framing and drywall mm-hmm concrete company we had to do some concrete a tuck pointer yes was a tuck point of the same as the bricklayer yeah yeah oh when in the same there okay a window company mm-hmm a different company for countertops yes okay what kind of countertops you doing there granite Oh fancy super fancy okay and then what am I missing anybody cabinets countertops can you yeah so did you find like Home Depot to buy stuff like the fans and whatever are Menards your Menards girl well use Menards Lowe’s Home Depot floor and decor okay and then without you know you don’t probably know the numbers yet because you haven’t sold it but do you think you’re gonna end up making money um there were so many surprises on this one and we don’t count you your labor or your time at all right so I did start counting how many times we had to go to a home improvement store and how many hours we were spending personal hours actually not me just being there running the project but literally working on the house yeah actual manual labor and so I don’t know what those totals are yet but it’s a lot took up a few pages Wow so we’re not including your time but I think I’m not sure on this one yes are you gonna sell it are you gonna keep it no yeah I don’t know they we’re gonna definitely try and sell it if not then we’ll airbnb it okay oh that’s cool so then you’ll have to go through a whole nother thing of buying furniture and I think you can I think that that’s manageable I think and go to Ikea and just go that that that in that two beds two in tables a couple things yeah Airbnb people don’t need like tons of storage or anything no you’re planning on buying most appliances either way suppose yes so the appliances are there so it’s been a year in a month when will you be done hopefully on the market by the end of this month October oh wow okay can I come to the to see it absolutely and come see it anytime all right so what have you learned there we don’t have enough time in the day to tell you how much of a learning experience that’s been the one theme that carries all of it is that I can figure things out you can figure things out like I don’t know I don’t know all the questions I definitely won’t have all the answers but I know I can figure things out so the main thing my dad would always say you’re Adam Kruse you can do anything you put your mind to I’m saying like this lesson taught you that right it gave is in that that I didn’t know that I think it just instills a confidence to continue moving forward and going yet I mean whatever it is we can do it yeah you’ll figure it out okay and so what’s where’s Jeff’s had at your husband I think so I think it’s very stressful for him I think it’s stressful for anybody that’s not necessarily in it because I think he’s like why isn’t the window guy showed up what about this what about that I’m like I’m trying I can’t yell and that’s the thing it’s not like you can call these guys and yell at him and get get your butt over here I know you’re holding us up because that doesn’t go anywhere you know for every single thing did you get three bids like three window bids and three whatever not necessarily just because I’ve I’ve always used my plumber I know he’s fair I don’t know that he’s going to be the cheapest but that guy always shows up when says he’s gonna show up and he does the job he doesn’t well the electrician yes for some of the things yes not everything I think if I thought it was fair and I liked him and they came by they had great referrals or something that’s just as important as am i interested necessarily the cheapest I just need people to show up and do a good job and just for a little side story here your daughter was going over there a lot what does this make her want to do rehabs or does she like get me out of here I want to live in a hotel right right uh you know I think what’s really interesting is yes my poor daughter who is eight it she did some summer camps but she didn’t get to stay home and just watch TV and hang out probably like most kids I made her go over to the rehab and we’d work and she would do some tuckpointing and some other random projects and but I think it’s really good for her to see that you don’t just walk into a house and it’s perfect things don’t have to be perfect when you walk into any scenario no matter what it is but you can make him like she can do things that she didn’t think she can do and all sorts yeah right we just figure it out and I’m gonna do some rehabs with her right yeah years old that’s awesome yeah and so and I even had the three year old and over there stacking up jump you know trash and taking it to the dumpster and we did have the inspector come by and he I think he came over one day and Malana my daughter was still it was there again he goes you know I’m a-looking to child labor laws I drove by the other day and there you know I saw them over here working I’m like yeah go ahead I don’t withhold food or water so it’s not child labor so speaking of the inspections have they been there it seems like they’ve been there have they been there a lot yeah they do come for a lot you know throughout the process is it always the same person checking the plumbing checking the drywall checking whatever no there’s a plumbing inspector there’s an electrical inspector and then there’s the general inspector so for framing drywall you know once you put the drywall up you have to have a screw inspection before you can even I know before you can even put the mud on and so it yeah but he was quick it wasn’t it didn’t hold up the project in any way he’s been there several times and I think so I’m one day he decided to have a bad day and start challenging some of the plans so we are a little bit stuck because of the front and the front porch deck he decided to challenge it what does it mean he challenged it I mean he’s like I don’t think this is the way it should be done so I had to go back to the city that Architects is like okay well now go back to your architect that you paid to do the plans and have them do an addendum so you did change something well I haven’t yet because I don’t want to what does the city guy want you to change where the footings are so that kind of like back and forth is probably frustrating like the city told me this is okay now you’re also from the city telling me it’s not okay yes well and yeah he’s been there he’d been there half a dozen times wiring that why then you know like as we’re trying to wrap up this project as you throw the wrench in yeah I know mm-hmm so fascinating okay but so if you when you were talking about timelines earlier I was thinking of things like oh you never know but you’re saying the inspector when you would call and say okay we’re ready for like the screw inspection he would be there quick yeah I think within the next day or two yeah usually that day he would run by oh that’s cool if not okay I’ll be there in the morning first thing that’s good that’s really yeah so he was really good I can’t say that that’s the true for every inspector across the city okay well we’ll have to do one more podcast once you’re done maybe we’ll do some video or something like that to show people the finished project I can’t wait to hear what you do with it because now you have so much into it I wonder if you’ll really be able to sell it you’ll like be like it’s my sweet baby I don’t say that and I’m like move on yeah it will move on it’s fine I mean that’s part of the that’s what it is well last question before we wrap this up I’m curious about you know I don’t think we’re gonna have time on this podcast to talk about the winter market like we were hoping for but I’m curious how this taking you know a year or whatever probably close to a year longer than you thought it was really maybe but in this case has it maybe been good for you because that market that you’re in is only continuing to improve the real estate market is still hot so you know the you’re in the grove and with like the new Rockwell right there and all that stuff like maybe you’ll get more for the house than you would have you know a year ago well yeah yes I mean I mean more for the house but then the holding costs all the other yeah yeah the things that really go into it I wouldn’t say that you’re gonna make out them any better for holding on to it but it is the way that it is it’s what how it worked out and even to that point we have three more houses on that specific block under rehab that’s a good thing right right it’s a great thing it’s gonna make that Street look that much better yeah so my neighbors done with his he’s now finally does yes he’s done too and then the there’s three more on that block better gutted right now and you wish you would have bought those no my neighbor came over who did a house just like mine right so he came over he’s like do you think you’ll ever do another one like this I’m like I don’t know I don’t know about this one but he had just as many challenges and I don’t know if it’s the house we I mean he was just everything about it was a challenge it’s a small space and it was excruciating I mean I’ve had times where I’ve had to had the plumber and the HVAC and the electrical all meet me at the property because I’m like we’re all crawling over they were crawling over each other and not then themselves but the HVAC lines the plumbing lines and the electrical we’re all competing for space and so it was extraordinarily painfully talk and kind of make a plan we all yes and they’re like would you be okay with this and I’m no way I’m not pushing out that wall anymore I’m not doing that you know yeah the only way to get through that one scenario was just meeting at the property so everybody compromised actually so the the HVAC guy is like well I could do this and the plumbers like Rheem moved a line over and you know so it and then the electrician had to move it that’s not as hard part of the reason why this is taking so long shannon is because you’ve also been killing it as a Realtor in the mean time – right so beyond being a contractor yes you couldn’t spend all your time over there because you were busy also selling homes and stuff like that – so don’t forget to call us for all your real estate needs right thank you very much for listening thank you

 



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