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Before and after on Chimborazo
11/16/2014 8:39 AM by John M
Mik Anders has 2 great sets of before & after photos of the renovation by Urban Core Development at 506 Chimborazo Boulevard.
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506 Chimborazo (photo by Mick Anders)(July 2, 2014)
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506 Chimborazo (photo by Mick Anders)(November 14, 2014)
Awesome.
#1 says it: Awesome.
And this is why I will never buy a flip: there is no way anything other than a superficial “renovation” can happen in just a few months. I wouldn’t touch the after with a 10 – foot pole.
Vanya: this isn’t my project but as someone who’s done dozens of them, I can assure you that 4 months is enough time to COMPLETELY redo a house like this, including all systems, not just cosmetics. We can typically gut the house down to the studs and fully rebuild in 4 months.
@3…you make a very good point since the very nature of a “flip” is profit motivated–similar to new build construction. Sometimes corners are cut in areas that aren’t easily noticed. Not all flips or new builds are done poorly, however. Let the buyer beware rings true particularly in this situation more so than others. A good, thorough inspection by a reliable contractor is worth the cost every single time. This could save the potential buyer thousands over the course of ownership and promotes peace of mind.
As for the speed of a renovation, anything can be done quickly…it just depends on how many contractors you throw on the project.
Just a quick observation of the photo…if the porch floor is more than 30″ above grade, building codes require the porch to have a 36″ high railing.
Correctly flipping a house in a few months is totally feasible, depending on your contractor, your wallet, and the extent of the damage. Whole houses can be built in four months.
This is a pretty great flip in my view. From an interior finishes perspective, this renovation is far more sensitive than many on the market lately and it is certainly a few grades above the usual pine cabinets and speckly granite one often sees.
These queen-anne-ish-style revival houses, with their accretions of over-exuberant exterior ornament, look pretty good with creative color. Bravo, boys. I think this one moves the marketplace of flips in the right direction.
@Vanya – do you know how long they were working on this particular property? I’m unaware/curious myself. Regardless, the before photos show that the place was already stripped to the studs before they started. In any event, it LOOKS great.
It is absolutely feesable to do a flip in a few months, especially if you do a complete gut and there isn’t anything worth preserving. Flippers look for a good bone structure (roof and walls), then do a complete indoor renovation usually in which they can do simultaneous aspects of the flip at once saving time and money. A good contractor with the right connections could easily do this in a few months. As for money, you are right, this house was probably purchased for slightly more than what they land was worth and the flipper is making a profit if it was a contractor purchase, where he can do the work himself and obtain contractor pricing for materials, so just because it is a flip doesn’t mean it is poor quality. Any contractor who is skilled and organized like this and can flip a house that quickly would value his craftsmanship enough to put his name on quality work.
Excellent work. I’d be glad to call that home.
Vanya,
I have watched new houses be constructed right by the Richmond community hospital near 28th and nine mile in about 2 months. So could someone do a serious flip in 1-2 months and do a good job? Yes, its obtainable with set strategic goals and reliable contractors. One of the biggest battles is working with the city and permits. But this is what is key- planning and doing everything right the first time.
I would have never picked the exterior colors of this house, but it does look exceptional! Great job
Daniil… you are an exception to the norm when it comes to most contractors these days. They will take on several jobs to keep money flowing and get the most bang for their buck but end up spreading themselves too thin and taking forever to do a job.
I like what they did to the house.
I guess there’s the difference between a renovation – which can easily involve taking a structure down to the studs — and a restoration that involves keeping what is there intact, and working modern upgrades around the existing stuff, and adding that which has been lost. Smart, organized and talented folks can work through the former pretty quickly – almost as fast, perhaps as building a new house. But restoration work takes longer. The house looks great from these pictures, and I think the colors are fun. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve taken apart other people’s flips and renos. And I’ve seen what contractors think they can get away with even under my close supervision. And so no, I completely don’t buy that you can do an honest job on a house in just a few months. Once you open the walls again, you see the bad pipes and framing and original, now-bare wiring all the other horrors that some contractor thought no one would notice. Whenever I have renovated a house it has taken a good 3 years. Once you are on a deadline, you stop dealing with the unexpected and start slapping drywall over gaping holes to the exterior, judge termite damage “not that bad yet” and on and on. Putting pretty finishes on top of problems is really doing damage to a place because it discourages anyone else from taking it apart and really finding the underlying problems.
You can’t just say “I took it down to the studs” and expect it to be just like building a new house. Those studs you took the house down to are likely termite – eaten (especially in Richmond). Renovating a house is very different from building new, if you actually deal with all of the problems you uncover. If you just redo finishes to make it pretty, then sure you can slap it together in a month or two. But that is really a dishonest thing to do.
You couldn’t be more incorrect Vanya. I have witnessed numerous “flips”/”renos” in the Church Hill and greater Richmond area done not only by my husband, but also other contractors out there. There are a few that give the business a bad name and it sounds like either you a) have unfortunately dealt with poor contractors or b) have unreal expectations. This isn’t 1892 when a house would take years to build because of a lack of materials and non powered tools to do the bulk of the work. It absolutely and is done all over the place in a timely manner. You can think what you want and feel free to only purchase new construction or waste years of your life and lots of money, that’s your own prerogative. A good contractor worth his weight in gold wouldn’t work on any project for that length of time, unless they were making a ton of money, excess of $215,000 just for their own salary alone. I find it hard to believe you spent that on just a contractor for continuous work on your home, not less the materials and what it costs to hire other people in other trades for work as well.
Please don’t try and ruin other peoples expectations of the business simply because you do not understand it. My husband is a GREAT contractor and has been voted so in Richmond Magazine and Style weekly, without prompting customers or friends to do so, based solely on hard work and merit. He works primarily in Church Hill and a lot of the renovations done here are his work, and quality at that. He is a college educated man who is choosing a love for his city and his talents rather than his degree and guess what, we will have a house on the market in April that we…wait for it…purchased to flip last week, and guess what, it will be quality and we will make a profit and the house will still stand in 100 years. He puts his NAME and REPUTATION on the line for every job and frankly I hope you never call him.
I will enlighten ya’ll to the real problem here.
Vanya is mostly wrong, and contractor’s wife is mostly right.
Most People around here are cheap and on tight budget. Most people who lived here more than 15 years ago did not have a lot of money, especially to sink into their house.
What did this result in? Crappy repairs and crappy renovations. So yes, the care of most houses around church hill (with maybe an exception of the lippy hill area) 10-15 years ago and beyond was pretty crappy. Crappy short budget repairs with crappy contractors. So yes that is the foundation on which we all sit with our current residents.
So here the current issue with our community – People really struggle with paying GOOD/EXPERT contractors. Most people are cheap. Most people don’t have the money or just can’t justify paying out to these” heroes” of their trades. They get the cheap guy or the guy who quotes the least. As a result, there’s a lot of crappy work being done…. for cheap.
And why is everyone surprised? I am not at all. If you want someone to come in and stain, finish and poly coat your floors for $1.00 per sq foot, you’re going to get a shi&%y job done.
A great start for getting reputable contractors is the listing in the CHA. The people who list these contractors’ help hold them accountable. If they piss people off, they are removed.
Contractor’s Wife.
I have a feeling Vanya is talking about basically working around original plaster walls and milled woodwork, cabinets and fixtures while at the same pulling out wiring, plumbing, gas lines, etc… under it without removing original materials? That would be a major undertaking and working against yourself. The only way possible to do it right is gutting and if you like, use plaster rather than sheetrock. But it will take a lot of time to work around things in your way to update while restoring. Hell, even our house – the oldest in Church Hill North when Dan Harrington renovated it in 1986, gutted it but did work around the woodwork which turned out to be a bad thing. Removing all the plaster walls, the sheetrock only butts up against the woodwork leaving a space between the two rather than running it behind. The 200-year old wood was probably in place so long and would have been nearly impossible to replace he rather not risk removing and breaking the pieces but leave them be (baseboards and chair rails) and should have restored the plaster walls. But because he removed everything the up side was that he replaced all of the wiring in the house with industrial grade and also all of the plumbing.
Church Hillian..
You raise a good point. But while replacing wood on the front of our house this past week, we found out that 1) due to historic code restrictions we have to use the same wood as on the house which can only be gotten from Siewers Lumber & Millwork at great expense and 2) to replace the porch railing (replicate it to match the rest) would have been millwork by them at $80 per hour! So yes, it is expensive to do true restorations and many people are on tight budgets especially with taxes going up on the houses and general cost of living.
Caravati’s is another great place to shop for authentic replacement items but again, expensive. If you are going to do a true period restoration then you need true period replacement parts. Not junk from Home Depot! Just like restoring an antique automobile to go into concourse points shows.
Exactly Church Hillian, hence why my husband is one of them, as well as one that CAR recognizes as a reliable and fair licensed contractor. Also, with most contractors, they will work with you. If you can wait to have the work done in the winter when they are slower, most give you a discount. Or if you don’t want to pay top dollar for the contractor to paint said walls (meaningless tedious work that any one can do) they will also take that off the bill and let you do it yourself. Contractors like to be efficient. If you change your mind on tile 18 times, it’s going to cost you. As you said, you get what you pay for. If you call any contractor and they can begin your project right away you have a bad one. Any good contractor will be booked for at least a month in advance.
Contractors wife,
you are on point about being booked. So true. You can almost predict the price and quality of work by their first available start time….
I always loved this house. Too bad it sold so fast I didn’t even get in to see it. Thanks for posting the pics. They look great.
I’ve seen houses “renovated” by a contractor doing flips in the neighborhood in the $1.5-2.5 million range where the basement was “finished” without closing the ventilation holes in the exterior masonry so the basement walls were open to exterior air and vermin. Not obvious until I opened the basement ceilings to rework some mechanicals and felt icy wind blowing through. Also, super cheap glassed – in rooms made with double – pane glass units walled in as fixed windows just using cheap soft pine trim, including on the exterior, so sloppily installed that they didn’t even pitch to shed water. You can imagine how long that lasted. This is the tip of the iceburg, and not specific to Richmond by any means.
All of these things look fine for a few years, but are designed to fail by people with no long – term attachment to the property. The problem with flippers is that all of their incentives are short term, and no one with any long – term interests is looking over their shoulder.
I don’t know this particular builder, but have seen enough to be extremely skeptical. Skeptical enough that I will never buy a flip. I can’t trust a flipper.
Vanya… I agree with what you are saying here for sure first hand with our house. Yes, Dan did many great things but either ran out of money or did what you said, knew he and his wife would not live there long so simply made it “look pretty” but used cheap materials (speaking of wood, windows, walls (not electrical and plumbing). And opened up one side of the basement beyond a permanent foundation wall to add basement space behind the fireplace. I can see at one time there was a metal support but it was never there when we bought the house yet inspectors said the foundation was fine. We thought we got one hell of a deal and made a killing on equity instantly but in the scheme of things it is costing big bucks for us to fix things nearly 30-years later from initial renovations. Some understandably but others not.
@Vanya
Please name some “flips” in the neighborhood that were/are in the 1.5-2.5 million range. Last I checked, this was not Monument Avenue or Winsor farms. And last I checked it was not cost effective to “flip” houses in the 2 million dollar range.
You are obviously ignorant when it comes to your knowledge of flipping houses and construction.
Its pretty obvious you have been burned by someone at somepoint, but please stop bashing all those in contruction and people who renovate houses as a whole.
@ Church Hill-billy-an
You said: @Vanya “You are obviously ignorant…”
Always remember – “when you point your finger at someone, three more are pointing back at you.”
I think it is more like 3 fingers pointing at Vanya. Let me say it again, Vanya is ignorant when it comes to construction and flipping houses.
And im still waiting on that list of the 1.5-2.5 million dollar flips…
Can we please look at the bigger picture here? Church Hill is on the up and up because of renovations and flippers….so please please keep your opinions to yourself. The more you speak, the worse it is for our community at large. If you don’t like what is going on in our community, please leave. Do not bash the revitalization of church hill or the people who are putting in the effort to do so.
I think it’s helpful to hear both the good and bad stories (without having people leave the community – @30 really?) regarding construction around Church Hill. It reminds that, although there are great contractors in Richmond, I need to keep my eyes open and wits about me.
#30 – “please please keep your opinions to yourself”. You are in the wrong neighborhood girlfriend!
We had our house gutted down to the studs and it took about a month to get it paint-ready. It really just depends on how much of the structure you want to change, but I think 4 months is reasonable.
I’m really really grateful for every person that comes in an flips a house here and hope this trend continues.
The 1.5 million flaps were in the same neighborhood as the house I was using as an example, not Church Hill. That was unclear.
Renovation is good and necessary. Flip are dangerous. They are different. They have different goals and therefore different results.
The main problem with neighborhoods getting attacked by flippers is that these guys snatch up houses, keeping them away from people who actually want to renovate and live in them. When houses sell to these in – the – know flippers the day they go in the market, real buyers don’t even get he chance to bid against them. In an environment like that, the only houses real buyers can get a chance at have already been ruined as flips. When people are doing this as a business, then it can really make a big impact on a whole neighborhood. I’m afraid that is what is happening in Church Hill, and it is making me reconsider my plans to buy in the neighborhood this spring.
Vanya: what you’re saying is ridiculous. Great majority of people that are looking for a house to live in
1) do not have the financial means to buy a house in very poor shape and renovate it themselves
2) do not have the know-how to take on a renovation of that scale and
3) simply do not want to take something like that on.
They want a move-in ready, finished product. That’s where flippers come in. They offer a legitimate service not just to the buyers but to the community at large, which they improve through taking the MASSIVE financial risk associated with extensive renovations and restorations.
Your credibility went out the door when you said in post #15 “Whenever I have renovated a house it has taken a good 3 years”. So please just stop offering us your input, and bashing hardworking people that are willing to take risk and improve neighborhoods. And don’t move here. No need for negative nancies in our hood.
Let’s be honest, if no one ever upgraded to modern materials, we would still have gas lights and coal fireplaces. I agree with #35. You need to have brass balls and a lot of cash to flip a house and they’re doing our community a huge favor by saving deteriorating structures from becoming condemed and eventually being torn down. If you don’t like it, don’t move here. This is not colonial Williamsburg.