1616 E St SE- New Rehab #1

So much for the slow market- we're picking up great new deals left and right. We're actually starting three new large rehabs all at the exact time over the next few days. Here is the first of the three. It's a solid rowhome in Capitol Hill. It's only two blocks from the Potomac Ave. metro station and three blocks from a huge new Harris Teeter grocery store. This was a bank owned property that we put under contract the first day on the market. Apparently, from talking with the neighbors, someone named "Big Boy" owned this house and the one next door. He fully renovated the adjacent home, sold it for a great price last year, and planned to rehab ours next. Something happened to him- I'm sure it wasn't great- and Wells Fargo ended up taking back the house. The house has two floors with no basement, and room for off-street parking.

Here is the block. Ours is the white one, second from the right. It's the only house on this entire side of the street that hasn't been renovated.



You can see the house that Big Boy renovated to the right. He took down the vinyl siding and rebricked up the entire front and porch. We're going to do the same thing, but I hope to add a little more detail into the brick (especially above the windows). We also are going to tear the front porch down. I noticed today that our front door is smalled than every other one on the street. We'll remedy that, as well.



Here's the kitchen. We closed at 10 am, and by the time I got to the house at 11, my crew had already started gutting it. It was terrible. The entire floor needs to be torn out and replaced. We found that when we tore out the drop ceiling that the actual ceiling height was at least a foot higher. Nice.



Here's the fireplace in the living room. At some point, the previous owner put drywall over it. We're going to tear out the drywall, install a new mantle and install a new gas fireplace.



This is a closet underneath the steps that we are going to convert into a powder room. You can get a better idea of what this will look like by looking on the drawings at the bottom of this post.



Here's the living room. We're gutting out all of these walls to open up the first floor.



This is the only stairway. It's super narrow, so we're going to open up the wall on the right side to allow more light. We can't expand the stairs because it would make the hallway upstairs too narrow.



These are the two closets upstairs that will be torn down to put in a new master bathroom (see plans below).



Here's the master bedroom. There will be walk-in closets on either side of the chimney.




The upstairs hallway. We're going to add more light by putting a skylight directly above the stairs.



This is the rear. Were going to put in brick pavers on a back patio area, and pave the rear for parking. We also need to put up a new fence.



This is the existing bathroom upstairs. It's pretty terrible and will be totally gutted. The floor is extremely soft from years of leaking fixtures, so we'll tear it out and build it again.



Here's the rear bedroom. We're putting a balcony off the rear.



I finally figured out how to put layouts on the blog. Here they are. You can click on the picture to make it bigger.





Check back in a few days to see our two other new projects.

Thanks
Dave

2214 Randolph St NE

Things are really cruising on this house. It should be ready to put on the market by March 1st, which will be great timing for the spring market. We're really pushing to finish this one because we have at least three other houses lined up to rehab. We're still waiting to close on them, but we've already gotten our drawings done and we're submitting them for permits now so we can hit the ground running.


The front columns were sanded down and painted, and the gutters and downspouts were finally installed. You can see we began to tile the front steps, but it was so cold out that the mortar kept freezing in the bucket. We waited a few days, and the tile is now done. It looks amazing. I was so impressed that I hired the tile guy to join our crew full-time. I will post a picture of it later this week. We're also going to build a small retaining wall in front and put in a low white picket fence.



Upstairs was painted and the trim was installed. We're planning on putting carpet in these bedrooms and hardwood floors in the hallways and first level.



The new hardwood floors were installed downstairs and a new railing built. The rail actually came in a kit and was surprisingly easy to put in.



Here's Fish- the tile guy- in action. This is the new huge bathroom on the second floor where the tiny bedroom used to be.




Here's the new custom shower in the same bathroom above. This is actually the first house we've done where we had enough space to put a seperate tub, shower and double vanity sinks.



A closeup of the listellos in the tile.



Here is the dining room with the new french doors where the window used to be. You can also get a better look at the new floors. Hard to tell how bad the house looked when we bought it, right?



This is the living room, and you can see the new crown moulding (editor's note: some people have corrected me and said it's spelled molding- I researched it and apparently both are correct). This week we'll build a real mantle above the fireplace.



Here's another shot of the floors. We decided to use a real light blonde maple because they make rooms look bigger.