I Spent Three Years Renovating My House (Before & After)

At age 18, I bought my first

house

for $135,000. I have 6 months to completely renovate it inside and out before my college roommates move out. Later in this video I will give a full breakdown of the costs and how I was able to afford this property. The 1100t home includes 3 bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms with a two car detached garage, based on the title and thumbnail, the first question that probably comes to your mind is how did I have enough money to buy a

house

at 18

years

old in 2017? I started a YouTube Channel I was a junior in high school and I started that first year in 2017.

I made $177,000 and then the next year, my senior year, when I was 18, I got a little more serious and made a total of $53,000. Now all those numbers are before taxes. also and all the living expenses and all that, but I lived with my parents so I could save almost all that money to pay for the house. I took out a $105,000 loan and put $30,000 of my savings into a 30-year term. 4% equals $500 a month in mortgage payment. Now add insurance and real estate tax. Our monthly payment amounts to $850. And here, a tour of the interior. Needs some work.

The kitchen had strange pink wallpaper. Half of the cabinets were closed. The countertops were broken, cracked and very uneven. As you leave the kitchen you go straight into the living room and throughout the house there are original hardwood floors, especially in the living room, it is in poor condition and looks like at one time they had carpets on about half of the rooms. Windows were single pane, leaked a lot of air, and about half of them I was never able to open on the main floor. There is also a small bedroom connected to the half bathroom.

Now up stairs there is a full bathroom with tub/shower combination. This apartment has two bedrooms including the master, the driveway is shared and on my side the retaining wall is falling down so the plan is to excavate the old retaining wall, remove it and widen the driveway, luckily Grant, my brother recorded it back then for release. On his channel as a freshman in college, I was still driving my high school car, a 1999 Cadillac SLS that cost $11,000 and had a leaking head gasket, so I was very fortunate to be able to use the Ford F250 7 my father and being able to borrow the truck. and all that equipment really helped me save expenses and time.

We will now move forward into the summer where we begin the retaining wall project. The first thing we need to do is remove all the old blocks and debris, and most of it falls off along the way. It wasn't too hard now I have terrible before and after photos and they just don't do justice to how narrow the driveway was every time I pulled into the driveway I was so nervous I was going to scratch the side of the car and if I was going to rent the house in the future, this driveway had to be fixed, it doesn't look like it's squatting, that bad, look at that one, so we have a lot of weight here, this is what diesel has, we probably have to take a few more steps , but all this is done so far, this is the line where everything goes, so we have to remove all this dirt that is already done.

This dirt, you see here, we have to eliminate all this yet, but that's something. good soil, so what we're going to try to do is use some of that to level the back of your garden because we didn't realize how much soil there actually is, who knows if this is going to be thrown away. interesting because the last time he had problems with the concrete, we put a lot more weight on the front, it didn't turn out the best, but at least we got it done, so now it's the second day of working on the project, but today Spencer and dad were at 7 am. to grab the stump grinder and they are just destroying these stumps.

The blade is a little dull, so it sounds like it's taking them a lot longer before off-camera. I took the chainsaw to this spot and removed the brush and small trees from the red. the spray paint marks the underground power line we need to be careful of on this project, after removing the stumps we put down some fabric and turned it into a gravel parking spot that is now less than a mile from campus , students drive to this neighborhood. to park and walk to class, street parking is well controlled as I found out later, so having adequate parking really pays off, we have a thin layer, just a couple more spaces to fill around here.

SPS, how come it wasn't so bad yesterday? A lot of stumps, there is still a lot of work there, so what it cost you in total is 80 7080, another load, certain hull, last time I loaded too heavy, this time I loaded a lot more on the back. Okay, boys, we've got Farmer Grant on the tractor. cleaning the place for more dirt to come, he's having quite a bit of fun as you can see so we're in a hurry right now those aren't mine to get to Spencer so this is like the second part of the whole build.

I guess the landscaping construction that we're working on ended up happening: we did 3 days of 3 days of stuff and then Spencer and Dad just said, "Let's finish the roof." My brother and I had never done any roof work before that and at first it was slow with replacing the roof on the house, we thought we might as well tear down the garage under the shingles, the boards were all in good shape, nothing It was rotted so all we had to do was replace the shingles after a few decoys. mistakes, we finish it and we fix it, what we have to do is have all the shingles, the old shingles that we ripped off, we just tear them off from the top and then we throw them in the garbage trailer that Spencer and I have today we have to leave.

They're all soaked, so we just left the shingles so we can focus on the landscaping walls, so Spence and I are starting to clean, we get all this out, there's a lot of dirt. We just got this whole thing out here, it's spinning on all four wheels, baby, come on, you're better than that. The squad's question is: will hydraulic power be able to LIF questionably? How many times was it close, it was very close, so we're greasing? This because I don't think we've solved it before, even you guys are probably wondering why we're renting a machine for the day, that's a waste of money when we already have one and yeah, now that I think about it, that's nice.

But Grant ended up convincing me to rent this thing, it came in handy when we jumped in the ditch there and got a good level scoop, it also worked a little better, so when we were slipping the yard and grading. some points were helpful, so I'm not sure what day it is, it could be like day eight of this project, but first this was completely leveled, there are between 4 and 6 in total that we removed, but before it was leveled. It was hard clay and that's why we couldn't get in there, our big charger couldn't fit in there.

Here are some good photos showing exactly how much dirt we ended up digging up some things we had to be careful not to make a mess. With the air conditioning unit we didn't want to disturb the foundation too much and have to move it, but we also had to make enough room for the retaining wall and make the whole project worthwhile and this is what it looked like after getting some forms. We've put up a couple of inches layer of gravel and now we're ready for concrete so right now we're waiting to pour C I've got Cory hey Cory's helping stay down here and working up there so we've got it done, it's all brushed.

Out of place, I made a little border and then the next thing will be retaining walls to the end of this retaining wall, retaining brick. Now here's a good shot to see how much wider we are making the driveway after the concrete dried. Between. with the saw and made the cut lines, now we need a good base of gravel to put as the base of our retaining wall, so with a little change of plans, it seems that everyone always likes to change the times and as if Spencer You didn't live here, right? Now it's like we were never here and it's like a 30 minute drive here, they called, we were supposed to get the papers and Spencer and I were supposed to start this tomorrow to finish all the papers, they called and they're like, oh, it's going to be Saturday right now, it's Thursday, uh, so we all had plans for Thursday to work all day on this, so the base takes forever and all we're going to need is like

three

pallets to start the base. so what I'm going to do, we're going to drive there, it's like a 50 minute drive there, pick up the pallet, so we load the

three

of us, these are heavy, actually, this one in the middle we might have to do it by hand , so now we are completely stranded, the Ford let us down, no I'm kidding, that would never happen, the trailer let us down guys, it went flat, she was totaled, in the end we tried to save a day by going and loading it ourselves.

It was a washout due to the flat tire and the most fun part was watching this forklift driver unload the pallet. I mean, every corner, I was skidding, the tires were hitting the brakes, let's take a minute and look at the first day of brick cobblestone Lane, you name it. call them, we're done, it probably took 5-6 hours, 1 hour with two guys because I wasn't there and it took 5 hours with me alone because you had to get this level perfect because we're going to stack this like three or four. high, so now we move on to the next day.

I felt like the hardest part of this build was designing and installing the steps to attach to the wall and just getting all the measurements right. We had to make sure there was good compaction. Follow these steps because this is really the only part of the wall you are going to step on and if it settles you will notice it right away and in this shot you can see a red handle sticking out of the wall. blocks, that was the most efficient tool ever created and it turned these 90 pound blocks into pale buckets that were about 5 gallons and you could have two handles on one and walk up and down the driveway with no problems, really easy to move.

The first layer took the same amount of While all the other layers blended together, we really took our time to make sure it was a compact level. That way, the entire wall up to the top is ready to go. Once you are on a long run you can really start flying and placing a lot of blocks one guy takes the blocks from the platform and places them on the wall another comes with two pins that slide into the block there are already preset holes we came with 3/4 inch of clean rock to fill we had a drain pipe perforated pipe underneath this is covered with a sock so everything here is completely finished the stairs took us forever to design so we are looking for that and this will have all the tops, it's going to look a lot better than this, so it's the last day, I guess if I want to call it the last day and the retaining wall is completely finished.

This feels so good. I guess there is one thing: we have to glue the steps, just glue the tops and caps of the steps for those of you who already figured this out on a previous occasion. clip this is probably the most annoying and worst place to make a mistake, the driveway slopes uphill when you are standing at the bottom towards the street and every time you want to start going up and you don't want to keep cutting into the ground you need to move forward a block and for some dumb reason I thought, "Oh, we'll just go up half a block." Well, that means you don't put your lines together and I don't know how I didn't understand them.

We discovered this before when I was gluing the wall caps and I wasn't going to go back and fix it. I probably should have done it, but at the time it took me quite a few days longer than I ever thought it would. I think I built the wall totally over the top and especially in this place it doesn't even reach hip height. I don't think there is any problem with this wall falling on the foundation. It is very deep. I think they look terrible to those who know what they are. looking at block 34b 83, okay, we're good, everything's trapped, let's get going before BL Tire again buddy and now it's time to start working on the inside.

I closed and took possession of the house on February 28, 2019, that gives me 6 months to do all the major renovations in time for moving day on August 1st. The biggest things on my to do list are completely redoing the kitchen sand and refinishing the hardwood floors in a new half bath and retexturing the walls and new paint. I was planning on renting a new roof and gutters, all the windows in the house and any electrical work done and we will start on the kitchen. I started by getting rid of the appliances, sold them for $200, removed the ugly pink wallpaper that was actually there, pretty cool.

Laminate floors, baseboards, all that kind of material appeared.things, the drywall where the old cabinets were and some of the backsplash came off so it was difficult and I had to patch it. I chose the nice gray paint color. I thought it would match the kitchen design I chose and to choose the kitchen I practically walked into Bernard's, saw whatever display looked best to me and bought it, it was a clear view cabinet tree, it was like $22,200 and then I chose all the stainless steel appliances too, after watching some YouTube videos, with the help of my dad, we hung all the cabinets, installed all the doors and then the countertop was put in and this is what it looked like when it was all complete.

I tried Go with the clean modern look here there's a lot of gray here some people say it's boring but I like it especially if you're going to come here and redo everything I learned a lot on this project especially and I think this was the biggest improvement on the interior of the house and, in my opinion, it turned out great. Now, on the hardwood floors, we're going to turn this rough, ugly, stained wood into a nice darker, smoother glass finish. I rented sanders from the store and

spent

a couple hundred dollars worth of sandpaper, now it took a little bit of technique and a lot of YouTube videos to put this drum sander on correctly.

I wanted to make sure that as I went along it was like mow the grass, but if you ever stopped and the drum was on the ground, you were basically digging a hole in the wood and you would feel it forever and ever. Above, I think this sander must have become unbalanced or just broken and left distinct lines on the floor and I was never able to get them out after the drum sander. I came back with a smaller sander to get to the top. For the boards, getting all the edges up and down the stairs was quite tricky.

Sometimes I had to use a Dremel on small spots or just as a piece of sandpaper. I don't remember what the stain was called, but I was trying to get some. darker finish I didn't want to go crazy but I didn't want the whiteness like a sanded floor and a natural looking floor looks because there were still stains on the floor and it looked like they were very prominent when it was a lighter wood so we stained it , we let it dry, put a couple of coats of polyurethane on it and I think it turned out pretty good, like I said, you can still see those lines and scratches.

I don't know it's probably my fault but in the end everything looks better especially the living room where there was all the traffic and my favorite part you can put on nice new socks and slide across the floor really well and it's a lot More durable with the thick polyurethane coating. I'm happy with the idea. to restore them, not just put rugs on top or something, it kept the charm of the house, the previous feel and when we wanted some carpet, we just put rugs, now the entire bathroom, compared to other areas of the house, was in Pretty good condition and I wanted to leave it almost intact after turning on the shower.

I discovered the leak in the plumbing behind the wall and once I broke it out there was a lot of dry rotted wood and some 2x4's. I guess we had a really cold snap last winter where the temperature reached ne20 -30° and broke the pipe, so I repackaged it with better insulation, put up new framing and drywall, added some finishing pieces to give it a fresh and pleasant look throughout the house. I retextured the walls. and the ceiling with drop and orange peel and then in the bathroom I painted it mostly white and I also painted the sink that white.

I liked how the bathroom turned out and it was pretty cheap to do. The downstairs half bath was unique and how small it was. and which connected the kitchen and downstairs bedroom, the toilet and sink had leaks and some damage to the floor so this required a total redo. I opted for ceramic tile to tie the kitchen together, bought the smallest toilet and sink vanity I could find. new mirror and light and so it turned out that the bathroom was still small. I didn't do anything about it, but at least now it looks good on the outside.

I didn't do all the work myself and hired someone to replace the windows. with double hung windows to keep the same old style, you would take out the old ones, slide the new ones in and then they would come back later with a painted metal trim over the old blue wood and the only real problem I had Working with contractors was this window company. Spencer was getting completely screwed. They said it was going to take a day and a half to install the windows and at this point it's been, I think, 30 days. They started on day one.

Some guy's durmax broke in half. It took him like 3 hours, he came up with tons of excuses, then he got here and it was like there was only one guy so my dad and my brother were helping them all day just replacing the windows as basically workers for him and then they had to do it. get another worker to install because that guy like he doesn't have a truck anymore and stuff because everything is outsourced, but it's pretty crazy what's happening. Spencer definitely learned a lot during this whole house move and in the end she didn't.

It was a great deal, it was more of a 3 day job that they promised to turn into two and a half months and at one point my dad and I even ripped out about half the windows so it was a good experience, there's a lot of miscommunication on the part from the company and they left me in the dark for weeks and at one point I was deciding if I would go to Home Depot to buy new windows and replace them ourselves before we had to move, in the end all the windows changed. everything went well and works fine, the roof and gutters ended up being replaced thanks to my insurance company finding out that the previous owner filed a claim on the house for some damage to the trees, they pocketed the money and never fixed that damaged area, for what we could to negotiate 5,000 on the purchase agreement as a credit for the roof, so in the end I only had to pay 3,000 out of pocket to get absolutely everything, replace the shingles and gutters now that the house is finished, move-in ready, Here are some before and after photos we moved into the house that fall to start our second year of college.

Here are some fun home videos nominated by my girl Patricia. The first wounded soldier was Allan. We have a very big hill next to the house. He decided to bomb down the hill on his skateboard. He faltered a little speed at the end and crashed completely. His battle scars included a broken tooth and a dislocated shoulder. We have been home for about 6 months. Now it's next spring and I have some outside projects I want to do. Oh, here's the new thing from Spencer. Ranger, he has BF Good Rich tires, which is an all-terrain tire, my goodness, good American, right there Ford Ranger, the cart started overheating.

I traded it in for $500 and bought this 2011 Ford Ranger, it only had like 80,000 Mi on it. I bought it for 6 grand, Spence and I go the next day and rent a skid steer. What happened was we planned to use a dump trailer which would save us 100 bucks but the dump trailer wouldn't fit the Harley rake so we had to get rid of the hard bed and then use their trailer which worked out fine now that we're done about 3/4 of the way there we are getting there so far, we graded everything and then got the little Bank Grass side.

We cleaned it up the best we could, it was so hunky, those come up, man, I love this, it's like a kid in a candy store. Grant liked that rental machine so much, a year later my dad sold his John Deere skid loader and Grant bought it. a track Kabota the drift you see in my previous videos what did you get here Spencer uh Ryan my friend here he uh has four wheels and 10 horsepower he's a good man we finished his yard completely put down some balls of straw to help grass to start I broadcast sowed and used an overseed which has worked very well now.

I wish I had chosen a darker seed mix because I underestimated how much sunlight the mature trees were going to smother, but in the end it turned out great and was nice to mow with the ground so smooth now, once the grass grew and was established, we had an open weekend and decided to put a fire pit in the garden, it was a good place to set it aside and we bled it. on the lawn to make it look really clean and fit, that was the last major project on the house and everything else would just be minor fixes and repairs, so I'm going to be totally transparent and show you the numbers of how I made savings.

To make that down payment in 2017, I started a YouTube channel and essentially what I do on this channel is play a game called Farming Simulator, so I make YouTube videos playing this game, talking about it, expressing it and then I post them on YouTube and you. I can make money because I was a junior in high school and I started that first year in 2017. I made $177,000 and then the next year, my senior year, when I was 18, I got a little more serious and made a total from $53,000 in 2018 now. All of those numbers are also before taxes and living expenses and all that, but I was living with my parents, so I could save almost all of that money now to move forward quickly.

I'm a freshman in college, I graduated high school and I have some savings built up and I'm trying to figure out what I should do with it. I was studying economics and finance simply as a passion for the subject, not to pursue a certain career path, or even to get a corporate job. I work in finance. none of that and at that time I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I always knew I wanted to work for myself, so the winter of 2018 2019, my first year, while I was in the dorms, right there is the The dorms in Those who lived began to make some purchases for the house.

I was just toying with the idea of ​​somehow taking my savings to invest in a house, fixing it up and that's kind of an internship while I continue doing the YouTube channel on the side where there was in a public listing that I liked, a three-story house bedrooms, one and a half baths, was listed for around $175,000 and then during the winter months they started to drop the price, it went from 175 to 170 and then everything went down to 160. When it did, I put in a balloon offer for 120 Grand and after some negotiations I bought it for $135,000 and since I started my YouTube business in 2017, I only had 2

years

of taxable income at that time and needed another 6 months until I can get a business loan now, if I had a job W2, it could show how much money you will pay me in the year and you can get a business loan pretty easily, but since I submit $199, I am self-employed I have three years of taxable income to even get approved for anything, so I found a private lender and borrowed $100,000 from them at 4%.

Keep in mind that interest rates were lower back then so you would borrow that money for The plan is about 6 months and then you could be approved for a business loan after that, now with the renovation finished we can see how much It cost everything. The total bill was $35,000. The roof and gutters were $8,000. The windows came to $7,000. Electrical plumbing work. It had a lot of lighting fixtures that cost $3,000. The retaining wall we did much of the work ourselves, but all the blocks, gravel and some equipment cost $6,000. The kitchen cost $5,000, that is, cabinets. the appliances and everything, the flooring, the hardwood floors, the paint and all the texturing I did on the walls, which was $1,500 for all those little supplies that add up quickly and then for all the miscellaneous items, it totals up to $5,000 so I bought the house for $135,000 then the renovation cost came to 35,000 if we add all that up we get $170,000 now investing in this.

I thought the house would be worth between 1,180 and 190,000 if market conditions remained the same after my renovation. I gave the two rooms to my friends Parker and Allen. for 500 a piece I now had to pay all the utilities which were around 200 250 dollars. Scenario A is when I lived in the house and was running out of both rooms. Scenario B is when I moved, graduated college early, and rented everything out. three rooms, each room rents $500, there is the difference and that was going to be our gross monthly income. Now, considering repairs and maintenance, I set aside $2,000 a year or $83 a month for that, our property taxes were $225 a month.

Homeowners insurance came to $45 a month and then this was $50 a month just for more capital expenses. Now when I lived there it covered all utilities around $150 a month and when it wasn't the tenants made the scenario where we are going to have $50 more bills owed. to utilities, here are our annual revenues, then our annual expenses and our net operating income. Now our purchase price was $135, which equates to a cap rate of 4% or about 10% if you choose.I rent the whole place. Here are all of our Loan information and cash out of pocket was about $30,000 after a $35,000 renovation cost, although our cash in the house became 67,000.

Our most important number is cash flow . I was able to live there for $54 a month or $655 a year in scenario B if I rent. In the whole house, we made about 600 dollars a month or 7 grand a year and 5 years later, this is how the scenario played out that took place for 19 months that I lived in the house, we made 54 dollars, like this which comes to negative $1 1.37, but then I moved and problem B occurred where I rented the entire house for $600 a month, which works out over 12 months to $7,100 or a gain of $6,100 in rental income, but when you analyze it I thought I was going to own this house for the rest of my life and if I'm going to go in there and renovate it, don't do half the work, go in there, do everything right, everything you want to do.

In 20 years you would be happy you did it, but as time went on my feelings towards the house changed. I felt like I didn't want to own it forever, so 2022 at the time seemed like a really good time to sell. A house again, our total cost is 170,000 and I spoke with the real estate agent, we decided to put it on the market for $220,000 at the time we received eight offers, all of them were above what I was asking and then three of them were in cash and so I chose the highest offer which was Cash $251,500 is what I sold it for this is what selling the house looked like again on paper our total cash invested was 67,000 between the rehab cost and the down payment I still owed $100,000 for the house, so our break-even point The cost is that we sold it for $251,500, our net rental income, what we take home after all expenses and everything we have in our pocket, our net profit amounts at about $75,000 on the sale and that includes all the closing costs and fees associated with that, but that's how Everything worked out, we're in 2024, now we're looking back, it was a good decision.

If I had held it longer, maybe I should have held it in 2022 before interest rates started rising and I should have refinanced it, I mean, maybe. I'll look back and think that way. Currently I am totally happy with the sale and one thing also is that if I owned that house forever I would probably buy more rental properties, you know, I would buy one every 3 years. or something like that and start actually building it, so I didn't want to do that and we sold it, so that's the story of the house, it was a lot of work, I learned a lot.

I also made a lot of mistakes. I hope you can learn from me. I can learn from some of the comments if you have more detailed questions. I will be happy to answer them in the comments section. Thanks for watching, guys. It was fun and I hope you enjoyed it.