What to Consider Before Buying a Fixer Upper

Thinking about buying a fixer upper? I GOTCHU.

Let me be honest with y’all – we were NOT considering buying a fixer upper when we began our house hunt. However, we found this house, and for a few reasons we decided this was the one..

WHY WE BOUGHT A FIXER UPPER

1. Location – the fixer upper we found was in a great neighborhood close to trails & open space, and it has easy access to Boulder / the mountains.
2. Price – it was a full $100K below other homes being sold in the neighborhood.
3. Size – it’s 1200 SF (not including the basement) which we felt was manageable for us to remodel. If it was closer to 2000 SF, we probably would have baulked.
4. The bathrooms had been remodeled. If the bathrooms were in the same shape as the kitchen (i.e. REALLY BAD), we would have felt overwhelmed.
5. No structural work needed to be done. Since I was a structural engineer for 5 years, I knew what walls were structural & which were not. The walls we knocked down were not structural, so we didn’t need to add any additional supports there.

We truly thought we would have the interior remodeled within three months of closing. We closed in early October 2018, so that would mean we would have finished by the end of January 2019.

LOL. It’s July 2020 and we JUST finished up the kitchen. Ha! I think it’s safe to say the work took longer than expected, and it took us longer to save $$$ than we expected.

Since we had fun with the process and literally learned SO much, I wanted to share with you guys what I wish I had known before we purchased. I wouldn’t change anything we did – in fact, we’re already talking about doing another fixer upper! 😉

(as you can probably tell, we still have some trim work to complete before our kitchen is actually “done”)

WHAT TO CONSIDER BEFORE PURCHASING A FIXER UPPER

1. Down payment amount. We pretty much drained our savings in order to put 20% down.. which of course now, I’m really happy about! (no PMI!!!) That being said, we had to build our savings back up after closing, which means we had to push our kitchen reno back a bit.
2. How will you finance the remodel? Do you have savings reserved for the remodel? Great! Will you need to save $$$ for a few months? Are you willing to take out a loan to pay off the remodel? I think Home Depot had financing options for the kitchen countertops / cabinets / etc… but we didn’t really pay attention to that bc we were not interested in having another monthly payment. And that leads me to…
3. Create a remodel budget before putting in your offer. We had to do this super quick because our home had four other offers on it! But it’s an important step that you don’t want to skip! Will you be doing the work yourselves? If so, what tools will you need to buy? If not, be prepared to call contractors & get quotes fast.
4. Be prepared to work your tail off if you’re not hiring out all the work. We would work a full day at the office, grab dinner to-go, meet at the house, and work until 10PM or later. It was exhausting! But as soon as you see the progress you’re making, it is so worth it.
5. Consider your living situation after closing day. We didn’t actually move in until four months after purchase.
6. Have a general design style in mind. You don’t have to have all the details worked out by any means, but it’s a good idea to know where you want the style to go. We decided on a rustic / clean / beach style – if that makes sense haha! But just having that in mind made making design decisions easier.

Bottom line: consider the impact on your finances, work hard at the project, and keep a good attitude.

I did create a kitchen mood board which was really fun…

Stay tuned for more kitchen pictures! Once we complete all the trim work and I have a chance to actually decorate it, I’ll share all the details. 🙂 In the meantime, check out more home reno posts HERE.

Would you ever consider doing a fixer upper?

Thanks for reading!