Witzl's tightar$e IP renos....

[Witzl]

I figured i might as well jump on the bandwagon here, and show off a couple of reno's we've done in our two IPs. This might also help people to get a few ideas on doing the odd tightar$e reno to help add value - i know that I love seeing pictures like this to get ideas for myself and i've pinched a few ideas from these forums myself, so hopefully i can give back

So, lets start with the most recent....

I call this "The Westie Kitchen Reno".
This is in the IP in outer western sydney. Its a cheap little 3bed/1bath fibro cottage, which has lovely long term tennants. It's on the market for sale now, as we are consolidating our portfolio to buy a big family home as part of our long term plan.
I had only ever been inside this IP when i inspected it to buy, and never noticed just how TEENY WEENY the kitchen was.

Here is what we started with:

As you can see, it's basically a sink, 1 cupboard and a stove.
Zero bench space.
Probably as old as the house (50s/60s)

So my installer ripped it out.

At this point the installer noticed that the splashback was sheeted with asbestos, and he was not able to remove the tiles without disturbing the asbestos. So a quick call to "Asbestos Removals Sydney", and they were out the next morning to remove the offending sheets and take them away.

So some new non-asbestos sheets were purchased from Bunnings and fitted later that day by the installer, along with some twin & earth run for two new power points (for rangehood and microwave).

The custom flat-pack kitchen was then assembled and fitted by the kitchen installer, along with the laminate benchtop, sink hole cut, and everything made ready for me to come in and hook it all up.

The tiler was brought in the follow day to tile the splashback in some nice large 600x600mm high gloss porcelain tiles.

Then i came in, fitted up the sink and sink waste, replaced tapware, hooked up the gas stove, fitted the new powerpoints, installed the rangehood, and finished it all up ready to use.
Got the room repainted in a nice neutral half hog bristle, with white ceiling, and we were done

... and the finished product

Total cost: $6400, give or take a little.

That included:
- supply and deliver of custom flat pack laminate kitchen and benchtop
- removal and disposal of old kitchen
- removal and disposal of asbestos wall sheets
- re-sheeting of removed wall
- buy new rangehood, sink and tapware
- assembly and install of cabinets and benchtop
- purchase and tiling of splashback tiles
- repaint entire room
- install two new powerpoints


I could have done this cheaper by getting involved more, and farming less work out to others, but i wanted the job done quickly.
From start of removal to 100% completion, it was 6 days. The last couple of days were spent messing around with the gas stove (had a regulator issue), otherwise it wouldve been done in 4-5 days.


Coming up next.... "The Townhouse Tart-up"

 

[jaspn]

This stuff is music to my eyes. Love it!

 

[luce.rocks]

Great stuff!

 

[neK]

Looks pretty good. Well done!

However i do see this quite frequently - Why keep the existing stove? I know its cheaper, but a new cooktop + oven is around $1,000 and i think it makes the kitchen look nicer.

I guess the argument is whether it will get more rent, personally i don't think it will. But i do believe that it will allow it be rented faster simply because it looks better - the quicker turn around means less rental loss (eg 1-2 weeks faster) - depending on how frequent the turn over is, this could pay itself off rather quickly.

What are other peoples thoughts on this?

 

[moyjos]

Nice work. But i would have tried to work a way to open the whole lot out to the laundry as well. Perhaps making a laundry in a cupboard scenario.

 

[Colin Rice]

Looks great and room for a dishwasher to boot!

 

[Witzl]

openin up the room to the laundry wouldve been opening up a can of worms.... there is a whole heap of plumbing in that wall, a lot of asbestos, and more cost than i had available.

At the end of the day, spending $5-10k more to do that wouldnt really see me much more money back on the sale above what i spent, so i think its not worth doing.
Likewise with the stove - in a better area with more discerning buyers, yes definitely wouldve repalced the stove. You gotta remember, the buyers in this market arent as demanding.

 

[kathryn d]

Looks very nice.
Stove looks great too....replace only when necessary.

 

[redwing]

Looks great Witzl

We'll need to give our IP in Sydney's west a happy birthday scrub up soon also

Looking fwd to "The Town-house Tart-up"

 

[Tim86]

Looks good.

But for $6k I wouldn't call it a tight **** reno.

$8k for the whole house: http://somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88378&highlight=tim86

Now that's a tight **** reno lol.

 

[redwing]

Looks good.

But for $6k I wouldn't call it a tight **** reno.

$8k for the whole house: http://somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88378&highlight=tim86

Now that's a tight **** reno lol.

And you did the work yourself, a trait of a tight ****

 

[wylie]

My initial thought was "open up the kitchen and laundry" and I also hate those upright stoves... but when I read your comments about why you didn't do those things, that makes sense. You know your own house and the demographic and likely rent market for the area, and also the potential sale price, so you've clearly made the right decision.

I always fall into the trap of wanting to make every IP suit "me" when in fact, this is not necessary. We had a house empty for two weeks (rented from tomorrow). I really, really wanted to rip out the kitchen that came from our PPOR and went into this IP. It is solid, brown timber and works well, but "I" don't like it. We decided it was not necessary, and it wasn't an issue for the tenant at all. I have to remind myself that I will not be living in these IPs .

Anyway I love before and after photos and you've done a fantastic job on that kitchen. it looks amazing! The new kitchen looks so much bigger, brighter and appealing. And if a future buyer wants to live in it and not rent it out, they can easily still pull down the wall and deal with the asbestos and other issues themselves, if they want to combine kitchen and laundry. It would be very easy to just continue the kitchen once the wall is down if that is what they want. (Let them deal with the different flooring and the problem of patching the floor where the wall comes out ).

I'm looking forward to any other before and after photos you care to post.

 

[attrill]

Great work. I have just made up some of the Kaboodle kitchen units from Bunnings and was quite impressed with the way they went together. Is that what you used?

 

[skater]

openin up the room to the laundry wouldve been opening up a can of worms.... there is a whole heap of plumbing in that wall, a lot of asbestos, and more cost than i had available.

At the end of the day, spending $5-10k more to do that wouldnt really see me much more money back on the sale above what i spent, so i think its not worth doing.
Likewise with the stove - in a better area with more discerning buyers, yes definitely wouldve repalced the stove. You gotta remember, the buyers in this market arent as demanding.

Agreed! Keep the stove, so long as it works and looks OK. This isn't the North Shore people.

If I was keeping, I might consider opening up the laundry, but if it's to be sold, then do only what needs to be done. If it's clean, tidy, with a new kitchen and a new paint job, you will get a good price for it.

 

[redwing]

Agreed! Keep the stove, so long as it works and looks OK. This isn't the North Shore people.

If I was keeping, I might consider opening up the laundry, but if it's to be sold, then do only what needs to be done. If it's clean, tidy, with a new kitchen and a new paint job, you will get a good price for it.

How would you open up the laundry skater?

 

[skater]

How would you open up the laundry skater?

Um....the usual way.

Remove the walls between kitchen & laundry, put in bigger kitchen and add a front loading washer to the kitchen. OR, put the laundry in a cupboard.

As it stands the laundry is as big as the kitchen.

 

[redwing]

Um....the usual way.

Remove the walls between kitchen & laundry, put in bigger kitchen and add a front loading washer to the kitchen. OR, put the laundry in a cupboard.

As it stands the laundry is as big as the kitchen.

Have never seen a combined laundry/kitchen, I need to get out more

 

[Witzl]

Well this weekend saw the house above sell for $342K - an excellent result considering that I paid $226K in dec 2008, and only ever did minor repairs and then this $6k kitchen reno.

Considering that i farmed out 90% of the work, $6k isnt bad, including painting the entire kitchen room.



But anyway... now onto on "The Townhouse Tart-up"

This townhouse was my wife's first home, bought with the FHOG back in 2005. Just a little 2bed/1bath townhouse in south-west sydney (around revesby area).
The kitchen was COMPLETELY original, and the backyard was a freaken mess when she bought it, but over the years it's been fixed up.
Just got sold on the weekend for a not-so-impressive figure at auction, but we are just happy to get the money out to re-invest in our family home.


So the Kitchen was an original 1975 item, straight out of the orange and white laminate kitchen design themes of 1975's "Home Style Catalogue". Bloody awful.

Unfortunately I didnt snap a pic before we started pulling it out.... so in this one it's already been half removed, but you can see the design theme.

Completely stripped out.... note that we eventually found we had to remove the existing cornices too, as the original bulkheads were built out flush to the overhead cupboards, which really boxed in the small space terribly.
You can also see that back in the 70's, they tiled the floor up to the kickboards, rather than sit the kitchen on top of the flooring.

The old splashback tiles from the pic above didnt want to come off, but thankfully it was only plasterboard, so we stripped back the walls, allowing me to run some new electrical wiring for the stove, rangehood, microwave hole, etc.
Walls got patched up, and the floor skreeted to level it up for tiling.

.... and then we INSTALL ALL THE THINGS!!!

But really the steps to get to this point took a couple of weeks, thanks to an awful tenant who would never allow access, yet constantly complain the kitchen wasnt yet finished, and a few "issues" along the way.

What got done was:
- The floor got tiled with 300x300mm porcelain matt finish ivory white tiles
- Plumbing updated to wall valves to accomodate dishwasher, and waste moved over 200mm
- Custom kitchen fitted, gloss white poly finish MDF, everything soft close
- Caesarstone benchtop fitted
- New LED downlights fitted
- LED under cabinet strip light fitted
- dishwasher plumbed up and fitted
- all appliances wired up and fitted
- bulkheads rebuilt in the modern way, set back from overhead cupboard doors
- new cornices fitted
- everything painted low sheen white
- splashback tiled with 600x600 nano gloss grey porcelain tiles
- probably way more other things i cant remember now......


I was a lot more hands on with this job, as a lot of things were quite fiddly. The only tradies involved were the cabinet fitter to fit cabinets, plumber for the new wall valves and waste, stone bench fitter for benches, tiler for all tiling, a painter for the 1st two coats of paint, and a chippy mate to re-do the bulkheads and cornices for me.

I did everything else and the 3rd/final coat of paint.





All up this cost about $16k, but the local market demanded a quality finish to attract the right buyer, and try to get them to forget some of the property's faults (which it has a couple).

 

[Witzl]

Poo - i forgot that we also fixed up the laundry in that above cost....

Oh yeah.... and we fixed up the laundry too.


OLD

NEW (note the water damaged wall was eventually fixed, and new taps/faucet fitted)

 

[wylie]

I'm loving your photos. You've done a great job (but your last "after" photo isn't showing).