written by ashley marsh

You all have seen the millions of Flip or Flop type real estate shows on tv right? I was thinking that we could produce our own show showing the “this is only funny because it isn’t happening to me” side of investing.

Don’t get me wrong – Investing in real estate has offered me an amazing opportunity. I run my own businesses. I typically run my own schedule. I have passive income. I love it!!

The journey to the end result in each project has it’s hiccups though. Here are just a few. #HGTV I hope you are paying attention!

  1. The Fly Apocalypse – So we had this one beautiful two story in downtown CBUS that we completely gutted and remodeled. This is by far my favorite project because I got to plan everything from the studs to the cabinet hardware. This was a real blood, sweat and tears project. We worked on the home all through the winter and spring then our new tenants moved in during the summer. Well all is well until I get a text with a pic of literally 1,000 flies on the inside of the living room window (brand new windows none the less) What in the “H” is going. All I could wrap my head around was the idea that there must be a molded McDonald’s burger under the couch or something rancid that just got missed somewhere by the tenants. (Then I remembered that those burgers don’t actually decompose but that’s another blog topic for later) After called every exterminator in town and researching a dozen different possible reasons as to why these flies are taking over the home, we find that there is a type of fly that can get in the walls during construction because they are looking for a warm place to lay eggs and low and behold they all hatched at one. G-to-the-ross to say the absolute least!! Long story short a few sprayings and it was all good but …are you kidding me right now????

This was after a few of the spraying. I wanted to show you the first one but I can’t for the life of me find it. Just imagine the entire top part of the window being covered

2) The Sump Pump Disaster of 2017 – Oh yes folks imagine this one. We have a cute little condo with a basement that we literally just finished- with carpet. Do you all remember the inches and inches of rain we got in CBUS a couple years ago toward the end of summer? Oh no you don’t – well I do!! We get a call that the basement is flooded. Flooded? We have a sump pump!! What in the world???? Troy get’s over there to take a look and there is at least 2 inches of standing water in the basement. On the carpet. That we just put in. Not to mention our poor tenants actually used the basement and had stuff down there. OMG! So Troy and a buddy move all the furniture, take out the soaking piece of carpet and put that and all of the soaked pad in the back of the truck. Where did it end up? MY HOUSE!!! We had trash cans leaking water for a week until the trash guys came. And the carpet? We had it out drying in the sun for two days. Beverly Hill Billies much? Nightmare…

Not our house but you get the idea – This is pretty much what it looked like

3) Hamlet Falls – This one takes the cake. We bought a cool 3 story on Hamlet St. in CBUS. We had renovated it. All new kitchen, flooring, paint, fixtures. Everything updated while keeping all the original Victorian Woodwork and statement pieces. Our contractors are finishing up while we are on vacation. On the way home I schedule a showing for the next day. I take my at the time 1 year old son down with me to do a walk through before the showing just to make sure we don’t need to mop or anything else. We walk up to the back door where the lockbox is to find the door kicked in. WHAT WHAT!! Ok I’m totally freaking out and especially since I have the babe with me I am jetting out of there. I call Troy spazzing out and then call the police. Once the they all get there we follow the officer inside to find a waterfall coming through the kitchen ceiling. HOW IN THE WORLD??? Ok so we jet to turn the water off while the office keeps walking through. He gives us the all clear and we walk around to see if there is anything else wrong. Some turd broke kicked the back door, unhooked the drains to the bathroom sinks and ran the water on full blast. For those of you that are not familiar with plumbing; picture there being no pipe under the sink. Where does the water go? Oh – anywhere it wants!! For what had to be at least 2 straight days. Oh and the cherry on top – said turd opened up the one can of paint that was sitting in the house and kicked it over on the brand new carpet. THANK YOU TURD!

This pic only shows the Turd’s footprints heading toward the door. Not cool dude. Not cool.

I will tell you that there are bumps in the road with investing and these were a couple stories that happened throughout our journey. I love investing, remodeling, and getting people into our homes. It is a very rewarding industry and, while bumpy, it is amazing in the end.

Do you all have remodeling stories you want to share? Post them below. We would love to hear them!!!

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