Rental Property Renovations … a diary of sorts

My brothers working on the new stairs - all part of the big rental property renovation!

Sometimes you have to just bite the bullet and put some money and sweat equity into a property … and that’s what we’ve found with one of our units we own in Nanaimo. As it began to look like we’d have a vacant unit on our hands for a third month in a row, we decided to tackle a bit of a fix up. As we got into it, we realized that a little bit of yard work and paint probably wasn’t enough … so we’re putting in new floors, counter tops, a couple of new sinks and a few other little finishing pieces here and there. As we added things like cleaning the siding on the house and buying a new fridge the budget started to grow to the point of a mid sized renovation project. To cut our costs significantly we decided to dedicate a bunch of time to doing the work ourselves and we called in the family helpers! We’re lucky that most of both of our families live within a few hours of this property!

For fun, I thought I would do a little video diary of our progress so you can see what we’re doing and what it looks like at the start and finish.

Day One of the Rental Property Renovation:

My Mom and I arrive at the property to get things set up and start tackling some of the outside work and painting prep work before Dave and my two brothers arrive on Saturday to really get some big work done.

Day Two of the Rental Property Renovation – let the big work begin:

Reinforcements in the form of my two brothers and my husband arrive on the scene. As they begin to tackle the front steps, my Mom and I carry on with painting doors, walls and getting the windows cleaned. Oh – and we had a prospective tenant come by and look at the place. All the activity out front was getting a lot of attention!

Day Three of the Rental Property Renovations – we’ll call this one the STANDOFF

The outside of the property is slowly coming along … it took Dave nearly 3 hours to tackle the jungle of grass, weeds and twigs that had accumulated all around the property, but we’re making great progress. With one brother gone from the scene until Friday, my other brother moved inside to take on the kitchen! It’s the first time I have seen his work in person (I’ve just seen pictures in the past), and I am so impressed! We’re very fortunate that he’s had the time to dedicate to our project right now. If you are in the Victoria, BC area and need an experienced and hard working carpenter just let me know and I will get you in touch with Wes, my brother.

Day Four of the Rental Property Renovations – we’ll call this video MISSING!

Exhausted from all of the work, and rushing to wrap up the work until Friday, I forgot to film our progress. When we get there Friday morning I will film first thing because it’s really starting to look incredible! And – my brother Wes has been there working away for most of this week.

Oh, by the way, we’ve secured new tenants for our unit! Mission accomplished – but we’re going to keep going to finish things up!

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