If you’d just came here for the pretty pictures and would like to skip my long-winded introduction, please feel free to scroll to the heading that says “START HERE”. I promise I won’t be offended. As my teenage brother likes to say, lots of my posts are tl;dr (and yes, he did have to explain that slang to me).

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Fair warning: this post is very imperfect because I can’t seem to find the words to describe everything going on in my head. So, apologies in advance, dear reader, but thank you for being here!

I’m an introvert by nature, typically quiet and reserved. Unless of course you ask my dear friend Mitch, because he’ll tell you that after I’ve had a few glasses of wine on his back deck while surrounded by friends, I don’t seem to have a mute button. Pair that introspective personality trait with the fact that I’m also painfully shy, but also a creative person, and you have a recipe for a person who is too bashful to share, but still inexplicably feels the need to display what she creates.

When I first started this blog, I thought I was ready. I was excited to share what we were working on, whether it was something as boring as filling nail holes and caulking trim, or something exciting, like the custom signs I have in mind for Grayson. Most importantly, I was excited enough to jump over the hurdle that is my own self doubt.

…and then COVID hit the US and the rug was pulled from under my feet. I was a mess of anxiety and tears, worried about all the people I love and all the people that I don’t even know. Although I haven’t taken a quiz to back it up, I think that my love language is quality time, and I was so anxious that my time with the people I love had run out. I also tend to be sensitive, as most introverts are, and I felt the far reaching impact of this calamity weighing heavy on my soul. So, Grayson and I stopped our projects and I stopped sharing, because we were simultaneously saving every penny to try to help our tenants in the event that they couldn’t pay rent (but obviously needed to stay in their homes) even though our mortgages were still due, and retreating into our little cocoon to stay safe amid the unknown and appreciate the newfound abundance of time that we had found ourselves with.

…and then, just when I was starting to get my sea legs and felt ready to open up my world and start sharing again, as we were just venturing out armed with masks and hand sanitizer to our local Lowe’s, the protests started happening across the world and I felt like it still wasn’t the right time to open up and share about our projects because there were so many more important conversations to be had. And so I did what introverts do best – I stayed retreated. I had long and quiet conversations with those close to me. I read and learned and despite the fact that I’ve always lived my life based on the fact that equality is a necessity that needs to be woven into the actions of our everyday lives, rather than just a political talking point, I started to realize some of the things I’d been blind to in our world and in my own life.

…and just when I felt that the time was right and appropriate and I could balance continued learning with sharing my life, I realized that I just didn’t want to.

You see, when I first started sharing our journey into real estate on Instagram, I thought it had to be perfect (perfectionism is another fun personality trait I possess). I started to connect with other people on the same ride, and I looked to their templates of sharing things as a way to format my own. The only problem is that when you do that, you learn a whole lot, but it can also feel inauthentic to both the person sharing and the audience. Instead of just sharing what I felt like sharing, there was this unspoken pressure that it had to look a certain way, be shared at certain times with specific hashtags and captions and filters. And while those accounts are beautiful and I still enjoy following them, I don’t want to pretend that I’m something I’m not, because it’s exhausting beyond imagination.

The truth is, working on these rentals and documenting it has me feeling very burnt out. While I’ve discovered a passion for learning how to build things with my own two hands and transforming neglected and forgotten spaces, my excitement quickly fades when I realize that I now get to install the same flooring, paint the walls the same color, select the same mass-produced lights, and go through the same motions on what is now the fourth copy of an identical floorplan to all the rest – and sharing paths and outcomes that are interchangeable and indistinguishable from one another over and over again sounds like a creative’s worst nightmare. I’m sure the audience doesn’t particularly enjoy it either.

So, some things will change over here. While we’ll continue doing the emotionally and physically exhausting labor of overhauling these long-ignored units, they will no longer take the leading role, but rather be supporting actors to the rest of my story. I’m getting away from the forced perfection (heck, I probably won’t even let myself sit on this post for a few days like I usually would, so take that as an explanation for the jumps between vastly different thoughts that I can’t seem to find the right words to express). Hopefully that shift will bring back my passion and allow me to build something else.

Namely, a new, very large project we have looming on the horizon. But that’s a story for another day.

In the meantime, what better way to close out this chapter of focus than to highlight our latest finished renovation? We started this one back in October of 2019 and moved in in December of 2019. I shared a decent amount of the process on Instagram, but I’ve been terrible about sharing the “after” portion of this transformation, a habit that I’m hoping I can shake. I know you didn’t come here to read a novel comprised of my tortured internal monologue, so I’ll just get on to the good stuff. Welcome to the 3rd copy of the floorplan, a very contemporary reprisal of 1980s quick construction.

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START HERE IF YOU’D LIKE TO SKIP THE NOVEL

Grayson and I closed on this fourplex against the odds. We didn’t qualify for traditional financing because our debt-to-income ratio was too high since banks wouldn’t count any of the rent from our current buildings as income. So, one day we dressed up and walked bank to bank…to bank to bank to bank… and presented each of them with a portfolio we had put together highlighting our current properties, the numbers on them, our income from Grayson’s day job and the rents, the renovations we’d already done, and all the best aspects of the building we wanted to buy to prove it was a stable investment. Every single one of them said no… except one. Then that one kept failing to do the paperwork to secure the deal, so we ended up with a closing date that was a month and a half late. Grayson was in an isolated part of Texas for training and I was in Alabama for Labor Day weekend, and our closing company wouldn’t give me any sort of direction on the closing paperwork, so I closed with power of attorney in a random notary’s house in a remote, rural part of Tennessee, my mom in tow and Grayson on FaceTime, with the documents I had printed on my parents’ printer and about 400 sticky tabs to mark every single line I had to sign. You better believe I double checked that whole 200 page document at least 40 times.

Two long months of hard work later, we had transformed the space we would eventually move into dramatically. The finishing touches like doors and small projects went up these last few months, so the full reveal took a little longer than expected, thanks to some global forces causing delays. So, without FURTHER delay, here’s a tour!

First things first – the entryway got a major update, including a painted front door and a working storm door, setting a welcoming tone for the home.

The kitchen saw probably the biggest transformation. New flooring, a scraped ceiling, Repose Gray paint, and new trim were brought in to match the rest of the open space. New cabinets, custom built floating shelves to fill out the negative space, and all new appliances (including a converted gas range) bring the room into this century and are more functional.

The living room got the same base layers, plus an electric fireplace insert to replace the wood burning fireplace that was no longer safe to use.

Even the downstairs bathroom got a complete facelift. (slide to see the before and after)

Upstairs the changes were just as drastic. The main bedroom is now a retreat, with a redone closet that maximizes storage.

The smallest bedroom became our office, which also has a completely different tone than the original.

The second largest bedroom at the back of the townhome serves as a serene guest room for the visitors that COVID sadly kept away.

The full bath got a facelift as well, although perhaps full body replacement is a better analogy.

Even the basement got a new coat of water repelling paint, some repair work, and a very thorough mopping.

The star of the show might be the new backyard, however. Each of the four units in the building had a rotting deck hanging on by a thread, thanks to poor installation and a complete lack of maintenance and upkeep. Those old decks had to come down for obvious safety reasons, and they were replaced with individual fenced in backyards and custom built stairs leading out from each home.

That’s all, folks. I know, you probably expected a longer sign off after the novel I wrote above, but… that’s all. Check back in next time for the next big project we’ve decided to tackle!