Case Study: How To Make Money On A Renovation

Read article : Case Study: How To Make Money On A Renovation

From the expert

Cherie Barber is a renovator on TV’s The Living Room and runs renovating-for- profit workshops. Cheriebarber.com.au

One of the guaranteed ways to add value to a home is to reconfigure the layout to add an extra bedroom and create open-plan living. These are the two key things on my radar when I size up a property and as I’m studying the floor plan, tapping walls and pacing it out.

When I came across this house in Sydney’s west, in an area that has already demonstrated great capital growth, I didn’t hesitate to snap it up. With a few tweaks to the layout and a better connection to the generous outdoor area at the rear, I knew I could tap into the full potential of the existing three-bedroom brick home. This was a wise investment.

Open sesame

The jumble of sprawling living areas offered abundant space, but no open-plan flow. By removing a gyprock wall between the traditional living and dining areas, the new L-shaped living space is now a free-flowing, light-filled gem that spills into the back sunroom and updated kitchen. With this redefined living area, I was able to eke out a new bedroom in the centre of the house. By closing off the arch in the entry foyer and stealing space from the living room, I created a new bedroom, opening off the hallway. Two vented skylights compensate for the absence of a window. It’s now a four-bedroom house in an area favoured by families. In fact, a tenant was secured on a one-year lease immediately upon completion of the renovation.

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Cosmetic refresh

The bathroom was dated, but its vanity, shower and bathtub were fine, so only a simple makeover was needed. Gerflor vinyl flooring and new tiles for the shower floor were supplied and installed for less than $300, while White Knight Tile Paint was used to mask the decorative tiles.

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Budget-friendly floors

The patchwork quilt of flooring left by the assortment of old rooms certainly couldn’t stay. Durable laminate floorboards in a honey colour called Chestnut now unify the whole house. They’re a fraction of the cost of hardwood floors, yet still provide the warmth of timber.

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Window to the world

The rear of the house was blessed with an abundance of windows, wrapping around two sides of the sunroom and offering a restful, leafy view. However, the addition of new bifold doors off the living area and sunroom has created a seamless indoor/outdoor flow onto the large verandah and sprawling deck beyond. Not surprisingly, the garden needed just as much TLC as the house, and nearly $3000 was spent on plants, turf and landscaping supplies.

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Kitchen central

Putting in a brand new kitchen would have totally blown my target of completing the renovation, inside and out, for as close to 10 per cent of the total value of the property as possible. That’s my recommended budget for any cosmetic renovation, but it was an ambitious target in this case, as there were also structural changes, like the bifold doors and creating a new bedroom. By keeping the kitchen cabinets but replacing the fronts and benchtop, I was able to complete the kitchen – including new appliances – for about $3000, plus labour.

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Colour my world

Now for the wow factor! I decided to marry the beige tones of Taubmans Penguin March with a blaze of punchy blue wallpaper. The entire length of the living area and one wall of the long hallway are now decked in Lines wallpaper. The large master bedroom at the front of the house basks in the luxurious blue of Taubmans Shindig.

The bottom line

It was three weeks of intensive effort to transform this rough diamond into the inviting family home it is today. But the ultimate sign of the successful renovation of an investment property is whether the numbers stack up. With a total interior/exterior renovation cost of $67,760, it came in at just a whisker above 12 per cent of the cost of the property – a fantastic outcome. But did it turn a profit? The triumphant answer is yes, it certainly did. I purchased the house for $550,000 and it was revalued post-renovation at $690,000. This is a gross profit of $72,240. That’s the kind of outcome an investor seeks.

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

Labour carpentry & building $19,420
Electrician $3500
Plumber $635
Roof spraying (done by painters) $1500
Painting $2000
Wallpaper installer $880
Garden excavator $750
Cement renderer $2640
Construction labourer $675
Rubbish removal $4425

SUBTOTAL: LABOUR COSTS $36,425
Materials timber & all hardware $9539
Flooring (supply & install) $4450
Bifold doors $6363
Kitchen doors & panelling $1585
Kitchen benchtops $645
Kitchen appliances $975
Bathroom flooring $160
Bathroom tiles (supply & install) $100
Curtains & blinds $1718
Wallpaper $520
Paint $1480
Skylights $800
Equipment hire $260
Turf, plants & Landscaping $2740
TOTAL $67,760

the year of living with banksy – Demi Adejuyigbe – Medium

Read article : the year of living with banksy – Demi Adejuyigbe – Medium

Wasn’t necessary to paint this on any walls, much less one outside my bathroom window.

When I first moved to Los Angeles in July of 2013, I found a room for rent in a house on Craigslist. I soon learned the landlord, and the man I’d be living with, was none other than the famous graffiti artist and incognito street poet Banksy. I never learned his true identity, but I did keep a journal of every strange thing he did in the year we lived together.

JULY 2013 — I toured Banksy’s house and fell in love with the living scenario immediately: my space was a large room in a ornate 2 bedroom craftsman home with a beautiful yard, for only $500 a month. I jumped at the chance, even when Banksy dressed up in a suit and red horns for the lease signing. He cackled devilishly through the whole affair and signed every page as “Lou C. Ferr,” but for $500 a month, I was fully prepared to let him set me on fire.

AUGUST 2013 — I called a plumber when my toilet stopped working. Less than a minute into the job he plunged out twenty tampons, each labeled with phrases like ”childhood obesity” and “the war on drugs.” Upon further inspection, we noticed the word “society” scrawled in Sharpie on the toilet lid. The plumber handed me a pre-typed invoice with a “Banksy fee” of $50 and said “see you next month.”

SEPTEMBER 2013 — Twice a week, I started catching Bansky dressed like a little boy (complete with propeller beanie and cartoonishly-large lollipop) kneeling before a life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders. Every time, he’d notice me watching out of the corner of his eye and say “In Colonel’s name we pray– yum yum.”

OCTOBER 2013 — Banksy painted a homeless man the exact pattern of our bathroom wallpaper and had him stand against the wall next to the toilet for a week. Every afternoon that week, Banksy walked into the bathroom with an American flag hat and exclaimed “Oh– sorry Mr. Homeless Man. I didn’t see you there.” On one occasion I asked if he was paying the guy, and Banksy changed the subject by asking if I saw “that real firecracker of a game last night.”

NOVEMBER 2013 — Banksy got into a routine with one of his art pieces: every few days, he dressed up in maternity clothes and directly called the local police station, saying he was going into labor. When they arrived, he pulled a doll labeled “Justice” from under a skirt and told the cops he “did a fine job delivering it without them.” This backfired spectacularly, as 911 started refusing calls from the house, even when Banksy almost burnt it down at the end of the month by cooking crack cocaine in a latex Nixon mask.

DECEMBER 2013 — For this month and this month only, Banksy vowed to pause all political art. He loved the time around Christmas and New Year’s, and rarely had someone to celebrate it with, so he didn’t want to alienate me and make me indulge in his traditions. Instead, we drove around the town in festive sweaters and looked at lights. We went to a Secret Santa party where he gave my friend Alan a nice cookbook. We stayed up late and made New Year’s resolutions. It was a pleasant little oasis in the often-chaotic time we spent together.

JANUARY 2014 — Bansky brought home a box turtle and put it an afro and a Big Dogs baby tee. I don’t know what it meant.

FEBRUARY 2014 — Banksy was out of town for the month. This was when I found paper bags piled under the sink, with eye-holes and phrases like “CELEBRITY IS A CONSTRUCT” or “FINGER-LICKIN’ GOOD” scrawled on them. It was also around this time we started receiving residual checks for Transformers 3, and calls to the house asking if “Shia” was home.

MARCH 2014 — My parents mailed me a box of home videos from my childhood, but Banksy got to the mail first that day. By the time I saw them, he’d edited in glitches with cartoon videos of Batman having sex with Goku. He mused out loud that the porn must’ve “corrupted” my youth. I asked why he chose such a weird specific porn and he again asked if I saw “that real scorcher of a game last night.” (Also– Alan reached out to tell me he finally opened the cookbook, and only found recipes for “barbecuing the government until it’s well-done.”)

APRIL 2014 — Banksy borrowed my guitar and learned to play The Star Spangled Banner and “Born In The USA,” but in the tuning of BAGDAD. Admittedly, this was the least annoying and most impressive of his weird political metaphors– until he smashed the guitar and printed statistics on veteran PTSD spilled out. I can’t be sure, but I think I also saw an invoice to KFC in there.

MAY 2014 — I got a job at an agency and had to wear a suit every day. This made Banksy… unreasonably upset. I installed a lock on my bathroom door because every morning, he would wake up before me and draw a clown on the mirror to outline my face whenever I looked into it. He changed the label for “work” on my GPS to “the circus.” One day after work, I found nine actual clowns huddled in my Honda Civic. I asked who hired them and they said he never gave his name, but did sign their checks as “B. Anksy.”

JUNE 2014 — Banksy gave me a screenwriting book for my birthday. It was hollowed out and rigged it to blow bleach in my face when I opened it. The dedication read ”Demi– if all you know is from inside a book, you become blind to the world outside of it. xoxo Banksy” I missed a week of work and lost my job.

JULY 2014 — On the 1st, Banksy asked if I wanted to renew, and I said no. I was ready to explode at him with all the reasons why– that he ruined my job prospects, that living with him made me fear for my possessions, that it was hard to be intimate when any girl I brought home had to hear racist Nixon recordings through the walls. But he never asked. He didn’t confront or fight me, or even ask me to stay, because he knew exactly why I was moving. He just paused, frowned, and sighed “okay.”

The following month was quiet. No art, no alarms, no surprises whatsoever. He replaced my guitar, restored my tapes, and washed his drawings of the Instagram UI off all the window frames. When I came home, he would just be sitting in his room solemnly reading a book. And even though he’d made my life a terror for a year, it made me feel bad.

On the 31st, I was packed into a U-Haul and ready to move. I thanked Banksy for the room and bid him farewell, to which he mumbled “no problem” and flashed a toothless smile without getting up from the computer. On his screen, I saw the same Craigslist housing ad I found all those months ago– this time with $100 off the asking price, and a few “pleases” and “sorry in advances” strewn about the ad. It was hard to not feel sympathy for Banksy. I thought about how lonely he must be in this big house, with only paintings of a gun dressed like the Pillsbury Dough Boy to console him. So I gave him something to remember me by.

I pulled my guitar from the U-Haul and cut the lowest string, before tuning the 5 others. I quickly Googled something before scribbling numbers on a Post-It and shoving the note inside the guitar. He was about to go for a walk when I came back in to give him the guitar, calling it a memento of our time together. Then I asked him to play it. He hesitated for a second, then strummed the five uncut strings to hear the tuning– BADGE. Without holding back, he smashed the guitar against a wall, sending fragments of wood and plastic everywhere. And in that mess of fragments, Banksy found a tiny Post-It note with hastily-scribbled police brutality statistics on it.

I hugged Banksy and told him living apart doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends, and with a bright, beaming smile he responded “Okay.” Then he asked me if I wanted to come back and hang out next Thursday. I told him I couldn’t wait. After all, there’s a real barn-burner of a game happening that night.