Harold's Renovation Blog: #114: Did We Almost Just Buy Another House?!

Our duplex renovation isn’t even close to being done, but we can’t help but think about the next house we’ll transform – because there will be another one. So today we’re sharing our hashtag goals to own more rental properties through retirement, and the story of how we almost did more than just think about the recent one we toured. What caught our eye? What were our plans for it? And why did we ultimately pass it up? We’re also explaining why we took a large saw to our front porch – and how a break-in scare turned into a highly embarrassing moment involving a police officer.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and Spotify – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you may have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

First, if you missed all of our talk about painting our brick house’s exterior white, you can catch up by listening to Episode #101 with another update in Episode #105 (spoiler alert: the mineral paint we found allows brick to breathe and has an awesome warranty).
That photo above is the inspiration picture (source) that we’ve been staring at while pondering what our front porch could be. You may have seen it already if you subscribe to our email newsletter. And if you don’t subscribe, here’s a box where you can sign up. It’s basically a free bonus post from us that comes right to your inbox each week, with sneak peeks of upcoming projects & extra tips/tutorials.

As a reminder, this is what our porch has looked like for most of the years we’ve lived here:

Front Porch With Teal Blue Door Fake Plants

Now that we’ve removed the Chippendale railings, it’s looking much more open – and a few steps closer to our inspiration image (but still VERY much a work in progress!). Doesn’t the brick porch floor look a lot wider in the shot below than the shot above?!

It’s amazing what a difference just taking down those railings made (code in our area doesn’t require them since the porch floor is so close to the ground). They were almost cage-like, kinda like our old deck in the back of the house before we removed it.
We’re planning to add a clean iron hand rail on the steps eventually, just to make them easier to navigate for someone who prefers a railing.
I also forgot to mention in the episode that cleaning the railings was the bane of our existence each spring. They collected mildew, pollen, and spiderwebs in every nook and cranny, but because they’re just painted metal, we couldn’t powerwash them without removing the finish. It’s going to be so much better to have them INSIDE at the duplex so I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

As we mentioned in the episode, the process of taking them down was remarkably easy. After we removed a few screws that were holding the railings up (you can see one in the photo above that’s painted over, but was still simple to get out) we just needed to run a box cutter along the paint around the seams and they came out with a couple of wiggles. Then to remove the extra posts – which were not loadbearing! – I just cut right through the middle and wiggled them out from the top and bottom.

As luck would have it, we were able to send them to Cape Charles when Sean The Contractor sent one of his guys over to pick up the replacement diamond door (remember that whole thing?!). So they were off to live their new lives as interior stair railings in no time.
And the most exciting part is that the crew has already started installing them in the duplex!! We’ll share a peek of them in this week’s email newsletter if you wanna see how good they look in their new home.

Lastly, here’s what we did to our previous home’s front porch columns. You can read our process for chunking them out here, and see the final look after we painted the siding too.

Well That’s Embarrassing

neutral foyer kids game closet

Not much to add here about our embarrassing story of the cops getting called, except that in this old photo of our kids’ toy closet in the foyer you can see the offending motion detector up in the corner on the crown molding.

Buying Another House?

None of the houses pictured here are the one we talked about touring and briefly considering as our next renovation/rental project. In fact, these aren’t even anywhere near our neighborhood (these are from Richmond’s Fan District – named for the way the streets fan out from a park on one end), which is a place we LOVE to walk around because of all of the beautiful houses.

The ones shown here are already super nice and ridiculously out of our price range, but a recent walk there inspired us to consider a location like this as another potential place for our next project after the duplex is done. Whether it’d be a long-term rental or maybe another vacation rental will depend on the place we find, but these would be tempting to Airbnb because they’re in great walkable locations for anyone visiting Richmond. Plus, there’s plenty of colorful painted brick!

We’re Digging

As promised, here’s that picture of Sherry buying that new trimmer at the same time as the tubs we talked about in Episode #105.
Since they discontinued my old trimmer (which I use here in Richmond) she ended up grabbing this new trimmer/edger. And below you can see the two new features I really appreciate. The foot pedal for switching from trimming to edging mode is so much faster than twisting the pole with your hand.

You probably don’t need to be told how to see the movie Crazy Rich Asians or how to read the nationally bestselling book trilogy (Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, and Rich People Problems), but we wanted to shout out the author – and all around super nice person – Kevin Kwan, who we were table-mates with during the Cincinnati stop of our 2015 book tour (more photos here).
I also double-checked and you can see Gillian Flynn’s inscription at the bottom of this recap from our other book tour stop in Cincinnati in 2012. Memories!

Also, as a side note, the star of the movie Constance Wu is from our town! And we second her feelings about it. :)

If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes. You can also see all the books we’ve recommended on our Book Club page.

And lastly, a big thank you to Agility Bed for sponsoring this episode. Remember to score $150 off your hybrid mattress order with the code YHL150 at AgilityBed.com. They’ll ship it to you for free and if you don’t like it, you can return it within the first 100 nights, no questions asked!