We Bought a Fixer Upper!

We bought a fixer upper! And by “we” I mean my brother and I. Damien, my younger brother, has lived in Oregon for over a decade and even though he’s a real estate agent, he’s been renting the entire time he’s lived there. When we traveled to Puerto Rico last summer, we spawned the idea of him buying a fixer upper with the intention that we would renovate it together.

Well, we made that dream a reality and in November of 2024, we closed on a house! Here we are at the closing!

I flew out to California, drove up a truck that he just bought, and went straight to the closing. In fact, we barely made it in time before the title office closed!

Afterward, we had a celebratory lunch and went straight to the house so I could have a first look. Damien had been to the house several times already throughout the process but me being across the country in Florida, had yet to see it in person. This is us on day one at the house, me about to see it for the very first time.

When I say the house was a fixer upper, I mean it was a FIXER UPPER! We bought the house as-is, and in it’s current state, it was definitely barely livable. It was in pretty bad shape and needed lots of work throughout. Let’s do a walk through, shall we?

The living room came complete with filthy carpet, popcorn ceiling, textured walls in a light pea green, and a very dated 70’s style fireplace.

From the front door, this was the view of the living room into the kitchen and dining. This dividing wall with pass through window was really making it feel closed up and small. Our first thought was to immediately remove this wall and open up the kitchen and living space. That would prove to be challenging as I’ll explain in a future post.

The kitchen was the only part of the house that appeared to have been updated at all since 1972 so thankfully we didn’t need to do a complete kitchen overhaul. It has newer appliances, newer cabinets with butcher block countertops, a new kitchen window and a few new can lights. I was not a fan of the tile floor which looked like slate, was very dark, extremely rough which would make it very difficult to clean. It looked more like a tile you would use outdoors. I was also not a fan of the grey paint color choice so that would have to go too. Ok, moving on!

Bedroom number one boasted a questionable choice of colors for this color block wall, more (maybe original) carpet and of course, popcorn ceilings. You can already imagine the facelift that this room is going to get!

Right across the hall from bedroom number one, is the guest bathroom. The vanity door was falling off the hinges, the striped and textured paint was interesting, that green floor tile you see turned out to be laminate and the inset shower was nothing to write home about. I will say the shower worked and the toilet flushed, even though it looked filthy!

Bedroom number two actually didn’t look that bad if you could get past the popcorn ceiling, and the same color and textured walls found in the living room and more of the gross carpet.

Talk about a bold color choice! The master bathroom was painted in the very aggressive red, of course had popcorn ceiling, and fun fact, had NO CARPET AT ALL! Damien had to put in a scrap piece of carpet before inspection so that the house would be deemed “livable”! The dude who lived here was actually living on the subfloor. No flooring, no carpet, no nothing. Actually, the subfloor was painted white, but that didn’t help much. Ready to see the master bathroom?

Yep! It looks very similar to the guest bathroom. Same laminate flooring, same funky vanity, more textured walls and a very small shower stall. See the part to the left of the shower that looks like new drywall? Yeah, that used to be a gaping hole as in there was no wall there at all and Damien had to add drywall once again to get the house to closing. He also installed toilet seats. That’s right, there were no toilet seats!

Alright! You can see that we’ve got our work cut out for us! I hope you’ll follow along so you can see the progress! It will be quite the journey!

I will be posting weekly about all of the projects we did, what they cost and how they turned out. If you want to follow along, be sure to subscribe below so you don’t miss a post! And if you feel so inclined, you can donate to the renovation fund on my Patreon page. We are doing this on a shoestring budget and can use all the help we can get! We appreciate YOU!

Until next time, happy DIY-ing!

-Selene Builds Things