Stuff in general from a slightly warped perspective…
Rooting around online, I found more pictures of Novalis Vinyl Plank Flooring:
Novalis Vinyl Plank Flooring in Golden Oak.
A different installation, Novalis peel-n-stick vinyl plank flooring, also in Golden Oak.
Both of these were posted recently on the GardenWeb Flooring Forum which is a terrific place to research consumer experiences with all types of flooring and building products. […]
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A few years back, some friends of ours described an inexpensive, solid pine floor installed in a home they visited in East Texas. We never had a chance to see this mythical floor in person, but the mister didn’t need no stinkin’ first hand experience to come up with his own version.
The upstairs gameroom floor is complete:
Our […]
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Other than real estate, home decorating is probably nearest and dearest to my chicken-fried heart (right after the mister… and the little Brz’s…and possibly JoJo… oh, never mind.)
Much too late in life, I came to realize that beauty and order in our home environment directly correlates to positive mental outlook and increased productivity. Which, of course, is an excellent excuse […]
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So exciting! We’re almost, possibly, very close to being done… how much fun is this?
Some pictures just for grins:
New Kohler toilet with 1 1/2 gallon flush, pedestal sink ($108 from Lowes), Price Pfister high-neck faucet in chrome, medicine cabinet with doors on two sides, chrome bar light with four round bulbs. Tub was too dirty […]
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The laminate installer made an appearance today, bringing us much closer to our goal of a Feb. 1st move-in. One more week of push, push, push and hopefully, the Magnolia house will be ready to rent. Ad goes in the paper Monday.
Cabinets Before: Stained, glazed and polyurethaned but sadly, counter-deficit.
And after: Wilsonart laminate installed on […]
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Another BiggerPockets article is up, Carpet or Tile? Rehab Decision Making for Nervous Newbies.
Nothing new on the REI front until January… lots of family and business stuff to wrap up before moving on to ‘08
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Books That Deserve a First, Second, Third and Thirty-third Reading
Reading this wonderful post over on Shaun’s blog, How To Get Started In Real Estate For Under $400, got me thinking about our own beginning in REI. For starters, our experience closely mirrored his post (never tried #10… just not a birddog by nature). And I can’t […]
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We made it over to the house late last night to check on the tile installation.
Couldn’t get back far enough to get a shot of the entire kitchen without stepping on the newly laid tile.
A slightly different angle
Some preliminary ceramic tile photos:
I’m really liking this terracotta color. The texture on this tile is particularly nice.
A […]
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The cabinets are glazed~! For complete DIY instructions, try Ask The Decorator– (includes an excellent video and checklist.)
Marc Bridges is a dear friend and I can’t thank him enough for his help. After a full day cutting hair at one of the swankiest hair studios in Houston (M Salon, on Richmond), he drove to the middle of nowhere […]
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Marc’s on his way over right-this-minute. As soon as he arrives, we’re going over to Magnolia to glaze the kitchen cabinets~ Happy Dance! (The mister would like to point out that, technically speaking, he and Marc will glaze and I will chronicle for posterity via digital imaging although I would like to point out that no […]
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We paid 83K for this 3/2/2 in 2004 with nothing but our good credit rating, an 80/20 loan, and a handful of credit cards. We borrowed enough to pay closing costs from family until our income tax refund came back.
Everyone’s got to start somewhere. I’ve hesitated to show our first purchase because the before pictures are […]
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Our agent called and left a message–seems she’s been gallivanting around Europe and South Texas. Anyway, I’ve got the street address to the 10K lot and trailer and will do a drive-by tomorrow while I’m out buying another gallon of paint for the kitchen cabinets. Hopefully, I’ll get some good pictures and post them tomorrow […]
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Mr. Brz likes the idea of ceramic tile counters and doesn’t need any elaborate justification. Unfortunately a couple of issues are hindering the advancement of counter materials in Texas from laminate to tile.
Measurement of the stove space shows exactly 30″… no more, no less meaning even the thinnest tile might interfere with stove installation.
The bid […]
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At high noon, the mister heads out the door for an afternoon of fun and profit sanding kitchen cabinet doors. At 12:01, Mrs. Brz heads out the door to visit her mother. At 12:04, the phone rings, child-unit #3 fields an emergency call from a highly agitated Mr. Brz. At 12:08, a face appears at […]
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It’s time to call the laminate installer to get an estimate for new countertops in the Magnolia house. As much as I love/hate laminate, its really the only choice that makes economic sense for a house at this price point. But while laminate may be inexpensive, it scratches and burns, serious drawbacks for a rent house. Looking at dozens of […]
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An experimental pine floor installed in a rent house kitchen has held up well. Mr. Brz used a combination of 6 and 8″ boards (the type generally used for shelving), beveled the edges and used Miniwax Golden Oak stain to darken it up a bit. Six coats of polyurethane and 2 years later and it looks exactly the same.
We […]
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A Little Demolition Goes a Long Way
Floorplan: Before
And After:
A few days back, I took my friend Marc over to see our latest project. Not only is he a great guy, he’s also looking for a place to rent and we’ve been trying to wrangle him into one of ours for a while. He’s also blunt– […]
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Dad and DD1 back in ‘87 on the deck he made of salvaged airport landing pads from Ellington Field
My dad use to take me hunting as a kid. As far as I know, he never picked up a rifle after leaving the Marine Corp, but he loved a good bargain and rundown shacks were his specialty. […]
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If These Floors Could Talk
The little house we’re completing now is one of my favorites. The first time we snuck inside, tiptoed through the fallen ceiling tiles while dodging the dead wasps on the floors, I knew this ratty little shack was going to be a keeper.
Repo’s are generally a mess. Holes in the sheetrock, exposed […]
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Flooring is probably one of the trickiest choices in a rental. We’ve switched to hard floors of one type or another in all our units. Carpet isn’t cheap and just looks nasty after a couple of years–even with shampoo, it never looks clean and I *really* don’t like thinking about what’s been ground into those […]
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The Brz's live and invest in East Texas. Mrs. Brz maintains the blog and tends to refer to herself in the third person.
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