The Tulsa House: From Trash to Treasure

The Tulsa house was my first flip. It was a former rental property that had been trashed by years of renters. My husband and I were newlyweds and found this house one block off of Utica in Tulsa, by far the nicest part of town. We bought the house for almost nothing, which was amazing considering how expensive the rest of the neighborhood is. We spent about fifty grand on the remodel: paint of course, every room, new heating and air units (the old ones were original to the 1944 house!), all new duct work, all new electrical which included all new wiring, new outlets, a new breaker box (the old one had glass fuses in it!) refinishing the Bruce hardwood floors (including the parquet floors in the nursery) a new brick patio in the backyard, tons of new landscaping and a new privacy/stockade and wrought iron fence around the entire property.

We put in a whole new kitchen including cabinets and top of the line appliances and did the interior painting ourselves.

And the finished kitchen (we kept the original Kentile):

Here's the sweet little breakfast nook:

We did the landscaping ourselves, too, which  mainly consisted of cleaning out dead leaves, dead heading neglected roses, thinning out the monkey grass and laying new fescue grass sod.

Under the foot of dead leaves and muck we found hostas, elephant ears, monkey grass, English ivy, Wisteria, a Japanese maple, all which had been hidden by trash.  It was like unearthing treasure redoing that house.

Here's the half bath off the kitchen, during and after:

And finished (we kept the original dark green tile from 1944 as well as original sink and fixtures. The walls are a Ralph Lauren deep forest green to match the tile):

The master bath was cool in that it was original to the house, but I just couldn't live with the colors. We had all the tile, the pedestal sink and the tub/shower resurfaced to a classic white. Before:

And finished (excuse the photo quality. I had to use a disposable camera for some of these):

We sold that house at for $85,000 more than we paid for it, for a profit of $35,000 after living in it/renovating it for a year.  My next flip will be on my own, as my husband swears he's never living through another one!