My investment property reno

Bec

My sister and I, with the help of our retired dad, renovated our very small 1 bedroom investment property a year a go. The property had been rented out to the same elderly man for 9 years and he was happy and comfortable living there and as you'll see kept it in quite a state! He had to move out so we therefore had to do a pretty significant reno to enable us to get it on the renters market again.

It was a massive task that involved completely re-doing the kitchen and bathroom, painting and carpeting however we had a tight budget so that we didnt over capitalise on it. We used a number of trades but did do a lot of the reno ourselves and got all our products from Bunnings.

Kitchen before

As you can see it is a very tight space and the joining 'living area' was very small so we had to try and open the space up a bit to make it feel bigger. We went back and forth with the Bunnings kitchen consultant who came up with a few designs to help us with the space and to get the best use out of the cupboards which was really helpful.

We came across a few 'problems' such as having to have the old tiles removed due to asbestos. Also due to the budget we couldnt have the whole wall re-plastered, however it really needed to be as it is old the walls were not straight and as we used mosaic tiles for the splash back this really showed it!

To cut down costs, as the kitchen is flatpacked, we put together all the cabinets ourselves rather than paying someone to do it that way he just came in a fixed it all to the wall and put it together.

Here is the final kitchen

As for the bathroom, it was a very awkward space with the toilet behind a seperate door, it is also meant to be the laundry.

We knocked down the toilet wall ourselves and pulled up all the vinyl floor, then the tradies came in a re-plastered the whole room. We had it tiled and then set up and put in place the vanity and the shower screen (base was done by plumber) so we saved a bit of cash there too.

Here is the bathroom now:

We were able to make it a lot bigger by knocking down the wall and removing wasted space.

Some other budget options we did on the place was spray painting all the window frames rather than putting in new ones. We also spray painted the light switches and re-painted cupboard doors rather than replacing them. We used a lot of the budget products at Bunnings too that still gave a very good result and surprisingly cheap. We got the carpet installed by bunnings which was really cheap too and used some harder wearing carpet in charcol so that it wouldnt show the wear and tear. In hindsight we shouldnt have used gloss floor tiles in bathroom and kitchen as they show scratches very easily.

Overally the project took about 6 weeks from gutting it to the final result and we were able to get an additional $90 in rent per week. It seemed like a bif project at the start especially knowing where to start but if you just take each section at a time and focus on that it is achievable and very rewarding.

Ben

Wow, what a great result, well done @Bec!  You mentioned just taking a section at a time which I think is very wise.  If you had your time over where would you suggest as the best starting point?