My role in our flipping business
If you follow me on Instagram, then you’ve probably noticed on my Insta stories I share behind the scenes of our house flipping projects. Every time I post something about it, I get messages asking me about my role in this business.
I’m going to share with you before and afters of our second flip house we completed in November and share with you our roles.
If you haven’t read my post on how we began flipping houses, I encourage you to do so!
In the beginning, Brian would show me each and every house he was interested in. I would go home, draw up a plan as to what I would do with it, and then 9 times out of 10, he wouldn’t end up with that house. So finally, after the first flip house, I said to him, “I don’t want to see the house until we own it.”
I know that sounds crazy, but I was wasting so much time drawing up plans and dreaming up design ideas on homes that weren’t officially ours. So now, once our business ZIMMERMAN HOME officially owns the home and once my husband has the keys in his hand, then and only then do I go into the home.
MY ROLE:
I go into the home in its current state, I take one look at it and pretty much know right away what should be done. I think everyone was born with specific strengths, specific talents, we all have them. Visualizing how something can look in my head happens to be one of mine. I use this strength in both my wedding and our home business. With weddings, I can easily visualize a big empty room filled with tables and people. With our flip houses, I can instantly see what it could be. Brian’s job during this time is to wait in the car. Ha! I don’t know about you, but when I’m visualizing something, I have to have silence. I can’t have anyone or anything distracting me. When I draw up an initial design for a wedding client, I’m completely alone, no music, no email, phone turned off. It’s the only way I can create. And I’m the same way with flipping houses. I just need to be in the space by myself for a few minutes alone to visualize and fully see the potential. I walk through it as if I am the one buying it. If I were going to move my family into this house in three months, what would I do to it?
Then I go home and physically draw the design on illustrator. I’m not an interior designer, I’m not an architect, I don’t begin to pretend to have the skills or the tools they have to properly draw a space, but I do have vision and I know the basics of Adobe Illustrator where I’m able to draw something at least good enough where my husband understands the vision and he can easily show his subs the vision too.
I choose all the finishes: paint colors, flooring, hardware, lighting, etc.
TIP: We choose one palette for a full year meaning we use the same paint colors, flooring, tile, hardware on all three homes we worked on in 2017 because we can easily use leftovers on the next project. This cuts down cost, but it also cuts down time. Time is EVERYTHING when running a sustainable flipping business.
BRIAN’S ROLE:
ZIMMERMAN HOME is his business. It’s his baby. I simply play a supporting role, just as he plays a supporting role with ZIMMERMAN EVENTS. He finds the home, he buys the home, he closes, he handles all the inspections, etc. He uses his financial background and his masters in business in order to create and maintain the budget. Then he creates the timeline. He then contacts all his subs and gets the bids. Once everything is where it needs to be, he does what he physically can to save money. He personally demos, frames any new walls that need to go up, orders everything, he reconfigures kitchen cabinets (because to date we have reused existing kitchen cabinets, but I always want the kitchen reconfigured, so he does that!), he then schedules the subs to come in, while they are working, he works on exterior. He handles landscaping, doors, hardware, etc.
SUBS WE HIRE:
Roofing
HVAC
Fireplace
Sheetrock
Painting (interior and exterior)
Plumbing
Electrical
Below you can see a before and after gallery of our second flip home. We had one major thing that went wrong with this house: the wrong countertop was ordered, but we had to go with it. This was a mistake I made way too often in the beginning of my floral design business: I would spend more for things to be perfect rather than making it work. In this case, it would have been an additional $3500 to have it redone, so we kept it and made it work!
