Before and After - Barn Apartment

The Barn Apartment is getting the first "Before and After" treatment because it's the first project that we finished. It's a small studio apartment located right off of the barn aisle in the B barn (No, I don't have a stutter. It's actually called the B barn). I'm pretty sure it's every horse girls' (Or guy; I can only go on my own experiences here) dream to open your front door and have your horse right across the aisle! Non-horse people: Not so much. Non-horse people don't understand that we actually LIKE the smell of horses! Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Here are some before pics:

Here is the living room/bedroom area. Left to us full of junk. To date, we've hauled over 100 yards of junk/garbage off the property. There's a half-wall type thing in the middle of the room to give privacy to what would be the bedroom area. The problems with that were: 1. It would only fit a twin size bed and we weren't planning on moving in a 7 year old. 2. There was no window on that side, so the "bedroom" was more like a dark, depressing cave.

Here's the living room in process:

And here is the after pic. We left the frame of the wall up for now. We also added a window to that side of the room to make it less cave-y.

Next up is the kitchen area. Here, again, is some junk:

We didn't change much to the kitchen other than painting, cleaning it up and getting a new oven. But here's the after:

The biggest project in the barn apartment was the bathroom. You could step right through the floor due to a prior leak that led to rotting. Most of the floor needed replacing. Here's the bathroom in process:

And now the after. New floor, updated vanity, and a fixed shower.

And lastly, a new bathroom door. It even fits with the barn theme!

After all this, it looks amazing! Our tenant moved in at the beginning of June and she loves it! I can take almost NO credit for any of it though. The only thing I did in the entire apartment was to vacuum and steam clean the carpet. All of the credit goes to Kerry and Phillip who worked their butts off! Also to our only outsourced labor, Kerry's brother-in-law Hans, who added the window.

More to come! We're still spending almost every weekend there trying to get it cleaned up. I'm exhausted just typing about it.

The Barn We Bought

So, we bought a barn. But what did we buy? Here's a quick description: It's in Lakewood, WA, 6 1/2 acres, a main house, a cottage, a 29 stall barn, a 9 stall barn with a studio apartment in it, a hay barn, a 20,000 sq ft indoor arena, a 50,000 sq ft outdoor arena, and an office. All of these are in various states of repair and we definitely have our work cut out for us to get them up to par and rented out. All of this borders JBLM where there are thousands of acres to ride on.

There's a book written about the history of the Woodbrook Hunt club and it includes a LOT about what is now Brookwood. It used to be Woodbrook Riding Academy. It's been around for at least 90 years. I'm sure I'll botch it if I try to talk about the history, but you can check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/073855863X/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=7435869927&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10163603501842805112&hvpone=18.52&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_4ci6we8k4t_b

Here are some pics of the place:

Front gate and driveway


Outdoor arena


Turnouts


100x200 Indoor Arena


Main Barn


"B" Barn


Office


Hay Barn


We don't have any house interior pics yet. But what does that matter?? I showed you the important parts! There have now been 2 weekends of work parties and a lot has changed. The next blog will feature some before and after shots of what we've been working on.

The Prequel

The title of the blog says it all. Here's how it all started:

When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of weekends staying at my grandparents' house, along with my cousins. We were all suburban kids, so spending time in the rural setting of Whidbey Island turned us into farm kids at heart. I have so many great memories of catching and releasing rabbits (with fishing nets and homemade traps), feeding chickens (though sometimes being chased by them), climbing trees (and learning to face the fear of climbing down), building forts (while getting stung by SO many stinging nettles), and so much more. But the things that always stood out the most for me were the horses. My Grandma had a shetland pony named Sugarbabe that I would brush and ride as much as I possibly could. "Ride" was a loose term. She was so old that she never went above a walk, and she was too stubborn for my 7 year old self to be able to get a bridle on. So mostly, I just sat on her in the field. Sounds silly, but I loved it.



Another thing that we would do while staying on Whidbey was to go to my Great Grandpa's farm down the road. My Grandma brought him dinner every night and we would always stay a while to do the chores. "Doing the chores" usually meant that Grandpa would feed the cows, etc. while we climbed under the fence and went next door. There was a horse stable next door that used to have racing Arabians. They had a fancy sign and everything! I think by the time that we were going over there, their main racing stallion was retired and the stable was mostly just a boarding facility. We would walk down the lane between paddocks petting all of the horses. The owner knew my grandparents and didn't mind us running around as long as we stayed out of the paddocks. (Sidenote: Obviously this was a LONG time ago! Could you imagine the liability of letting a couple of unsupervised 6-8 year old kids run free around your property today?! Even without unpredictable 1,000 pound animals that would like to bite fingers! Luckily, we were now farm kids; we knew how to behave around farm animals, so nothing bad ever happened. End sidenote.) Ever since those walks down the grassy lane, I wanted to grow up and have my own barn.

When I was 11, I took money out of my college savings account (who needs college, anyway?), and bought my first horse. Somehow I managed to buy a horse without actually asking my parents. Not sure how that happened. Anyway, I bought a 3 year old, very green-broke, bad-mannered Arab mare named Stormy. I had barely more experience than she did. Somehow, we both survived without maiming each other, and I still have her-18 years later. I also have 2 more. I think that my parents figured that I'd eventually outgrow the "horse thing" (as most girls do). They were wrong. I still love riding and I have some amazing horse friends! Over the years, I've tried everything from eventing to western gaming to trail rides to polo to foxhunting. It's always an adventure! Foxhunting has been my sport of choice for about the last 5 years. It's the rush of cross-country, but getting to do it alongside your friends instead of alone!





The other part of what has brought me here is my interest in real estate. Growing up, my other grandparents had a couple of rental houses. I learned the value (and sometimes the pain in the ass) of owning and managing rental houses. My goal has been to slowly (every few years or so, depending on how much money I can save) build up an income through owning rental properties so that I could eventually get my own property with a barn. I've never really put a timeline on it. It's definitely a slow build, so I didn't expect to reach my goal for ten years or so. We even keep roommates at our house so that we can work toward our ultimate goal. Some people think we're crazy for doing it. Most of the time it's great, but it has definitely had it's trying moments (Ty?! Cassie?!).

Tre and I decided to try to take another step this year since the real estate market has been so low. We refinanced our rental house with a plan in mind to buy a cheap condo; something turnkey that we could buy outright and get some extra monthly income. We weren't having a whole lot of luck for the money that we were working with. My friend Kerry was looking into buying a small rental house at this same time. One day, she texted me with the idea of going in on something together. I was open to the idea, but didn't think about it much right away. Until she mentioned Brookwood. My spider senses tingled at the thought of being able to own not just a barn, but a historic facility right next door to the hunt club! Clearly, she was insane. Wasn't it too expensive for us? Hadn't a couple of our friends tried to buy it already and financing was impossible? Yes and yes. But I was intrigued enough to at least start to pursue it and look at the numbers.

So Kerry and I put in an offer. The next month was an emotional rollercoaster. First, we had a pre-approval for a mortgage. Then we didn't. Then we scrambled to find something else. Approved! Write a business plan. Write a partnership agreement. Inspection. Appraisal. Waiting on the appraisal results. Waiting on the bank to finish loan docs. Ticking down to the planned closing date. Tenants not leaving as planned. Tenants leaving but taking everything that they said they wouldn't. Finally getting the appraisal. Finally getting the loan docs sent to the title company. More stuff missing from the property. Finally, papers signed!

We bought a barn!