BLOOM HOUSE RENOVATION
LEANNE Burnett has plenty of advice for people interested in “flipping” houses, starting with being very flexible.
Mrs Burnett and husband Jason spent the past year renovating an old Queenslander cottage at 14 John St, East Toowoomba with a view to selling it as a way to raise funds for a special project helping disadvantaged women.
Founded by Mrs Burnett’s sister Ruth Larwill and her husband Murray, Bloom Asia takes the most vulnerable and discriminated against women in poverty-stricken communities, and through a program of education, vocational training and employment, gives them the skills they need to make a better future for themselves and their families.
So when Mrs Burnett’s sister asked for ideas to raise money to start up a third training centre in the Philippines, she turned to her natural talents as a house flipper.
The 12-week project soon blew out to a lengthy 12 months, but Mrs Burnett said that was largely due to relying on the goodwill of local tradespeople who donated time, expertise and materials for the project.
After walking through the home, which was laid out in rabbit warren fashion with small rooms, dark colours and little natural air flow, she began to make big plans to rip out walls and lighten the place up significantly.
That proved to be the second lesson in flexibility as builders came through and explained that certain walls would have to stay due to their load bearing capacity and certain other ideas were not feasible for various reasons.
“The changes were incredible and nearly did my head in at the start,” she
said.
“I had a plan that I’d organised and loved and on the spot got told it wouldn’t work.
“You have to be flexible
and ideally always have a plan B.”
Her next big tip was to avoid over-capitalising.
“Don’t over capitalise,” she said.
“It’s so easy to get caught up in it as a project, but if you’re the type of person who likes to do something really well, it’s easy to do.
“Keeping within the
budget gets very confusing because there are so many options once you start looking, but just go for your style and don’t look sideways.”
She said the idea of keeping with your style could be another pitfall when undertaking a house flip project.
While she might like bright colours and interesting textures personally, Mrs Burnett said it was important to keep the Bloom House Flip project simple and clean to help open a small space up into a large and useful area.
That meant walking past a lot of her favourite things and heading straight for the white sections.
The results were stunning though and the monotone colour scheme was perfect for the space.
Her last warning was for people who choose not to live in the house they were flipping.
Mrs Burnett lives out of town and found the task of grouping jobs together and constantly driving back and forth to be monumental.
She said it was the first house flip they had worked on that they didn’t live in.
But overall, the project was a roaring success and she couldn’t wait for auction day to get the final fundraising number.
Either way, if the amount of interest and the number of people who helped was anything to go by, it was set to be a wonderful outcome.
“We had 71 contributors, either professionals, tradespeople or businesses, who donated their services or products in some capacity,” Mrs Burnett said.
“We’ve estimated their donation (as a total) to be more than $130,000.
“This has allowed us to use top of the range products to make the renovation extremely high quality.
“We had over 50 volunteers, unskilled labourers, at various times either working on the house or with fundraisers raising nearly $40,000.”
Auction will be 2pm this Saturday, with the house open for inspection two hours prior.