Yikes, this place is a mess.

You’ve heard “buy the worst home on the best street”? We just did. This is our third flip home. It’s a 1925 Tudor that’s in a state of wrack and ruin. And, geez, does it stink.

"So, why did you choose this house?", you ask.

Well, we both are passionate about old homes with soul. And our eyes are always open for the next project. However, we are constrained by how much money we have to throw at a project. At this point, we're not bank rolled. So, here is what we look for:
1. How much we can afford.
2. Something in a decent (preferably good) neighborhood.
3. Good "bones", meaning good strong architectural details. Another words, soul.
4. Easy and obvious places to add value without changing the house footprint, like opening up walls or adding french doors.

We didn't think we could afford Willow Glen...yet. The Silicon Valley is on fire right now. And Willow Glen is one of the more desirable neighborhoods. So we really weren't looking there. But we were fortunate to hear about this place, which happens to be around the corner from my house. It had fallen out of escrow and it was in very bad shape. But it had the aforementioned qualities, so we jumped on it.

Everything aligned and we recently became the proud owners of 1725 Lincoln Avenue, a charming street, walking distance to downtown Willow Glen in San Jose.

Flipping Lincoln Avenue: The beginning

I am going to attempt to take you through every step of this process as we figure out what pieces of the house will remain and what will go to the junkyard. Our goal is to bring houses back to their former glory. Here’s a video with a walk-through. Hope you’ll join me.

Want a tour?

Nice Shag.

The Good: This house was constructed in 1925, with a bonus 1-bedroom cottage in the back!
The Bad: The house has apparently been through a few renovations which didn’t help matters.
The Ugly: One of the renovations included a 1970’s upgrade to the kitchen with fancy avocado appliances and matching green shag carpet throughout. Lovely.

Who does this?

They actually took this fabulous arched walkway between the foyer and the living room and closed it off—on the cheap, apparently, with no attempt to blend it into the wall.

Warm your heart.

Speaking of soul, this fireplace has it in spades, so we’re keeping it. And the windows. Although they are going to be hauled off to some speciality old world window dude who is going to clean them up and make them look like new again.

Back to the fireplace. This is what’s called Spanish Revival, a style I am semi-obsessed by. Take a look at this photo (above), just to dream for a minute. At some point in the future, it will be all fancy like this.

Oh, and look what’s here.

This is a little one-bedroom cottage with full kitchen, bath and eat-in area. Our realtor says this could possibly add $100K to our sales price. We’ll soon find out.

Super cute, right? Well, it has potential.

We’re hoping to just give it a clean up with updated kitchen and bath. We’ll put most of our remodeling budget into the big house, so we’re hoping this one is the easy part. Famous last words.

Say cheese.

We thought it would be a kick to place a stop motion camera in a strategic location in the house that will capture the most activity possible for the next six months. We may be posting segments of it along the way or wait till completion. Regardless, I apologize in advance for the inevitable butt shots.

Disaster of the week

I guess we need another camera.

Turns out bad guys like abandoned homes. They broke into the garage and stole about $3,000 worth of tools. Such a drag. SO...we installed this make-shift fence, a security camera and topped it off with a schmancy security sign.