Posted by:Aleksandra Oleksak

As I stated in my 2012 A Year in Review, I bought a house right at the end of 2012 and closed on it January 14th, 2013. This will be my 5th renovation project, wow, where did the time go! I know you’re use to me buying a home, gutting it, staging and selling it, but I’m doing things a bit different this time. I decided to hold onto this propoerty as it’s in a hot and up and coming neighbourhood, the Junction Triangle and there is a new townhouse development happening down the street from my house, which hopefully means I’m sitting on a gold mine. So what will I be doing with this home you ask? Well, I will be lightly renovating it, obvisouly with my own flare and style in mind, and then renting it out for a year and see where that takes me. This will be the first time that I’m a landlord and although I’m excited, I’m also a bit nervous! Regardless, it’s a new challenge that I’m ready to face.

So here’s the actual challenge:

• I put myself on a $10,000 max renovation budget, so I really have to get creative here and not go over the top, although there’s been instances where I already wanted too
• My timeline is to have it rented for March 1, 2013
• I’m hoping to find some young and hip family looking to call my house their home

So, do you think I’ll stick to my timeline and budget? I guess time will tell as I will be posting all updates here. The first one will be at the end of this week with my first ever video blog! In the meantime, here are some before pictures. Side note here, if you are a smoker and are thinking about quitting, take a look at the yellow walls, that’s not paint, it’s 50 years of smoking inside with the windows up and ironically  the previous owner died of lung cancer.

What do you think? I know there’s not much to say at this point, but there will be once I’m done with this diamond in the rough!

There’s been progress, check out my first ever video blog, here and make sure to follow along!