When I was little I had always imagined what life would look like at 30 years old; married with 2 children, living in a beautiful little home with an education that gave me a great paying job. In reality, I was now 28 years old with $40,000 in student loan debt, barely making ends meet, living in a cheap apartment, and felt lightyears away from getting married or having children.
Rather than getting my dream job working at the Ministry Of Natural Resources, I somehow ended up becoming a personal trainer at a local gym. In 2016 I was lucky enough to quickly work my way up to a management position and went from making $28,000 a year to $50,000. It didn’t come easy and I worked incredibly long hours in order to transition but I would do anything to get ahead and make something of myself. My boyfriend, at the time, was working as an irrigation technician making around, $25,000 a year, which meant that we were now making a combined $75,000 a year.
In the spring of 2017, I decided that we needed to buy a house in order to get ahead in life, rather than spending the extra income on nice cars or getting a nicer apartment. We would save all of our extra income and put it directly into buying a house. We managed to save $15,000 by the fall for our downpayment on a house. Our budget was $200,000 which was pretty much unheard of in Ottawa Ontario but I was more than determined. I eventually came across a house on the river, 35 minutes from downtown, listed for $193,000.
We went to view the property immediately and had been completely destroyed by the occupants renting the property. The grass was well over 5 feet tall and needed to be landscaped, I couldn’t even see the water from the house. The walls were covered in stains and paint, the carpets were dirty and burnt from cigarettes. It needed a complete overhaul on the inside as well as a complete septic system. Fortunately, we felt up to the challenge and widely overestimated our abilities.
We bought the house for $190,000 and mortgaged another $29,000 for the septic system, which meant that we would put down $10,500 for a 5% downpayment plus closing costs. We had to pay an $8,000 CMHC fee, which was added to our mortgage since we could not afford a 20% downpayment but it was still worth it in the long run.
We moved in October 2017 and got to work! We started installing the septic system and began renovating the upstairs by tearing out the kitchen and creating a larger open kitchen with a breakfast nook. We also finished the walk-out basement by adding a TV room, second a full bathroom with a shower, and a third bedroom.
We replaced all of the flooring with new laminate flooring upstairs and luxury vinyl flooring in the basement. We also drywalled the basement and changed all of the lighting upstairs and downstairs to recessed lighting for a more modern feel.
Hard work felt like an understatement during this time, I would wake up at 4:45 am and would work from 6 am until 3 pm then get home by 4 pm just to work on the house until 9 pm. I made a list of all the tasks and every weekend we would try to complete one of them. We worked tirelessly over the next 2 and a half years, some days it felt like the most dreadful, never-ending project but we just kept plugging along. Please keep in mind that we did not have any experience renovating homes, we just learned as we went and Youtube became our best friend.
In order to afford the renovations, we did almost everything by ourselves and were on a strict budget, I was even only paying $100 a month on my student loan. The end goal was to sell the house and pay off the student loan so the renovations became the main priority.
By July 2020 we had finally finished the renovations and were ready to put the house on the market. During this time the market was just starting to get hot due to the pandemic and we were able to sell our house for $360,000, which meant that we had made $110,000 profit since we had spent $30,000 on renovations.
When all was said and done, we had paid our house down to $200,000 and sold for $360,000, which left us with $160,000. We spent $20,000 on closing costs, which then left us with $140,000 to pay off my remaining $40,000 student loan and $100,000 for our next property.
Sometimes you have to go against the grain and do what no one else is doing. By jumping on this crazy idea that everyone said wasn’t possible, we ended up setting ourselves up for a successful future. Now we are working on the renovations on our next property, with no intentions of selling soon. We can breathe a little easier knowing that we don’t have a massive student loan hanging over our heads. We are now putting the little bit of extra money that we have into my husband’s business in hopes that it will grow and become successful enough to invest in other businesses.
I hope this can inspire someone to go against the grain and do what others won’t in order to give yourself the life you want. Stay tuned as we continue to expand on our ideas and get creative with the little money that we have. Please feel free to leave a comment with your own ideas, I would love to read them!
If you enjoyed this post you might like our renovation blog posts HERE.
