Illustration by Victoria Borges
Dec. 10, 2015, was a pretty significant day in my life. In the morning, I slipped into a hospital gown and underwent my first fertility procedure. In the afternoon, my husband and I purchased our first investment property on Richmond’s North Side.
Over the course of the next 40 weeks, we restored the century-old foursquare to its former glory, while my belly — and our baby inside of it — grew to full term.
We were taking a gamble, using every last cent of our savings to attempt a flip when our knowledge was limited to what we’d seen on HGTV. And the heightened emotions and diminished capabilities of pregnancy caused a lot of anxiety for me, while putting a huge amount of pressure on my husband. In short, it was a stupid idea.
And yet, after a few years of watching the neighborhood’s housing prices rise — and plenty of “Fixer Upper” marathons — we’d gathered the courage to take a chance on flipping a house. Even if the timing was rather inconvenient.
I was barely showing when we started meeting with contractors and settled on one who could work with our tight budget — and who promised a six-week turnaround. The house had orange carpet in the bathrooms, avocado-green cabinets in the kitchen and asbestos tile in the sunroom. It needed a new HVAC system, updated electrical and plumbing, roof repairs, a new kitchen and bathrooms, and a complete cosmetic overhaul.
Six weeks passed, and I was firmly in my second trimester, waddling around the house behind a quickly expanding belly. Our contractor slowly worked his way through our punch list, then he started going MIA for long stretches at a time. When he started recycling alibis, the relationship got tense, and I was forced to take on a bigger role in the renovation.
I did my best to wrangle the electricians, HVAC techs, sanders and other subcontractors, trying to keep them on schedule. I learned that I could use my condition to my advantage — no one wants to upset a pregnant woman. (Well, no one except the painters who disappeared after we advanced them their check. We ended up spending a week painting the interior of the house ourselves.)
That wasn’t our only DIY project. To cut costs, we opted for an IKEA kitchen. After incorrectly measuring our space twice (and two extra trips to Potomac Mills), it took over a month to build a kitchen we expected to finish in a weekend.
There were some happy moments, too. I’ll never forget the delight I felt discovering a cache of love letters in the shed just before Valentine’s Day. They’d been written by a couple during WWII; the man was off doing basic training, and the woman was awaiting his return in Richmond. We also found some old toys, tools and a 1960s-era nudist magazine stashed in the basement.
Spring turned to summer, and we found ourselves sweating through the final stages of the renovation — and my last trimester. As we prepared to put the house on the market, I felt a sadness that was hard to explain. It was as if I’d gotten to know our son in the house, carrying him with me every step of the way, and we were giving up this place that had been so important to our journey.
And yet I felt nothing but relief when we signed the contract to sell the house — from my hospital bed, two days after giving birth. After signing the papers, I held my tiny son in my arms, and together we watched his first episode of “Fixer Upper.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erica Jackson Curran lives in North Side’s Barton Heights neighborhood, where she’s perpetually working through a list of DIY projects for her century-old house. When she’s not spending time with family or channeling Joanna Gaines, she works as a freelance lifestyle writer and content marketer.
