A look at some interior material choices on a recent multifamily renovation.
Hi, this is Devin. I wanted to walk through and talk about some of the materials choices in our model unit. This is a 75-unit project of ours in San Antonio, so let’s talk through some of the finish-out options.
We wanted a two-tone paint color. You can see the baseboards and some of the trim and the doors are this white color, and then the neutral gray color. Grays are a little tricky sometimes. They can show up purple. This is Alpaca color. I can’t remember the brand, I believe that’s a Sherwin Williams color, maybe a Behr color.
This is the living room here, and it’s obviously staged. What we did was bought this furniture outright, and then we may sell it when we don’t need it, or we may turn one of the units into a corporate apartment that we can rent to a nearby employer for maybe a higher rate than a normal rental rate.
The ubiquitous vinyl plank flooring. This is some of the best stuff because it looks like wood. It’s really tough and it’s the six inch planks, so if there’s a scuff in one, we can just pull it up and replace it. And so, really on this particular property, every inch of the floor is vinyl plank. There’s no carpet.
Now there’s the argument to put carpet upstairs in apartments for noise reduction. On these particular units, or this particular project, we just opted for vinyl plank throughout.
Now in the kitchen here, we’ve got maybe not as popular a choice in B and C class multi-family but we did go with stainless appliances with a granite. Now the granite obviously costs more than some of the other options, but on this property the property was in such bad shape that we had to replace all the cabinets and the countertops. We couldn’t resurface them. We couldn’t salvage or rescue them.
Now sometimes with cabinets, these are brand new, but sometimes with cabinets you’re able to just pull off the existing doors and reface the cabinets. That was not an option in this case, so we got new cabinets. And granite which of course costs more up front, but it’s obviously a nicer interior amenity. And then your turn costs are lower, so when we turn over this unit, you’re not having to go and resurface it. You know, this is virtually indestructible unless somebody actually breaks the slab. This is going to hold up very well, should hold up very well over time.
Some of the other choices we made, these are two-inch blinds. A little bit nicer than your typical mini-blind. We did not replace the windows. They are single pane windows, but we did have solar screens which you may or may not be able to see here. We do have solar screens on the windows, so they look great from the outside, and then they look great from the inside too. So we didn’t actually go through and replace all the windows.
We’ve got new fixtures and fans throughout, and that obvious really creates a nice pop. Again, fully staged, this unit. We went ahead and bought all the furniture, and we will likely sell it at some point, or turn this into a corporate apartment that is fully finished.
Coming into the bathroom here, we’ve got granite again. New fixtures throughout like I mentioned. These cabinet pulls looks really nice. They’re a six-inch cabinet pull. They’re a dollar on Amazon, a dollar apiece, so really nice upgrade there for not much money. Tile surround on the tubs. Now, again we didn’t have the option to salvage anything, so we just went ahead and put in new tile surround, and this should hold up really well over time and be very robust, I guess, as time goes on and not have a lot of turn cost associated with it.
This is one of the other bedrooms here. This is our model, so we wanted to make it look nice. We’ve got the door stops in every unit, of course. Tenants can be kind of rough on the units, so we want to make we had door stops throughout.
That’s a highlight look at some of the finishing material choices that we have here. We’ve got some private yards in some of the units that you can see there.
One of the other projects that I’m actually in the middle of closing this month, the cabinets were in okay shape, and so I’m just going to reface and put new cabinet doors on. They’re going to look like new, but I don’t have to have to expense of replacing all the cabinets. I’m also going to go ahead and resurface the existing countertops instead of replacing because they’re kind of beat up, but they’re salvageable, and obviously the cost will be lower by doing the resurfacing. I’m a big fan of the vinyl plank flooring. It looks great. It’s not that expensive, and it’s easily replaced by small sections if it gets scraped up.
So, that’s just a brief look at one of the projects here and some of our interior choices on multi-family. I hope that gave you some insight there, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you.