House Walkthrough... Hi, My name is Tony Law from Lawson Homes, and welcome to the last in the series on how
to build a profitable HMO. In today's video, I get the satisfaction of being able to walk
you around this property, now that it's completely finished. Just like we did in video number
one, let's start at the front door and let me initially walk you around upstairs.
Here we are at the front of the property. I've got my back to the front door, and you
can see the fire panel that we've had to install here. It's a typical 2-zone system. One zone
covers the ground floor, and the other one covers the first floor. Looking back, if you
can recall in our first video, we literally gutted this place back to exposed joists,
exposed brickwork, everywhere.
What I'd like to do is just briefly show you around one of the bedrooms. This is bedroom
number 5, located at the front of the house, and it's typically of all of the rooms. We've
used the same colour scheme throughout, so it's a colourful pointing on the walls, and
also on the ceiling. Just used a neutral coloured carpet, and every room's got this feature
wall. The en-suites are not big, they're 2 meters by .9 of a meter, but they work well.
Dropping back down onto the ground floor, I'll just walk you through to the back here.
You can see this dark wood flooring runs throughout. Again, a huge transformation from where we
were a few months ago. As we turn left into the kitchen, you can see I've used a white
high-gloss door everywhere, with, again, the darker flooring and the darker worktop working
well together. It's actually a very big kitchen, that. It sort of flows into the social lounge
area. I think I'm still going to put a rug down there. I'd appreciate your opinion on
that, actually. Got the feature wall on our right.
I'll just briefly show you outside. We've paved the entire garden space. I kept that
raised bank at the bank to save me having to move about 20 ton of dirt. The white wall
space there is where we're going to be hanging the TV.
I hope you'll agree, I think the finished result came out really quite well, but I'm
going to have to be honest here and say I had a whole bunch of challenges throughout
this project. As always, I want you to gain from watching these videos, so I'm going to
share a few of those with you. Let me do it like this: let me tell you 5 things that I
would do differently next time, and 5 things that I like best about this project.
What would I do differently next time? Don't be tempted to stick down the vinyl. It will
show every tiny, teeny little imperfection in the floor that's below it. Before I buy
anything next time, I'm going to put together a colour palette, which will hopefully make
my life a hell of a lot easier when it comes to choosing wall colours, fabrics, flooring,
everything, basically. I actually don't think I did too bad a job on the planning front
on this particular project, but there's always room for improvement.
Next time, I'm going to make sure that at any point in the project, I know exactly what's
happening at least 6 weeks in advance. I will definitely be looking into getting furniture
delivered, ready-made, and put into all the rooms next time. I kind of feel that here
was now my second home, and that was far more work than I imagined it would be. Finally,
I'm going to spend less time on site. I'm going to have to be honest and say I really
enjoy coming to site and getting my hands dirty, but that's not what I should be doing.
That is a set-in-stone rule for me next time.
I love the Masterkey system. I love the fact that this one key opens the front door to
every property that I own, and it also opens all of the internal doors in every property
I own. Once again, using an independent building inspector made our life so much easier here.
These guys, they come along. Yes, they're there to make sure you're doing the right
thing, but they work with you on the project, so if you have a challenge or a problem, they're
there to help you find a solution to that problem. An independent building inspector,
I think, is somebody that everybody should have on their power team.
I wasn't too sure about this next one at first, but it is definitely one of my like bests
now, and that is the way that we ran individual electrical circuits to each bedroom. The huge
advantage of that is that it kept our costs down, in terms of putting the electrics in
in the first place, but also, if a tenant has a problem and they blow a fuse, it only
affects their room. That's a big like best for me.
One of my biggest like bests is the way that the kitchen turned out. I think that's worked
really, really well. The fact is, you've got 2 completely separate cooking zones, so that's
2 sinks, 2 ovens, 2 hobs, 2 hoods, combined with loads and loads of storage. That, I think,
is a really big success for this particular project.
I have to say probably the biggest like best for me this time was my site foreman, Scott.
He made my life so much easier in every way. I tend to micromanage stuff, and I know that
does his head in, and certainly, I'll be giving him more control next time. He made this project
run like clockwork.
Well, we're pretty much at the end of this particular journey, and I genuinely hope that
you've enjoyed watching all of the videos in this series. Perhaps most important of
all, I hope that you've gained something from doing so. As always, if I can be of any help
to you, you're welcome to give me a call on this number, or you can always email me here.
If I can help you, I will always do so. Couple of final things: first of all, please subscribe
to my video list. I'll put a link in the box below here. If you subscribe, I've got loads
of ideas for small little nuggets of videos, tips, tricks, apps I'm using, little tools
that I've found that I can start sending you from time to time.
The very last thing I'd like to say is that if you would like to find out a little bit
more about how I joint venture with other people, I'd be delighted to speak to you.
Maybe you'd like to get directly involved in a project, or maybe you're simply looking
for a dramatically better return on your money. Please get in touch. I'd be delighted to talk
to you. My name is Tony Law from Lawson Homes, and if you're subscribed, I look forward to
seeing you in the next video. Thank you.