Home: Flipping Into a Functional Home

Flipping Into A Functional Home

By Taylor Riley Photos by Melissa Donald

On the first home Brenna Brooks and her father, Barlow Brooks, worked on together, they did the contracting themselves and quickly realized it wasn’t a “sustainable business model for us,” Brenna says. She confessed that the first house taught her a lot about construction, but also about the way women are treated in the industry. “People assume because I’m a female I don’t know [anything about the process],” she says. “It taught me a lot. I had to be a lot more assertive. Older men [in construction assume] I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

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Get more information from our home advisors:

WR Realtors: wrrealtors.com (p. 19) Idea Source: ideasourceky.com (p. 21) Bliss Home: blisshomefurniture.com (p. 23)

Brenlow Properties owner Brenna Brooks redid this St. Matthews area home that she now lives in, taking out walls between the kitchen and the dining room, creating a large open living space.

Barlow Brooks, who Brenna says is “comfortably retired,” began the projects with his daughter as she attended a nighttime MBA program. Brenna designed the project and lead sourcing and worked with Brooks to plan and execute the project with the client. The two have mostly concentrated on purchasing, upgrading, and reselling homes in the St. Matthews, Indian Hills, Highlands, and Middletown areas, 13 projects since 2012.

With her father’s retirement, Brenna is ready to begin her own business journey with Brenlow Properties. What gives her a leg up is being a realtor, too. “I do understand how houses are constructed and the potential concerns someone may have with a property,” she says. While real estate sales is currently her main focus, she has the desire to flip more properties into rentals and Airbnbs.

ROLLING FIELDS REDO

One of Brenna’s largest projects thus far was a home in the Rolling Fields subdivision. A 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom home, in the upscale neighborhood for 13 years. She and her father bought the property from another investor who did not have the time to finish the home after gutting it into an empty shell. “Given the area and standard for the area, (we knew) it needed to be really nice,” she says.

The home did not have a master suite or walk-in closet, which is typical of the area, and only a small bathroom with a single vanity. The layout was a pain, too, with the front door of the home leading to the basement. “It wasn’t up to the standards of the neighborhood,” she says.

(Above) Here is the opposite view of the room on the previous page with Brenna by the front door. (Below) This is the before photo of the dining room and kitchen space, and back door.

l The beforeand-after photos for one of Brenna’s favorite projects so far. Here in the stunning after, it shows how she reworked the flow of the main floor and updated finishes.

The duo created two additions: a master suite with a large bathroom and walk-in closet in the back, as well as an office and full bathroom in the basement. They added a front door to the upper level of the home, a mudroom entryway to the garage, and even a doggie bedroom underneath the stairs. When completed, the project was a 4-bedroom, 4-and-a-half bathroom home with refinished floors, high quality finishes, new HVAC and water heater systems, and a new driveway. “We made it into a gorgeous family home for a young couple with two kids,” Brenna says.

MIDDLETOWN MID-CENTURY

One of their latest, and most memorable, projects was a mid-century modern ranch home in Middletown. The home was owned by a woman for 30-plus years but had most recently been occupied by renters. It was neglected and in “bad shape,” Brenna says, but it had potential at 4,000-squarefeet on a 2-and-a-half-acre lot with a pool.

As one of her favorite projects, Brenna says they kept the character of the home to create a “magical” 5-bedroom, 4-bath home with a daylily garden and a beautiful pool area. Brenna even kept the house for a year and set up movie nights on a projector with her friends while floating in the pool. She would have kept the home, she says, but as a single person, the home was just too big.

The house went on the market and sold in three days for the full asking price. In the future, Brenna said she would consider buying it back. “That was the hardest one to let go of,” she says.

She is pretty happy though, living in St. Matthews in a home she flipped with the help of her father.

HOW YOU CAN DO IT

Brenna says she and her father were never in the flipping game as a main source of income. “It’s not how we paid the bills or put food on the table,” she says. So, when looking at a potential property, she suggests to be picky.

Location is everything, she says. Check into what is around the location, because that will determine the sellability. “You can change anything about the house for some amount of money, but you can’t change what’s around it,” she says.

Brenna also suggests being conscious of the quality of the flip. She asks herself, “Is this what I would do for my house?” If she puts her name on it, she wants to be sure it’s her idea of perfect. “There will be a family living there, so we ask, ‘Would we live in this house?’ If the answer wasn’t ‘yes,’ then we reevaluated our approach,” she says.

Another tip Brenna suggested was to make sure the home is functional. Good design, she says, isn’t just about looking good, it’s about being functional for the family who lives there. Considering functionality in the layout of the property is essential; it’s all about how the doors and drawers open, she says.

The bathroom redo shows how beautiful a functional room can be, while still keeping main plumbing lines in place

CANCELED

“AT THE END OF THE DAY, WE COULDN’T PUT OUR GRANDPARENTS, OUR FRIENDS, AND FAMILY MEMBERS AT RISK.”

Jessi Winner, 29, secured the perfect venue for her wedding, all the vendors were paid, and her bachelorette party and honeymoon flirted on the horizon. She was in the homestretch of wedding planning and eager to walk down the aisle on April 18.

But the ultimate wedding crasher — a global pandemic — shut down the country and turned her dream wedding into a surreal nightmare.

On March 18, a month before their big day, Jessi and her fiance made the difficult decision to cancel their wedding after Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s social distancing mandate. Jessi, a project manager by trade, had coordinated a 235-guest ceremony at Churchill Downs, but once her wedding planner explained that the race track was trying to figure out how to run the Kentucky Derby with six-feet of social distancing space between all the guests, she knew her wedding was going to be impossible to pull off. Churchill Downs offered Jessi a full refund and attempted an August reschedule date, but the couple decided to forgo the venue due to new language that would not guarantee a full refund in these uncertain times.

“At the end of the day, we couldn’t put our grandparents, our friends, and family members at risk,” Jessi said. “At first, it was heartbreaking, but I realized that we aren’t breaking up — we still have the same relationship and love — it is just that our plans have changed. We won’t be having a 235-person wedding. I really don’t know what type of wedding we will have or when it will take place, but I know it will be something more intimate. I’ve had friends cancel their weddings and head to the courthouse. It helps to have others around who are experiencing the same thing.”

Upon deciding to postpone the wedding, Jessi had to mail a letter to every guest saying that she would keep them posted on their future wedding plans but had no idea what those might be. She also took inventory as to which vendors were independent, local companies and called them to establish credit. “The wedding industry was hit hard by the coronavirus, and many small businesses can’t honor a refund. We prioritized which deposits to refund and which ones to roll over. We decided to support our florist by keeping the money in an account, and we plan to send flowers to people all year with the credit.”

Jessi had to cancel her bachelorette party and honeymoon to Costa Rica as well. “It has been more work canceling this wedding than it was to plan it. It has been draining, but I suppose that is where the project manager in me thrived.”

Diana Vela of Essential Details of Louisville, a destination management and event planning company, has had to reschedule three May/June weddings due to the coronavirus. “So far, most of the suppliers in the industry have been understanding and accommodating. We are all in this together, and we realize that every situation might look different right now. We are trying to help our clients reschedule and alleviate some of the stress during these uncertain times,” Diana says.

Essential Details created a Change-the-Date Coordination Service in response to its clients’ changing needs. The service helps to review vendor contracts and cancellation policies, research and secure replacement vendors, negotiate refunds, and reschedule venues. Diana and her colleagues are navigating our new normal, oftentimes attempting to ease a bride’s stress or choose a place setting from their couches via Zoom.