Complete Overhaul
What some might consider a flip turns into a complete renovation
By Bobbi Mlynar
Saturday, September 29, 2007
There’s a difference between flipping a house and restoring it, and John Mallon knows it.
Mallon bought a 20-year-old house at auction last fall in Wichita and has spent a year tearing out, moving or replacing walls, and replacing drywall, stucco, bathroom and electrical fixtures, appliances, tile, doors, windows, insulation, vapor barriers and more.
This week the house went on sale for $1.25 million.
The house was one of the talked-about mansions in Wichita before owners discovered a major flaw in the house and moved out.
Last year, a friend of Mallon called and encouraged him to take a look at the house and attend its auction the following day. He did.
“I bid it to $400,000 and walked away,” Mallon said this week during an open house at the restored home on Perth Court.
The winning buyer bid $420,000 but was unable to get financing because of mold. The mold was the crux of a problem that had begun almost as soon as the house was built.
Mallon said that a principal in a national motel chain built the house.
“Unfortunately, his contractor didn’t do the flashings on the roof correctly, so the water was leaking into the walls,” Mallon said.
The original owner sold the house to an official with Koch Industries. That family noticed the doors didn’t quite fit and the house had an unusual odor. Eventually, the errant water and burgeoning mold became evident.
Repairs could have been made for about $200,000 to $250,000, according to insurance estimates, but another specialist set the repairs at approximately $1 million.
“So, they sued (the motel owner) for a million dollars and won,” Mallon said. “And then they lost on appeal.”
The house sat empty for several years before it was sold at auction.
“To make problems worse, they had a water line break and flooded this end of the house,” he said during a tour of the property.
Some walls had been torn out much earlier and the repairs were never finished.
Mallon knew about the mold and water problems and was prepared to fix them. The surprise came when he discovered that raccoons had crawled up those unfinished walls into the attic, where they feasted on insulation and wiring and damaged ductwork.
“We took out all the ductwork and replaced all the wiring up there,” Mallon said. “That was kind of a rude awakening for me.”
It was a blessing, too. The R-19 insulation wasn’t high enough for Mallon’s liking, and he replaced it with insulation rating at least R-38.
He discovered the vapor barrier between the floor and some of the tile had been installed upside-down, and corrected the error.
The unexpected barriers didn’t daunt Mallon, who has been in the construction business for 31 years.
His crew, most of whom were his employees before he sold Hastco Construction, worked steadily on the restoration. They were joined by a number of Mallon’s friends in Wichita, from an interior decorator who made suggestions to other specialty contractors to an environmentalist who worked with him on mold and other potential issues.
“That’s been a really pleasant part of the project,” he said of working with his friends in Wichita.
The greatest pleasure, though, has been working with his son, Justin who recently graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in construction science.
The father and son tackled the challenges they knew were there and some they didn’t — like digging hundreds of holes to plant all of the flowers purchased from a nursery that was too booked to get them in place in time for the open house this week.
Mature wisteria plants that twined like thick arms around support posts and over a long entry arbor also needed special tending when the support posts were replaced.
“How do you do it with all these wisteria plants?” Mallon asked, laughing before answering the question: “You do it one board at a time.”
The results at the arbor are as pleasing as the results inside and outside the house.
Weigand Real Estate, which has listed the property, describes it as having “every conceivable amenity.”
Its 1.8 acres hold a 5,853-square-foot house with a four-car garage on the north and, on the west, a separate air-conditioned and heated two-car garage that Mallon said would make “a great hobby shop.”
The tennis court, adjacent to the swimming pool, also holds full-sized basketball goals. The pool house, as large as some apartments, has men’s and women’s dressing and restrooms, and a living area with an indoor-outdoor stereo system. Past a putting green that Mallon has re-seeded is a walkway down to a two-level dock and a pond large enough to accommodate a small boat.
A hot tub and deck sit outside the master bedroom, which holds a spacious handicapped-accessible sit-down shower and steam room. Across the master bathroom sits an elevated Jacuzzi tub with colors that adjust to mood. The double lavatories set in granite countertops that Mallon also has installed in bathrooms and in the kitchen. The his-and-hers walk-in closets, with cabinets, drawers and racks encompass 280 square feet of floor space.
Nearby are Jack and Jill bedrooms connected by a spacious bathroom, with double sinks, toilet, and bathtub with shower.
Mallon tore out walls to get rid of mold and replaced them with drywall and laid an almost-smooth stucco coating over them before painting the white walls with warm tones the color of ripe wheat. The construction friends he hired for the stucco had done the original stucco overlay, which was a happy coincidence that provided a consistent look throughout the house.
He installed mahogany-colored, oil-rubbed fixtures in all of the bathrooms, the kitchen and the laundry room. The latter has cabinets galore, with a sink and countertop, in addition to washer and dryer space.
“I got a little carried away with cabinets and drawers,” he remarked.
“I had to spend $50,000 re-doing the decks on the house,” Mallon remarked.
They stretch almost entirely around the house. Many windows and doors were replaced, and Mallon made sure they matched the originals that remain.
“I don’t see any place that I feel that it’s patched back together,” he said.
He re-tiled some floor areas and removed, scraped and then re-placed some of the special Saltillio tiles from Saltillio, Mexico.
In the kitchen, new appliances and granite countertops, with an island, sit off a formal dining room.
Skylights, sets of large paned windows and even oversized half-moon transom glasses between rooms bring in light and a view of the beautiful grounds that give the house a light, airy atmosphere. Clestory windows meet in triangles in several rooms where high ceilings reach their peaks.
Custom-made wrought iron lights complement the Southwest feel of the house, which has a surprisingly home-like feel and none of the stiffness of a traditional mansion.
“There’s always more to do than there is time,” he said.
The house is reputed to have cost $1.2 million to build 20 years ago, Mallon said; it is being offered for sale now for $1.25 million and the house’s environmental tests rank it higher than most new houses, despite its former problems.
Mallon hasn’t flipped this house; he has restored it, keeping in mind that everything needed to be done right.
“I watch the shows on TV because they horrify me,” Mallon said.
Some of the “flippers” appear to be incompetent and others appear to be covering up problems instead of fixing them, he said. Some use the wrong product for the purpose, like building a deck from untreated wood.
“They do everything, virtually, wrong,” he said. “They’re trying to make a profit at the expense of the buyers.”
And that drives Mallon to distraction.
“My reputation is everything to me,” he said, “whether I make money or don’t make money, everything has to be right.”
He conceded that some of the surprises crews encountered caused the restoration to be more expensive than anticipated, but he accepts that with good-natured resignation.
“I doubt that it’s going to be a real profitable job for me,” he said. “Probably the next owner is going to make a lot of money on this home.”