A couple bought "the worst house on the street" but now it's unrecognisable.
Jo Lemos and Chris Chris Gilheaney, however, discovered there are risks involved in taking on a property to fix and flip.
They bought an 'ugly house' in Prestwich, Greater Manchester, with plans to renovate it and make a swift sale.
The Manchester Evening News reports Chris the pair bought a property together in Prestwich.
After doing it up and selling it on, the couple then planned to purchase their next house to flip.
Chris, 33, said: "We've always wanted to work our way up the property ladder but our aim ultimately is to try and become mortgage free, so that's why we've had a few properties that we’ve bought, improved and sold on.
"For our next house we wanted to stay in Prestwich because it’s an up-and-coming area, it's really leafy and green, you’ve got the big parks around but you're still only less than 15 minutes to the city centre. It’s kind of got that village feel which we love with nice bars, restaurants and cafes."
They began house-hunting in 2019 but found the market tough at the time.
Chris said: "It was horrific trying to buy a house at the time. It was really competitive in Prestwich.
"We ended up going for the house that no one else wanted, the worst house on the street, and it needed a fair amount of work doing to it."
Jo added: “We were the only people to put an offer in on this house and we were in a four property chain. It was quite stressful and it took about six months to go through.”
The pair eventually bought the three-bed semi-detached for £244,000 in November 2019, but say it 'probably wasn't worth' that then.
Jo, 36, said: “We paid that price for the area but for the house itself as we bought it, it probably wouldn’t have been worth that price.
"It really was the worst house on the street and I think it has always been the worst house on the street."
"A lot of effort went into bringing it back to some sort of liveable standard - let alone looking nice."
They began renovating the home immediately, but then the pandemic hit.
Chris said: "We moved in and we were just getting settled. We began renovating downstairs and then the pandemic hit in the middle of our renovation.
"We couldn’t get plaster or materials for a long time, so we ended up living in a building site for a while because of those issues."
They patched up their home and did the majority of renovation work themselves.
Chris said: “I’d say we probably did about 80 to 90 percent of the renovation work ourselves.
"We’re big DIYers and it filled a lot of our time during the pandemic. Even when things were going a bit more back to normal we didn't really go out, we just concentrated on the house."
Now it is completely transformed into a Scandinavian-style space on a meagre budget.
Chris said: “The renovation is more or less finished now. It’s really liveable, it’s really comfortable and every room is done to a good standard, it’s just more tweaks that we are making now."
Jo added: “I think we’ve spent around £30,000 renovating it. We spent a fair bit on the garden because it was so overgrown. We cut down 14 trees because they were just so big."
They managed to keep costs down by learning the skills needed.
Chris said: "We did a bit of DIY on our previous homes but anything we hadn’t done we just learnt off YouTube.
"It was just about not being afraid to give things a try. We’re both quite handy and we just cracked on with it. Doing it ourselves massively helped us to cut costs."
During the renovation, the couple had a change of heart about flipping their home.
Jo said: “We initially bought this as a doer-upper to sell on, but the house took longer to renovate because of the pandemic. The longer we stayed, the more we fell in love with it.
"The more we add to it, the more we're adding ourselves to it. It's not just a flip, it's home now."
They set up a home Instagram account @two.men.and.a.semi to document their renovation journey which now has 18,000 followers.
Jo said: "We realised that people were enjoying it and it went from there. It was my personal Instagram account and I changed it to @two.men.and.a.semi when we moved into our semi-detached.
"We just started out sharing photos between friends and family and then it grew from there.”
Chris said: "There’s a lot of work that goes into it. There’s definitely things that we've done over the last four years that have been more for Instagram rather than ourselves.
"It's not as simple as just taking a photo, you have to fully renovate a room, document it the whole way through and if you're working with a brand you need to get their approval and sign off on things.
"One Instagram post can often be weeks and weeks of planning and negotiation."
Jo added: “We used to look at other home Instagram accounts for inspiration so it’s nice that people now come to our page for the same thing. Instagram was definitely how it started for us.”
But the couple said it wasn't their forever home.
Chris said: "We got our house valued in the summer because we wanted to decide what was best for us to do.
"We bought the house for about £244,000 and it’s been valued between £350,000 and £375,000.
“We will probably stay here for around three to five years. I’m originally from Northern Ireland so we’ve talked about maybe moving there to a much more rural community.
"Jo is Portuguese so we’ve often talked about moving there too.
"I think that's probably the next move - go to either Northern Ireland or Portugal.”
