Carolyn McLean doesn’t know when, or how, to stop. Much to the advantage of Iola.
For the last five years McLean and her husband, Val, have purchased run-down homes only to “flip” them into respectable homes, which for the most part they rent.
The first home they renovated on North Jefferson, they used for themselves when they were displaced from their home on South First Street by the 2007 flood.
Since then they have renovated eyesores on North Jefferson, North Street and most recently in the 200 block of South Cottonwood. They also purchased a home on South Colborn contracted by the Homes for Iola group. They also lease that home.
They paid $19,900 for the property at 207 S. Cottonwood. Today it fetches a tidy $795 monthly lease payment.
Still, it will be awhile before the McLeans reap a profit on the property considering it’s been refurbished from stem to stern, including new cement siding on the exterior.
“A renovation seems to always cost at least two times what we had budgeted,” she said.
CAROLYN McLean considers the real estate makeovers a hobby of sorts, although she doesn’t have another house on the immediate horizon.
She also does it with a sense of mission.
“We’re trying to bring professionals to Iola by providing them nice and affordable housing to live in the minute they arrive in town,” she said.
That she’s buying former eyesores and transforming them into respectable homes is also a bonus to downtown Iola.
All the homes have new wiring and plumbing, cabinets, flooring, fixtures, Energy Star-rated appliances, windows and abundant insulation.
In many cases to preserve a home’s uniqueness, Carolyn will strip fixtures of their paint, including door knobs, backplates and hinges, and restore them to their original luster.
On the South Colborn house she had new fish gill siding made to match the original. It is in the upper eaves above the front porch.
“It was cost-prohibitive to rewire the original fixtures,” she said. “So we went with new. But where we could, we preserved the original just because it’s so pretty.”
