Happy Monday everyone. Today’s post is all about how we want to update our house so that we can enjoy it while we live here, but to also sell our house more quickly when we put it up for sale. Usually on Monday’s I post my Extra Income and Life updates, but I figured that I talked about myself twice last week and there’s only so many times in a 7 day period that you probably want to read about my life! 🙂
Next Monday I will do a full life and extra income update and weekly roundup. I’m also going on vacation from this Thursday to next Monday and am going to the U.S. Virgin Islands with my sister. WOOHOO! Also, I currently have a Novica giveaway that you should check out because it ends this Wednesday.
There are many things that we want to do to our house. Most of these will improve the value of our house and/or help it sell more quickly when the time comes. AND there are some things that are on this list that will make living in our house more enjoyable as well. We still have at least another year in this house, so why not enjoy it?
We love our house, but over the years we haven’t been keeping up with the maintenance like we should have been. These are all things that have been on our list forever. We want to be able to sell our house quickly and with little problems, while also getting maximum value for our house.
Selling it quickly would be awesome, but we don’t want to sell it for super cheap either. We don’t mind keeping the house while waiting for the best offer.
We’re not putting our house up for sale until next year, but as I said, we still want to enjoy the house while we live in it now, and we want to be able to do things slowly.
Landscaping
We’ve already done some landscaping, and paid someone to clean everything up the other day. For some reason a couple of people have been using the side of our house as storage, and there was TONS of garbage that people left. A full carpet (that was actually ours, oops), 4 tires, broken ladders, crutches (yes I said crutches), a huge metal cabinet, a dishwasher and so on.
The side of our house turned into a hoarder’s house and I’m sure our neighbors hated us for it. We paid someone to just take all of that and throw it all away (our trash company will not take these items) and we also paid the landscaping company to clean our gutters and clean up all of the leaves and other debris in our yard. This way our grass and plants can actually grow.
We plan on fixing up our front yard and making the grass green again and grow flowers.
Kitchen
Our kitchen was brand new when we bought our house and it still looks great. However, they put really ugly gold knobs on all the cabinets, and I think if they were changed to a darker color, then the kitchen would look MUCH better.
I priced out knobs and this would probably cost around $150, or we could just take all of these knobs out and spend probably $10 on that Rustoleum paint that everyone seems to be spraying all of their homes lately on doorknobs. We will probably do that so that we aren’t just wasting all of the knobs that we currently have. Cost: $10.
We also need to touch up the paint in the kitchen because whoever repainted the kitchen after the cabinet installation did a horrible job. There is leftover glue/paint on the walls and it just looks messy. We have the exact paint downstairs so the cost for this would be $0. Cost: $0.
Door Frame
We need to repair the door frame in our garage. Last year when we went to Kauai, we had a friend watch our house and she got locked out. She cracked the door frame trying to get back in. This will cost around $700 from what I’ve been told. However, I have heard others say that this might cost over $1,000. Have you ever replaced a door frame? Is it easy enough for us to do? Cost: $700 if we pay someone else to install a doorframe.
Guest Bathroom
There are only small things that we want to do with our bathroom. I bought a mirror a long time ago for super cheap, and we want to replace the current mirror in the bathroom with this one. We also want to touch up the paint on the cabinet. Cost: $0.
Miscellaneous
There are lots of other little things that we would like to do, such as switching out all of our door knobs in the house to a silver color instead of the gold that we have now. We’ve looked into it, and a little change like that can make a house look more modern. Some in our house are already the correct color, so only a couple need to be replaced. Cost: $75
We also need to somehow cover a pipe that we have in the basement as well. Right now our basement is finished but we had to replace this pipe last year so now it’s uncovered and doesn’t look good. Cost: I have no idea.
The garage door also needs to be replaced. When we first moved in, W pulled the truck out of the garage (it’s a classic and we never drive it), and it slipped into reverse when W put it in park and got out of the car for a slight second, and hit the garage door. The garage door isn’t horrible looking, but it definitely needs to be replaced before we try selling the house. Cost: maybe $1,500? We have been told that we could just buy the garage door ourselves for around $500 and do this ourselves.
Decluttering is a MAJOR thing on our list that needs to be done. We have way too much in storage in our basement. This of course is free to do because we will declutter ourselves.
And lastly, the carpet in the living room needs to be replaced. This is something that has been on our list for quite some time. We pulled up the carpet in the living room when we first moved in because we didn’t like the carpet. It turned out that the hardwood floor underneath was extremely ugly and whoever put the carpet down did a horrible job and ruined the hardwood floor. So we need to replace this. Cost: $600.
What would you do to increase the value of your home and help it sell quickly?
How much have you spent (or would you spend) in order to sell your house more quickly and for a higher value?
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