I have a client in West Orange NJ. The home is about 90 years old. We did extensive cleaning and repairs last year about this time for them to put house on market. Spent about two months time re-piping the old galvanized and leaking pipes. Rewired lots of old knob and tube, redid a third floor bathroom with claw foot tub that had not been used for over 40 years etc.
The house is still on market. Pricing on the house is reasonable for the area, but they have had no offers in the past six months on it.
The primary feed back was the master bath, which is really a jack-n-Jill type of bath that adjoins the largest bedroom on 2nd floor. Its pink with white fixtures. And its turning off people.
The 2nd issue was the kitchen area. It has older dark wood cabinets but good quality ones, high end stove, dishwasher hood and fridge, but has old brick style white tile floors and counters are dated.
Client wants to do something in these areas to improve them.
They thought about tearing out bathroom and re-doing it. And they want to update kitchen such as floors etc.
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Attached is some photos I took with camera phone today so you can get some idea of what I am working with. They do not want to go overboard, but are willing to spend some money to entice people to come back and have another look see.
Some facts on bathroom. Old style cement walls with tile set and mud based tile floors. Lots of windows room is small as well. They do have two other bathrooms with tub, so on of my ideas would be to remove their tub and install a new mud pan shower in same footprint. But it seems lately that pink is coming back, but not sure what else I could do to change this.
The kitchen is painted yellow, which goes OK with dark wood cabinets, High nine foot ceilings. a
Any ideas or suggestions, please let me know.
So my idea to bring to table to owner is to reverse the door so it opens into the bathroom, and build a linen closet to serve this room. As there is no storage at all. ...»
The tub is five feet long so I am going to suggest to my client to remove the tub, and then construct a shower that is four feet long and widen the shower to just under 4 foot wide as I have enough width in the bath to do this. Install a mud pan and one short wall to divide between the shower and the sink area and have glass door and wall installed to surround the two walls of the new shower area.
I then plan to remove the pedestal sink and replace it with a three foot wide furniture style vanity with sink to match the period age of the home.
I am thinking of using subway tile on shower walls and surround the bath with same. And re-tile floor and use same on shower floor as well.
Kitchen, New tops for sure, new back splash as well. I am going to try to convince owner to at least rent a stainless fridge and at least one that fits under the cabinet. The current one sticks out six inches beyond the upper and overpowers the room.
I am a bit concerned on the floor however, I was looking at it today and its not very level nor strong enough without lots of additional framing improvements. I am going to do a look see on what other flooring options I can offer other then tile. I am not big on laminate and because of the several steps leading to the lower landing to outside I am not sure what I am going to do. What ever I decide and that the owner agrees to must last. I warrant all my work for two years on labor and five on materials that we purchase. And with framing not really proper, I know that the tile floor will crack and grout will fail. And I do not want to have to come back and fix it afterwords.
My fear for your homeowner is what is it costing for the house to be on the market for 6+months with no activity and offers? The small changes will have such a great impact on the sale and get ...»
Do the steps that make the most economical sense.
1. Changing knobs is time consuming but inexpensive
2. Replace the counter tops instead of the entire kitchen
3. Stainless steel will go a very long way--(check scratch/dents/used) tons of great deals out there. Ask about purchasing the floor models.
I hope this helps. It is a hard pill to swallow and somewhat of a reality check but there is so many benefits for them.
The agent that is marketing this home is one of Prudential's top agents in area and he is well aware of the price factor and based on the local market they are just a bit below the other homes ...»
Although the seller did a lot of pre-sale prep on the home from painting both outside and in. We re-vamped the 3rd floor level bath and re-piped most of the steel plumbing with PEX to remove leaks and increase water pressure. They were at the time not willing to do any other major repairs or modifications to the home.
After hearing from the many potential buyers reactions they now are focusing on kitchen and what they call a master bath, which is in fact a Jack-n-Jill bathroom in the center front of the home.
Although not ugly its not the kind of bathroom or kitchen that the couples that are buying are familiar with. I agree there can be some very simple improvements to update these areas, but after doing these kind of improvements over the years, and with the ever more demanding buyers the seller must go much further to make this sale come together.
As far as demo in the older bathroom, Not to bad of a job. We have electrical cement hammers that will make short work of the wall tiles and debris removal is only a window away to the back of our truck.
Flooring tile if we end up going that route will be placed over Schluter DITRA system as an uncoupling membrane for the tile. This will be used both on the soon to be master bath floor and kitchen sub-flooring. http://www.schluter.com/6_1_ditra.aspx
In our area there are some very good low cost tile re-sellers and prices are comparable to those of the big box stores with a greater selection. But what ever the owner chooses I must be able to provide them with our two year labor warranty without worry that there will be cracks or issues with grout on the floor.
They had an offer on table for house as it currently is so were put on hold. For their sake I hope it sells, but if not they will be moving ahead with some of the ideas all of you had.
I will keep you posted.
Bob
All of the suggestions are great.
They did sell the house after much effort on outside and inside cleaning, painting etc. We did provide the buyer with some options if they wanted us to come back into the house to assist them, but have not heard back from them.
But remember, floors and items such as these are difficult to remove and reuse. There is a bit of a challenge to do this. Also because of time issues and the contractor wanting to get started, you need to be ready with plenty of assistance to get in and out quickly or you may find your deal going south real quick.
I have pulled plenty of wood floors, and even with just tearing them out it was difficult to do. And we were not saving them. So be prepared.