May 10
7
by Julie Broad
All right … this is just going to be a picture show today. I just wanted to show you what about $6,000 and 4 days of labour got us in our latest home purchase. We had a total of 16 different people working away to make this magic happen … when it’s totally finished the final bill will probably be about $8,000 and 5 days of labour because the deck is not quite finished. I think you’ll agree it was money and time well spent!
I can’t say for certain how much value we added. When the deck is done, my guess is that we will have added $20,000 to $30,000 to the value of the home with the work we did.
What I can tell you for sure is that within about 24 hours of starting all this work we had tenants hungry to call this home their own!! So I CAN tell you that this work made it super easy to attract some awesome people to rent to own this home from us!!
Front Entrance Before:
Front Entrance After:
Adding bark mulch to landscape a home is pretty much the easiest and lowest cost way to give the curb appeal a seriously big boost. This took 4 bags of bark nuggets at a cost of $35 and 3 plants for another $60. So for under $100 and about 3 hours of my time I had the front yard looking awesome. Oh, and Dave mowed the lawn and trimmed the hedges too so that helped a lot!!
Living Area Before:
Living Area After:
Oh what a difference a simple paint job will make!!
Upstairs Window Before:
Such a shame to have a lovely ocean view spoiled by this ugly old window so we pulled it out and put in a new one.
Upstairs Window After:
My brothers are pretty much the most amazing carpenters I have ever worked with so jobs like this are really easy for me to take on. The window itself cost about $200 and my brothers time to do the work will cost me about $200 as well (yes, I pay my brothers fair market value for their time … they are worth every penny). But that $400 takes this room from crusty to comfy.
We also replaced a window in one of the bathrooms. Here are the before and after shots of that change (same cost for this too):
Upstairs Bedroom Before:
Duck hunting anyone?? How about an unfinished cave for closet??
Upstairs Bedroom After:
Wish I had taken pictures of the baseboards and closet trims. My brother Wes finished up the closet really nicely. It looks amazing now. It made such a difference to add baseboards and closet trim and put up some dry wall in the closet. The new tenants said the closet will make a great playroom for their little girl.
Deck Before:
My brother Dan working away on taking the deck apart.
Dave sporting his playoff beard while the boys are working away on the deck.
Due to rain that set in too soon to finish up the deck we didn’t get to finish this up but it’s going to happen this weekend!! I will probably post the finished pictures on our Facebook Fan Page.
And the new tenants are actually moving in tonight!! So this renovation story has a very happy and profitable ending!!
I think bark mulch or bark nuggets for landscaping and simple paint jobs are my two secret renovation weapons. What are yours???
So no more beard.
