Okie doke. I’ve just bought my first house. Yaaay! It’s a gray and beige, lifeless, soulless ranch on 1/6th of an acre. Boooooo! I definitely want to do stuff to it. So what would you guess the following ideas (ideas only) would do to resale?
Digging up a flower border along the back of the house, and installing perennials, with spaces for annuals.
Digging up a small garden plot, just enough for some tomatoes and herbs.
Installing open storage shelves under what is supposed to be the eating bar, which would be convenient to the (spacious) eating area.
Installing bottom cabinets and top open shelves in a nook in the eating area, thereby making it slightly smaller.
Installing bookshelves in one of the four bedrooms.
The master suite currently has the tub and toilet in an enclosed room, but the sink in the main room. What about extending the walls of the bathroom to include the sink?
Installing a chair rail in one or two bedrooms?
Installing panelling up to chair-rail-height in one or two bedrooms?
All of the wood in the house is a pickled finish, so the panelling would be pickled. Because I’m a big fan of English Country, and because the kitchen and bathroom cabinets both have single inset panels on the doors, I’d try to match that. If I couldn’t match it, I might be so discouraged that I’d give up the idea–or I might put in white painted paneling.
The first two don’t even fall into “curb appeal” as they’re in the back yard.
The shelving probably won’t have much effect. It may even be adverse - potential buyers in the future might like the place but will be thinking about how they might have to yank out the shelves from the bedroom so their furniture will fit.
The chair rail and wainscot will be a wash, unless it’s hiding huge ugly holes in the wall.
The bathroom remodel will be useful, but probably expensive. If you’re just rearranging walls, not so bad, but if you’ll be moving plumbing, the cost can jump, especially if you want to move the toilet and its 6" drainpipe. We want to do the very same thing in our home as we’ve currently got a hotel-style setup with the vanity in plain view and the shower and toilet behind a door. We’re estimating about $5,000 - 10,000, and that’s with us doing most of the work and leaving the toilet alone.
If you like flowers and vegetables, by all means, make gardens! If you like chair rail, grab a miter saw and have at it! It’s your house - live in it like you want it. This isn’t an apartment that you’ll eventually move out of, leaving it every bit as sterile and unchanged as the day you moved in. You’re going to live there and fill the place with your touches. Unless you’re planning a flip, do what YOU want without regard to resale, unless it’s something that’s apt to clobber you later on. (I could regale you with tales of the horrors I’ve seen people do to innocent houses.)
Is that $5K - $10K just for the walls, or are you indeed moving plumbing around? It sounds like you’ve got exactly the same situation I do. I wouldn’t have to move any plumbling at all, just bridge the gap between the bathroom wall and the walk-in closet wall. The sink is currently in a sort of alcove between the two.
Good to know that you don’t think any of this would have an adverse effect. I really do loathe eating bars, and really do have a collection of lovely English transferware that needs to be displayed on open shelves.
Congratulations, Sattua! I agree with gotpasswords. This is your home first and an investment distant second. Make what improvements you like. You’re the one who’s going to be living there.
The bathroom area was designed by Best Western, or it seems that way. That price is just to replace the gargantuan vanity with a more normal-sized sink, ditch the five foot-wide mirror, fix up the wall (these mirrors are frakkin’ glued to the walls!) change the tub-sized standup shower to a smaller shower so we can reclaim some space for storage, take out the wall that separates the bath/toilet from the sink, nip about six inches off a closet so we can define an entrance for the bathroom and put in a door, lay a proper tile floor instead of the half carpet/half stick-on vinyl we have now, and all of the this-and-thats that pop up.
We’re not even doing the fancy trendy stuff you see on the TV shows like 18" stone tiles, glass tiles, laminar faucets, ($1300 for a faucet? Bite my ass!) “vessel” sinks, towel warmers, etc.
Sounds like you want to extend a wall slightly and add a door. My quickie guess is that would cost $500+ to have it done, and maybe $100 - 150 or so for materials if you can do it yourself. (How are you at framing?) Oh, and that’s not including paint - you’ll undoubtedly want to repaint the bedroom and bathroom.