Renovating your kitchen or bathroom can be time-consuming and expensive. The payoff is that when it's done, you have a room that you love and more value to your home. But is style or resale value your main motivator? Here are some tips on how to maximize both.
1. Do it right. Don't know what you're doing? Hire trusted professionals to do the work. Crooked cabinets or poorly cut tile will be more of a problem than differences in individual taste. Also, if you're DIYing and not familiar with the building codes and permitting in your city, you may have a huge and costly problem come home inspection.
2. Invest in quality fixtures & appliances. Quality never goes out of style.
3. Consider your neighbors. What kind of area or building do you live in? Modern? Traditional? Creative? If you live in a classic brownstone with period detail, going stark white and minimalist probably won't net you a profit. Choosing the best appliances and fixtures you can afford is a great rule, unless your imported Italian tile and Viking 6-burner make you the nicest house in the neighborhood. If your renovation values you significantly above surrounding homes, it will be harder to recoup your investment.
4. Forever home or home for now? The longer you plan to stay in your home, the more personal your renovations can be and likely still net positive at resale. If you're settling in for 10+ years, go ahead and tile your kitchen lime green if that's what makes you happy. You may even find a buyer who shares your funky style.
5. Don't live or die by resale value. Yes, your home is likely your largest investment, so renovating to increase its resale value is a good financial decision. But you're the person who has to live through the renovation process and pay the bill, so you better like the final product! Also, future worth is never guaranteed, so it's best to find a comfortable balance between the two.
So what's your renovation motivation? Resale or personal style?
All Images: Tara Bellucci
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I would add to this:
— Do not go for trends. Trends go out of style.
— Think into the future: will you love and adore what you're putting in now? Black tile in the bath might look cool, but will you want it in 10 years? Will others? Resale or personal, IMHO it's best to stick with neutral elements that will stand the test of time.
I love that rounded corner shower!
I have never bought a house that we planned to stay in for longer than 5 years (we just purchased our 3rd) - so any renovations are done with an eye toward resale value. We keep things neutral and not too trendy. But even if we were planning to stay in a home long term - I would stick to classics & neutrals.
I figure if you are going to err, err on the conservative side, not the funky side. You can always incorporate funky into your world through accessories or furniture or easy-to-change wall color.
That said, I am in love with a house in my town that looks like a mini castle, complete with turrets -- so if your sense of whimsy is universal enough, you can probably always match it to a buyer, just maybe not as fast as something more generic...
(Oh, and just for balance, I HATE that round cornered shower!!)
I save really personal style decisions for paint and furnishings. I'll invest in a piece of furniture that just calls my name, even if it's in a really un-neutral style, but my house is an investment so I'm always thinking of resale value. I don't go for trends unless I love them anyway.
OK, I wouldn't have thought of it if the sculpture wasn't above the toilet, but I think the rounded shower looks like a singular 'cheek'....
this is exactly what just happened. i looked at the second bathroom picture, laughed out loud at the statue, glanced over to the left and saw the tub/standing shower, then my jaws dropped. really loving that for some reason.
Haha - just goes to show... if I were house hunting and saw either that hot tub or the rounded shower, I'd probably consider them deal breakers. Really. I agree that the safest thing is to avoid trends and be conservative - neither of which necessarily means boring.
I aim in renovations both to please myself and to avoid having to redo the work before putting my home on the market. However, my actual renovation motivation usually is to maintain or regain function or structural integrity affordably. "If it's not broke, don't fix it."
If your home is your biggest investment, you need a new financial advisor.
That said, I was amazed by the number of house hunters who specifically pointed out the vessel sink and jetted tub in one of our bathrooms as "pluses" when we were selling... Personally, I'll never get either again and both will be huge negatives the next time I buy!
That corner shower is an abomination! Are there two full-length mirrors in there??
I've made improvements to my "forever" home. If I were interested in selling, I might have pursued a full bathroom or kitchen renovation to boost buyer interest and achieve the best selling price. But since I'm staying (and bearing the cost of the improvements), I've worked with what I had and made lots of upgrades instead. The net result is living in a home specifically tailored to my personal taste. It feels new but at half the cost or inconvenience of a gut renovation.
I'm with vykim - I also personally dislike vessel sinks and jet tubs. I'm about to remodel a 30+ year old bathroom and would like to have just a shower, but having that "full bath" - tub/shower combination - does seem to be an issue with resale value, so a tub will probably remain.
There's is a jacuzzi in one of our bathrooms, put in by the previous owners. Although the realtor kept on pointing it out as a "fabulous" feature, we were not particularly impressed. I used it once to see if it might change my mind on baths vs. showers. Just a waste of water, imho. Definitely not a selling point for me. Just screams "The Bathroom Is Your Sanctuary! Blah! Blah! Blah!"
@vykim Wow... I hope that was a commentary on the housing market crash and not meant to demean those of us who do consider home-ownership to be our biggest investment. Some people reading the internet are actually lower-middle class, believe it or not. We exist. hah...
Anyways, don't remove your tub if you are in condo/small home land and it's the only one because it will reduce resale for people who like a good soak or have kids.
We've lived in our home for 35 years (yikes!!!) and our last major renovations 15 years ago was done in a classic style. People think our kitchen still looks new.
Both. We want to be able to live with and enjoy the improvements as opposed to doing them to sell. And we also think about what will be attractive to others , although in the long run, we want the home to work for us.
So many bathtub haters, lol! If you are at all worried about resale, I would suggest keep your tub. I was so surprised while house hunting how many otherwise perfect houses had reno'd all the bathrooms to be shower only.
It would be extremely easy to update that first bathroom and the first kitchen.
I've recently finished an overhaul of the bathroom in my first flat; went overbudget but having erred on the side of tasteful and good fixtures I'm happy I can ENJOY the bathroom for 5yrs or more AND add value when I come to resell because the style and quality of fittings were not the cheapest I could find.
there are just certain materials that will always look good, like the lady with her 15 year old kitchen that still looks fresh. this is the goal for me.
i think the best advice a person remodeling could get is to keep the permanant/expensive stuff (flooring, cabinets, countertops, tubs, etc...) very classic, neutral and transitional in style and color. Add your personalization in areas that are easy to change: wall paint, window treatments, light fixtures, cabinet hardware, wall art... this is the way to avoid HAVING to remodel every 10 years.
and of course agree with the "do it right" part. the hubs and i passed over a nice house with beautiful land because the owners did all this crap diy work that looked like amateur hour, then wanted the premium for an "updated" house. no sale.
That rounded shower stall looks like something Dr. Evil would escape in.
I agree about balancing personal style with resale value. Even if I was living in a house for the rest of my life, I would want to do all permanent fixtures like cabinets, countertops and tiles in neutral schemes and then go crazy with whatever personal accessories I want. Then I won't have to blow money on renos to update every decade, hopefully :D.
It's all about the resale, baby.
We like our house and aren't planning to move for a while, but when the time comes, I'm hoping I've watched enough HGTV to know what the average buyer looks for. (But who knows...)
And I agree with Jess13--all our taste-specific stuff is in the form of accessories. I'd love to paint my walls some cool and funky colors (they're all beige right now), but frankly, I know that I'm lazy enough not to want to repaint everything just to prep it for selling. :)
Personally, I'd love a jetted tub - but not one that's the size of a small lake...
...and I'd never have a vessel sink - Hate the appearance and the crazy faucets that require an instruction manual to operate, plus they're a nightmare to keep tidy. I'll take an undermount sink every time.
Nowadays with so many distressed houses on the market, it's foolish to personalize/trendify a house too much. Sellers have got to appeal to the greatest number of buyers out to get a sale - much less a sale price approaching the dollar value desired -and that means quality materials and workmanship, and classic-styled features that most buyers would want.
Our taste doesn't fit with our local real estate market -- which is why we had such a hard time finding a house in the first place -- we were looking for unrenovated "virgins". I hate paying top dollar for someone else's renovations (which I invariably dislike in our very conservative and very frugal town).
My husband always says that our house won't appeal to many people, but when we rented it out, our property manager had 10 couples trying to rent it on the first day. Guess we'll see what shape it is in when we get back this summer...
It's a medium-sized bungalow in a neighborhood of McMansions, but we have probably outdone our typical market -- yep, 6 burner Wolf range, concrete terrazzo and soapstone counters in the kitchen! Bathrooms with simple sinks and deep bathtub (no jets!), but honed green slate on the floors, and white Brazilian glass mosaic tiles on the walls (same ones in the kitchen too). We went with a walk-in shower stall in one bathroom, and a really great deep tub in the other. I know it is not the tub/shower combo everyone says they want, but we think that it is the best of both worlds.
Hopefully, it will pay off in the end.
(no distressed homes in our Canadian market, and prices continue to rise astronomically)
Seeing the title and scrolling down to the photos of the bathrooms just had me cracking up! That plain as day Ass sculpture ;D
It's a tough decision really, do you make your home easier to sell or go with your own style? Fortunately I tend to be simple. *Nice ASS
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA that shower looks like a time capsule!! I'd be afraid to ever get dirty, if I had to get in there I'd wonder where it would take me.
jetted tubs = bacteria breeders