Structurally this property was fine, and there were no problems with the brick finish or the slab. However, it had a very untidy appearance from the street, with broken windows and very messy fiy screens. What was appealing about this property was its location in a reasonable part of town. The renovation consisted of cleaning up both inside and out, and undertaking some basic landscaping at the front.
This renovation took us less than seven weeks, with a profit of $20,000. Requirements. And expectations may vary but, for us at the time, this was a great return for seven weeks of effort (Elise part time). A number of changes were made to this property.
The outside didn’t have any landscaping and the back yard was filled with old bikes, boxes and all sorts of other rubbish. Our aim for the outside was to clean up, make it neat and tidy, add some very basic garden beds and add a garden shed (mainly to all in some of the space in the back yard). We also decided to erect simple car accommodation.
On the inside, everything we did was very cosmetic. In the bathroom you will notice in the ‘before‘ and ‘after’ images that the vanity stays the same but has different door handles and taps. The original handles and taps were plastic, and were replaced with new stainless steel handles and chrome taps. The original bathroom wall tiles were retained, as was the original bath, as there was nothing wrong with them.
The mirror and shower screen both had black frames, so were replaced with a stainless steel finish. The original black combination made the room feel small and dark.
The bathroom, in fact the entire house, was painted sky blue with a dark blue trim on the windows, architraves and skirting’s. By simply repainting with lighter, neutral colors all the rooms felt much bigger. In summary, the changes in the bathroom were very cosmetic, didn’t require us to spend a lot of money, and achieved a great final result.
In the kitchen, the renovation was again classified as cosmetic. As everything in this house was cultured blue, it influenced what changes needed to be , made. When the house was built, blue may have looked trendy but, unfortunately, it is not an easy color to sell and had most likely put many people off buying the property. Our aim was to remove the blue but avoid the expense of having to replace the entire kitchen. The actual cabinetry behind the blue panels (called the carcass) was in ?ne condition, so we were able to simply remove all the doors and end panels, replacing them with white. We confirmed this decision and the pricing before we purchased the property as part of the due diligence step of costing our renovation using our Renovation Costing Tool. We had our kitchen cabinetmaker come to the property to view and confirm all of our options. The total cost for making over this kitchen was less than $2,000, including a new overhead cabinet and new appliances (oven, cooktop and range hood).
The same process applied to the kitchen sink. We replaced the existing worn out sink mixer tap with a new one.