Guest Post: Finding the potential in your home

One of my good friends has gone through a similar renovating process with her fiance and have designed and renovated their home beautifully, she has also provided us with a number of useful tips and suggestions when we went through the renovation process ourselves. I asked her to share some of her experiences, challenges and she talks a lot about finding the potential in your home.

By Claire Butler

Three years ago my partner and I bought a house in Weston Creek. It was a house that turned a lot of buyers off because they couldn't see its potential. They couldn't look past the bright coloured walls, the dated bathroom and laundry (including a bright pink toilet) and the three different flooring's (carpet, tiles and vinyl).
Potential buyers looked straight past the large bedrooms, the extra room off the main bedroom that could easily be an en-suite and walk in robe, the massive block, and the separate living areas (separate family and lounge room). And to be honest, at first I did exactly the same thing at first! In the end it worked in our favour that so many people were turned off the house so quickly because it meant that we were able to get it a lot cheaper than the asking price.

We renovated and designed every single room of the house in our own style. This included painting throughout, laying new floating floors, installing new lights and fans throughout, installing a ducted gas heater, new carpet, re-doing the bathroom and laundry completely, installing new doors and so on. We ran into a few issues while renovating however it all worked out in the end.

 

One of the biggest projects was the bathroom renovation, there was a lot of dodgy DIY work done by previous owners including tiling onto existing tiles, which meant we had to rip up two lots of tiles (so much more work!). We had never tiled before but it was something that we wanted to do and decided to give it a go. We were very lucky that my brother who is a qualified builder and carpenter was able to teach us along with my parents to tile. This was a very time consuming and stressful exercise but one that we don’t regret because we can say we actually renovated everything in this bathroom (besides the plumbing).

We also renovated:

The lounge room: by painting, ripping up the carpet and laying floating floors, new light fittings and blinds. We also removed all the in-wall heaters throughout the house.

The Family room: Removing tiles, filling in a small window, removing a fireplace (that was in the middle of the room, was not functional at all), painted, installed a new back sliding door, and installed new light fittings and a fan. 

The Kitchen: we kept the existing cupboards as they were pretty new and in good condition, however we had to change the layout slightly as the existing owners did not have space for a dishwasher and also had a very small fridge. After changing these things we also installed a new sink and new bench tops and also removed a few cupboards to open up the kitchen. We also tiled the new slash back. 

Bedroom 1: For the short term we have made this extra room a massive walk in robe by installing shelving and hanging space, in the next few months we will change this to a walk in robe and an en suite, however, we are enjoying some time off renovating for now. The bedroom itself had a large inbuilt bookshelf in the middle of the main wall, we took this out and patched the wall, we replaced the cupboard doors to glass sliding doors, new carpet, painted, installed new lights and a fan. We also installed new blinds. 

We have just recently landscaped the backyard (besides the paving area), and now in the process of designing the front yard. After the front yard is completed we will then build an en-suite into the main bedroom and then hopefully everything will be complete! Hopefully… 

Throughout renovating the hardest thing we found was all the different opinions people were giving us. From what brand of paint to use, what layout we should use in the bathroom to whether or not we should take down the walls in the bathroom or just remove the tiles. Everyone’s opinions were valued by both myself and my partner, although at times is was overwhelming and confusing. When this happened we had to sit down together and workout what we thought was the best approach and most relevant for us.

Advice to new renovators is to just get in there and give it a go! If it doesn't go to plan then things can be fixed and you can call the professionals to replace or fix anything, but at least you can say you tried your best to do it and you never know what might happen, most people get hooked and want to renovate another one!