We're gonna talk about bathrooms, basements,
and then upgrades to energy, appliances, and mechanicals.
Bathrooms are important, obviously,
because it's the first thing buyers see
when they walk through your house
that they want to redo.
All right, if you don't have at least a clean bathroom,
people are gonna walk through and say ah,
this is gonna talk too much money.
I don't wanna buy the whole house.
Bathroom renovations can be super simple,
and I'm gonna talk to you about some simple things
to do there.
So I'm gonna show your right now,
a before of my bathroom in my house
which is there on the top of the screen.
Which listen, don't get me wrong, looks nice.
It's a fine bathroom.
If you were there in person, and you get up close,
you know, it was small.
It was tight, and so I wanted to completely redo it.
So the lower image is what we did,
and we really blew the whole thing up.
We moved the tub, we kind of opened up the whole shower,
so there's little things that you can do, right?
You can change out fixtures.
Your fixtures are the same ones you've had
since you bought the house.
That makes a bathroom look absolutely brand new.
You can change the grout.
The first thing I tell everybody,
other than just painting.
Yes.
Because that goes a long way.
The grout in the tiles, whether it's in your bathtub
or shower, on the floors, it can get pretty grimy
over the years of wet feet, and hands, and soap, and dust.
So just changing that and bringing it back
to a lighter color can really open up a bathroom.
You can even just put in a glass door
instead of an old curtain.
That'll make a bathroom feel brand new.
Or you can change out the vanity and add storage.
I wanna show you, this is my favorite, is basements.
That found room.
So here's a before photo of what my basement looked like
when I bought my house, and here is the after photo.
And so.
Wow.
These two images, so opposite,
but if you really look at the details,
I didn't really do a whole lot.
I painted the brick, you know,
from the red original brick into a whitewash.
You just put in some benches.
Yeah, added some wooden benches.
I put down a rubber gym floor.
And I had, what was the most expensive here,
is we found a guy that would do shower doors,
and said hey, can you do a shower door,
but without the door and just make a mirror,
and just carve it so it fits into this kind of shape
of the archways in my gym?
He said yeah, no problem.
Wasn't that expensive.
But it was the most expensive thing down here.
And voila, now I've got this big, beautiful,
bright gym that is now in the cellar.
So cellar spaces, which are underground
and a lot of times just used for storage and stuff,
you're never gonna use ever anyway.
That's right.
But I love how you made it look like daylight.
You guys were so clever with that.
It looks like the sun coming into the room
because you have the reflective object
rather than the basement wall.
Yup.
And our gym is in the cellar.
I wish I could that down there.
I'm gonna go try and canoodle that.
Yeah, do it.
You could also make it a home office,
or a second home office, or a playroom,
a crafts room.
All that is to say that your cellar doesn't need
to have a full renovation.
It's probably pretty good the way it is
with a little TLC, and then boom,
you've got more house.
Okay, so, the energy, I love this,
because people, especially after the last two years,
this is something that I think speaks to everyone.
Having better mechanicals and energy systems,
and appliances in any environment speaks to everyone
in the market, right?
Yes, exactly.
And listen, buyers hate to have to deal
with utility upgrades because it feels like
it's so much work.
You know, if they see an old boiler,
or an old HVAC system.
You know, like the old panels on the wall
where you've got the little line and every.
No, no, no, no, no.
Those are easy fixes that you could do
that are gonna make your life easier,
but are also gonna make your house seem a lot more valuable.
Now, I didn't have any good before or after photos
of my mechanical rooms, or systems,
so what I wanted show, though,
is a before photo of my kitchen,
and an after photo of my kitchen.
Just to show that.
Wow.
I did a new kitchen, but I also went to hide things
that were kind of like unsightly in a new kitchen.
So today, people like to spend a lot of time
in their kitchens, so they cover a lot of things up,
and that's exactly what we did.