Increasing the Value of Your Home One Project at a Time

D and I are in the process of flipping our home on a small scale. We actually closed on our first house in March of 2006. We are young couple who moved to a town one-thirteenth of the population of where we grew up. We were very optimistic about home repairs and settling here for a while. Unfortunately, we’ve had a hard time adapting to the small-town life and are planning our escape… and we now have an outdated house and a mortgage payment.

Last year, we got a lot more serious about fixing up the place and prepping it for the market. We’ve tried really hard to make the house look as classy as possible spending the least amount possible. So far, here is what we’ve done:

• Painted the hallway, living room, dining room, and kitchen (Purchased Pittsburg Paints brand when Menard’s was having a huge sale.)
• Primed the bathroom, but haven’t decided on a final color (Used primer we already had from priming the above rooms.)
• Built a huge retaining wall in the front yard. This was our most expensive project.
• Laid new Shaw laminate plank flooring in the dining room and kitchen (Purchased when Menard’s was having a huge Shaw flooring blowout – we haven’t seen our flooring for cheaper then what we purchased it for.)
• Installed new outlets and new hardwood outlet covers (Stained the covers and installed the new outlets ourselves.)
• Installed a new kitchen countertop (Purchased sheets and installed ourselves.)
• Installed new entry light, new hallway lights, new overhead kitchen lights, new under-cabinet puck lights, and re-vamped the dining room light. (Purchased discontinued and clearanced lighting.)
• Purchased a new refrigerator to match the rest of the kitchen appliances (Purchased online as Best Buy was clearancing out their stock of black Whirlpool fridges, then used our $500 credit card rewards check to purchase it… final cost = $0!)
• Installed new bathroom floor (Menard’s was discontinuing some premium Armstrong vinyl tile.)
• Currently planning the kitchen backsplash. Menard’s was discontinuing their stock of real travertine tile and it was 75% off. We will be purchasing Mohawk’s 1” glazed metallic ‘Rocco Pia’ tile to intersperse with the 4” travertine– a splurge.
• Currently planning the attack on the very flat, very 70s cabinets. Even re-facing them is going to cost more than we want to spend.

In the future, each 100% completed room will have its own post along with photos and how much we spent on the upgrades. Next Friday, I will explain our kitchen countertop upgrade, including all options we considered, instructions on how to lay the countertops, and photos of the entire process. See you then!