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All of my bathrooms and the kitchen. We have an old house and none of the bathrooms have been upgraded since the 50's and the kitchen is the size of a postage stamp! We even have the beautiful pink, grey, baby blue and peach tile from the 50's.
If I wait long enough, maybe they will be in style again
The best return for your money is kitchen and bathroom upgrades. Make sure you get granite counter tops. Wood floors are much more popular than carpet, other than in the bedrooms.
Someone suggested wiring for ceiling fans in every room. good idea. Extra phone jacks are so neccessary anymore, with several phones operating from a central jack.
Lots of good suggestions in here. take your time and make good decisions
This isn't necessarily an upgrade to the home, but once my perfectly functional traditional kitchen fridge goes (probably not for a while, though), I'll definitely get another bottom freezer fridge again. Loved it in my last house!
I have an appointment for next week with the home design studio for my upgrades......let's see how far my 30k goes. here's the list that i've got made out on the things i want in order of preference...... will be interesting to see how many i can actually get.
ceiling fan wiring.....all rooms
surround sound wiring......living room
extra electrical outlets throught house
Mater bath......jetted tub, double vanity, tile flooring, walls and shower.
i know, i know, wishfull thinking on my part that i can get all of these.
i know i won't have enough for the kitchen, i just still don't know which i should upgrade........lets say i upgrade the cabinets, so now i have nice cabinets.......but i have linoleum floors.......or should i have nice tile floor and standard cabinets.
I have to try and do as much as i can now, cus i know once we're in the house we will not upgrade anything.........according to my boyfriend "too much of a hassle"
ya know, it never fails that a lot of the houses that I do design work for have fabulous kitchens, and the owners dont cook! Trophy kitchens? I love to cook, I would do my kitchen! I just put in new floors in my house, so I am eyeballing the kitchen.
For starters, I'd have a pergola built on the back porch -- with a Southern exposure, and a stamped concrete decking, it gets h-o-t in the summer. I'd have some planters built along the outer stretch of the upper deck, and plant something deciduous, perhaps mandevilla.
I'd love to do a low, brick wall with a short wrought-iron fence atop it -- very traditional, in-keeping with this very traditional Georgian house. Because I sit on a corner, I would pull up about 3/4 of the lawn on the side of the house, and do mass plantings of azaleas -- the lovely big formosas. Just in front of the azaleas, I'd plant perennials.
When I sit in the yard, and daydream about winning the lottery, these are the things I imagine I'd love to do to the house.
For the kitchen, upgrade the cabinets now. It's costly later since it's all custom order to fit. Upgrading the counter-top is fairly simple since most of it is precut and just installed on-site.
I think I've got to agree with this suggestion. Changing cabinet sizes & style down the road affects the floor as well. By the time you completely recover from sticker shock of closing & catch up on furnishings, you'll be approaching the seen better days shelf life out of the cheapo countertops.
Should you see no reason the kitchen floorplan would need rearrangement, might as well lock in high end cabinetry. It's like a classic black dress that goes anywhere.
Who knows, maybe a better quality and/or style countertop will have developed by then?
I think I've got to agree with this suggestion. Changing cabinet sizes & style down the road affects the floor as well. By the time you completely recover from sticker shock of closing & catch up on furnishings, you'll be approaching the seen better days shelf life out of the cheapo countertops.
Should you see no reason the kitchen floorplan would need rearrangement, might as well lock in high end cabinetry. It's like a classic black dress that goes anywhere.
Who knows, maybe a better quality and/or style countertop will have developed by then?
excellent suggestion, and one most folks dont think about, cabinets are kinda a forever thing, unless you want to redo the floor as well........this is kind of an out of the box suggestion for countertops, but think about concrete. I have done a few houses with them. They can be tinted any color, are much cheaper than granite, dont have to be sealed at least twice a year like granite, and can be formed into more shapes than granite....... just a suggestion...... I am thinking about myself. I wanted marble, but thats worse than granite, my next choice was zinc, but thats more, too........ just my luck, my taste always exceeds my budget.
Done right, and concrete countertops can be beautiful.
My husband tried it out after buying the book by (Cheng?). We even went to his showroom outside of San Francisco, his stuff was great.
Anyhow, DH did our island in concrete. For a first-time attempt, it didn't turn out half bad.
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Unless the original tile is in bad shape, removing it wouldn't be an upgrade, it would be a crime!
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Additional landscaping
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