One of the smartest things you can do on a fixer upper to increase its value is fix or improve the floors. There are major fixes which require large sums of money to implement and then there are fixes that do not require a large cash outlay yet make an immediate improvement in aesthetic appeal or your homes value.
Such improvements involve cosmetic touches while others simply have to do with replacing or repairing what you currently have there. It doesn’t matter if the reason for your overhaul is because you wish to flip the home or because you wish to have a prettier or healthier floor. The tips below apply to either and can be implemented with a small to medium sized budget in mind.
1. Fix -
If you have tile carpeting on your floors and some of them are now cracked, it would not cost a large sum of money to fix the broken tiles by hiring someone to fix them for you or by learning how to DIY. By doing it yourself, you could easily end up saving hundreds if not thousands of dollars in labor costs. You could take an inexpensive one day class or workshop at a community college and try to fix them yourself. If you decide to hire out, you could ask family and friends for low cost recommendations of reputable and local handymen. Maybe you even have a family member who does side work and can fix them for you at a very good rate. Or you could take an inexpensive one day class or workshop at a community college and try to fix them yourself.
2. Clean -
You might be surprised what a good professional cleaning can do to a weary and tired floor be it carpeting, wood, rug or any such traditional material. If you have wood floors and they have lost some of their original luster, hiring a local floor cleaning company might do absolute wonders to bring them back to life. Shiny wood floors are a sight to behold and not only that but they could also help with increasing the value of your home if and when it comes time to sell. Don’t kid yourself, people do pay attention to floors and they especially pay attention to healthy nice looking floors.
3. Partially Replace -
If you prefer to do a complete overhaul of the floors in your home but your budget doesn’t allow for this, the next best thing is to do a partial overhaul. This could consist of changing only the broken tiles on a bathroom, changing out old rugging in bedrooms only or replacing worn out carpeting in the kitchen. These partial replacements could cost just a few hundred dollars as opposed to thousands if you opted to change them all out all at the same time. Go room by room and decide which needs the most work and start there.
Whether you want better floors because you have lived in your home for decades and now seek an improvement or because you wish to sell your home in the near future, the potential payoff definitely outweighs the labor and time involved. Good luck with those beautiful floors.
About Missy:
Guest post by: Missy Diaz who writes for Samson Moving, a local moving company based in the greater New Jersey area.
Image via Flickr
