All right. Today, we're headed into the
office for a video call with Tim and Liz Spiller. They're currently living near
Seattle, but they also have a home here in Snohomish that they need our help selling. Hey, guys. How are you? We just wanted to hop on real quick and have
a quick conversation about your property there on Pine. I know you guys were out of the country a. Few years ago. We had know purchased a home
and I ended up getting a job in the UK and decided to put the house on the market after
being on the market for roughly. It was like five months. Five months. Wow. Wow. Traveling back and forth, trying to deal with
selling the house. So it got to be too much. Now that we're back, we obviously want to
sell it as soon as possible because we don't want to to support two households. Yeah. Wake up and live the dream. Hit the scene fresh on the scene. I think it's pretty obvious why it's not
selling. You can't even see it from the road. Yeah, the color is less than appealing. Yeah, it's very drab out here. I'm already seeing paint. The roof is a little concerning the
landscaping. So this is the probably great room. Yeah. Honestly, from outside, if we can get
the buyer in, this is a really great room that we can do a lot with. I think in here, this is exactly what
Snohomish has. The charm, the arched doorways, the built
ins. We've got the lath and plaster walls. Yep. Overall, this is really nice. Let's see the kitchen. Oh, and there's a
little breakfast nook. That's super fun. Love the dining, Love the breakfast nook. Something's weird about the kitchen. What is it? It's the cabinets. Oh, Leslie, They put the knobs in the middle
of the cabinet. Weird. I've never seen that before. Why would you do that? I don't know. Huh? Very strange. This whole kitchen is just bizarre. What happened here? Yeah, I hear you. We ran out of cabinet, out of cabinets. Okay, so let's see the bedrooms. Oh, that's kind of fun. That right there is the character I'm
talking about. These are the typical steep stairs. Steep and narrow, like all old homes. So this would be our only bathroom upstairs. So we have four bedrooms sharing one
bathroom. So if this is going to be our upstairs
bathroom, I'd like it to be as nice as we can possibly make it. So I would assume that
this is going to be our main bedroom. Then at this price point for a main bedroom,
we want to give something really special. So I think, yeah, framing this in making his
and her closets special lighting. And then I do think we need to address the
fact that we have one bathroom for this entire floor. Well, I think this would work
for people that had kids that could go downstairs because the downstairs bathroom
is literally at the bottom of the stairs. Yeah, I'm thinking, is there a way for us to
make this main bathroom? And the main bedroom here on the upper floor
closed off in private when they want it private and then open to the kids or
whomever when they don't need it to be private, there are going to be people that
just are not okay with buying a house in this price range where they do not have their own
bathroom and it is what it is. I'm very comfortable with it. I feel like we could do a lot of really fun
things. I would love to do both. Bathrooms, kitchen. I feel like there's a lot of places inside
where we need continuity with the older character of the home, the front yard, the
paint, the roof. It's a matter of getting the sellers to wrap
their head around. I think this is a bigger project than they
realized. Let's get our pricing together, find a
priority and then compromise. I don't think Tim and Liz realize how much
work their house needs to be able to sell at top dollar. Hi. Hey. It's nice to meet you guys in person
finally. Right. Today we're going to meet them at a
comparable house to show them what it's going to take to update their home. This is a great comp just for us to walk
through and see. Move in. Ready? Yeah, Move in. Ready for sure. In your front living room
and really throughout the rest of the house. We'd want to brighten it up with some fresh
paint, new trim and cohesive design. Just those simple touches, along with
deliberate staging will make a huge impact when a buyer walks in the front door. Let's check out the kitchen because that's
going to be a big focus for your guys's house as well. Well, I mean, there's no comparison. This kitchen is really nice and bright and
clean and new. Absolutely. Love the wood flooring along with
the white cabinets. Yeah, It's put together nicely. Your kitchen feels dated and closed off by
installing new cabinets, flooring and dropping the height of the peninsula will
create a user friendly space that buyers will not want to leave. And when we install the
new cabinets, we'll make sure we put the knobs where they actually belong. So you were looking to sell at 550 and you
did that for how long? Yeah, 5 to 6 months. Yeah. So a good run at it. So I think we can all confidently say it
didn't sell and wasn't going to sell at 550. So you know, there may be almost a 25,000
price drop there to get that buyer in. I would hate to see that house go for 525. So we've kind of come up with a plan. There are some major areas that we would
like to definitely hit everything from the curb appeal. We want to be able to give that
first impression with some beautiful paint. We do that kitchen, the dress, the outdated
bathroom downstairs. Given the fact that the upstairs bath is
shared by four bedrooms, we'd want to create some added privacy for that main bedroom to
make up for the lack of ensuite. We'd also recarpet the upstairs, repaint the
walls and install new light fixtures. The charm of this Craftsman home has been
largely covered up over the years, but we'd like to restore that charm by adding a
cohesive Craftsman style back to the home. So we're going to be putting in $80,000 our
own money for the renovation aspect, and that's a pretty large investment. But we would take that price from 525 to a
650 list price. So at the end, after our investments back,
we would have additional profit of $45,000. So 22,500 for you and same for us. And that would kind of be a win win. Yeah, definitely. This project has a bigger scope than we
usually take on. Especially since it's a big house and we're
overhauling the whole thing. Check this out, guys. Oh, so we pulled up all the carpet and look. Are these. We found floors. Floors? Yeah. Oh, my. Goodness. All the way through most. Of the upstairs. Wow. No, it looks actually in decent condition. Oh, my goodness. We had budgeted for new carpet. However, I feel like with these floors, we
don't refinish them, but instead we clean them up and we paint them like we just did
in the office. Yeah. Believe it or not, when hardwood
floors are painted the right way, it's just as durable as stain floors. Putting a new roof on the Spiller's house is
going to be a huge selling point, and once we give the rest of the house a fresh coat of
paint, it'll hopefully bring those buyers in the door of this charming old home. Come on, Jeff. I have some thoughts. Thoughts mean requests in Lindsey language. Thank you. I will interpret. Okay. I have some thoughts, requests,
concerns, desires, ideas. Wants. Ooh, I'm good. Unfortunately, with charming old homes comes
some not so charming problems like limited number of bathrooms. And I'd like to get Jeff's opinion on some
possible solutions. This is the main bedroom. This is the only bathroom upstairs. We can't add another bathroom. No. In this age home, the money we're
dealing with. So my ideas are we put a door here and make
this all just a main bed with their own private ensuite. The parents could close it when they need
privacy and the children could go downstairs. I like having a door here. Okay. Okay. One of the things that we all
agreed to is keeping the old charm, right? If we put a door here, it needs to be an old
door because you walk up the stairs. It's the first thing. The first thing you
see? Yes. Old doors are not cheap. We can make a new door look old. We've done it before. Okay? It kind of gives that illusion. So it stays with the charm of the house and
in a more budget friendly way, for sure. All right. I'm curious to what you're going
to do to the door. Yeah, Yeah. Well, you'll be amazed. Oh five. Our team has been working their butts off
over at the Spiller house and it's really looking good. The roof is about wrapped up
and the exterior is now a gorgeous greenish gray. Inside we painted the walls, a soft
gray classic. Subway tiles are up on the bathroom, walls
on the floors. We're going to do a beautiful black and
white tile that will also carry into the kitchen area. Huh? Oh, my gosh. I love this. Jeff, what's up? We're so happy already. This feels more like we stepped into a 1900s
craftsman craftsman home. I love how this came back down to. Yes. Yeah, this is going to open this two. Rooms up. Really opens it up. When we first walked through, we had talked
about building just a simple built in bench. I don't even need a back to it because I
really don't want to block 100%. Would the bench come below the molding? Yeah. A normal seat is like 18in 18. Brings it up out there. I love this because what we're doing is we're
adding a piece of furniture to the space which is just added value. Yeah, it's. Going to look really good too. It's a good use of. Space and in this age home it's not uncommon
to find built ins. So this is definitely what you would see in
a Craftsman home in 19 tens. Yeah. Oh. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Totally different. I love the green color. That's great. Yeah. And the yard looks great. You can see out on the street, too. I love that. Now we've got the street view
and it just feels a lot brighter and more welcoming. Great. And you have this giant side yard. I know, I know. Who knew that was there? Right. So we feel like before it wasn't
selling because obviously there was no curb appeal. So new roof. Yes. You saw that. We talked about we did
new gutters, cleaned up all the landscaping, obviously painted it. So the outside now is
just ready to go. That's really great. It really turned it into something where when
you come in, you want to pull in here now? Yeah. All right, here we go. Come on in. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Absolutely amazing. It looks great, you guys. You did such a good job. Thank you. So this room, we didn't do a ton to honestly,
because I love the character in this room. We've got the craftsman style. So when people walked in this house
originally before they were expecting, you know, the charm, the character of a 1940s
home, and they got that. But it was also dark. Now we're hoping that people walk in and
they still see, you know, the history of the fireplace, the history of the floors, the
built ins, but also get the light and the bright and all of that. Oh, I love the kitchen. I love that the stove is back on that side
now. Everything looks so good. It's functional and you break it, but you can
still actually talk to people as they're sitting here at the table. This is perfect. Come on up. Okay. We're going to pause right here at the
top of the stairs. Wow. Oh, look, there's a door. Look, there's no carpet and. There's no carpet. So, yeah, we pulled up the carpet and there
was original hardwood floors. Nice. Really? It would have cost, you know,
probably close to $10,000 to pull up the different sections and replace wood and then
refinish it all and stuff. So we made the same choice in our store,
which was to paint it. No, it looks great. And then, Tim, Yes, you're right. There's a new door. A door, finally. Yes. I don't want to brag or anything, but I
actually made this door. Well, tell them how. What? You mean you made the door? I went out and chopped down a tree. She did not. Fine. I bought a hollow wood door, put trim on it
to kind of make it have that older style look. But our whole reason for this is when
you open up, we moved the door from inside to here so that the person that takes this room
has a main bedroom with a main en suite. That was one of the things that I really
wanted was to have just a suite up here. Take a look. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Go ahead, peek around. You have a whole tile surround in here and
new vanity. It looks really good. Whoever is in this main suite can have their
own bathroom.
