You Want to Upsize Your Home: Now What?
Once the budget has been fixed, there comes the fun part – deciding what to change and how to do it. The right choices will create a light, comfortable, welcoming home that will return a nice profit for your trouble, while the wrong ones can blow both the budget and cut into profit margins – or eliminate them altogether.
Rather than picking fixtures and fittings at random, Caulfield recommends master planning the renovation so that it is creative, appealing and cost-effective. He says that home design professionals are invaluable when it to comes to bringing a concept together. Sydney northern beaches-based home valuer Beau Bowen from Quadrant Real Estate Valuation concurs. He says people shouldn’t be tempted to build Hollywood estatetype features into the home unless they plan to live there and enjoy them for a few years – marble floor tiles, over the top luxury bathrooms, high-end kitchen fittings, lap pools and even home theatres are often a matter of personal taste and do not necessarily add value to the property.
In the case of pools, for example, unless a prospective buyer has a young family, it may prove more of a liability than an asset. Before getting started, you will need to make a dispassionate assessment of whether your home is appropriate for the renovation you have in mind. Getty images 82 LOOK HOME L O O K W O R T H Both indoors and out, it is much better to choose simple, good quality inclusions that appeal to a broad market.
“Idiosyncratic inclusions, like solid gold dolphin-shaped taps, wine cellars and tennis courts, add little and may even detract slightly from the home’s value as potential buyers factor in the cost of replacing them when considering an offer,” he comments. Likewise, modern refurbishments of a period home may actually deter buyers wanting to purchase a character-filled residence. Keep it simple He says that the market favours a simple, uncluttered, streamlined look, which feels light and bright and will have few maintenance hassles, both indoors and outdoors.
For renovators on a tight budget, he suggests updating kitchens and bathrooms with stylish but not necessarily top-of-the-range fixtures and fittings, especially in houses about 20 to 30 years old. It may also make sense to lay new carpet or even replace it with timber flooring or tiles, and repaint using a contemporary colour palette for a fresh, smart look. Externally, simple landscaping and a neat and tidy garden filled with fragrant flowers will also pay dividends.
For those intent on a larger overhaul, Bowen believes that older properties, especially those with red, cream or brown texture brick benefit from rendering or cladding. “A lot of those buildings look quite dated, but they come up very well once they’ve been rendered or clad,” says Bowen. “Tiled roofs may benefit from either being painted, coated or replaced altogether with newer materials to freshen the home’s look,” he says, adding that extensions should be built from low maintenance materials that are easy to install but give good thermal performance and a stylish, contemporary look to the home.
A good choice might be James Hardie’s Scyon™ range of lightweight building materials. These include products that are suitable to a variety of different looks – ranging from classic weatherboard to an industrial finish and even a product that has the appeal of decorative render. Compared to the mess and cost of building with brick, lightweight materials can be easy to install, store and maintain