I love construction and renovations. I love making changes and upgrades.

One of the best parts of my job is providing clients with ideas and a vision for improving their homes. I love the whole process from planning, to discussing the budget, managing the progress and then, always, the big reveal when we are done staging.

For some clients, the concept of spending money to make money can be hard to understand. It can be difficult to tell clients that their home is outdated. I never want to offend anyone but my job is to present the best product that I can, within the specified budget.

We are deep into updating and improving a new listing that I have coming on the market at the end of February. This seller optioned to add value to her property in order to get a higher selling price.

We sat down together and looked at comps and how best to achieve her goals. She has a specific price in mind and I knew we had to make some changes in order to get there.

Here are a few photos of the work in progress.

We are making the following improvements:

• New carpet throughout the house.
• Painting the interior walls. We are going with the light gray look, which is the hottest thing out there right now.
• Painting the kitchen cabinets. Going light gray.
• We considered replacing the appliances with stainless. The current ones are white but they are very high-end and fairly new. It didn’t make sense to spend money on a lesser quality package. This is an example of the give and take needed when mapping out the best plan for return on investment.
• The fourth bedroom was more of an open loft, so we sheet rocked in the wall making it a true bedroom.
• The biggest investment was converting the third car garage to a fifth bedroom.  The home will now have a downstairs bedroom and bathroom, which is always a plus in any floor plan. This also adds square footage to the home.

I can’t wait to show you the AFTER photos once we are all done. And, I promise, it will be staged to perfection!