Anonymous wrote:8:42PP - if the corian looks nice, I wouldn't replace it with granite. Granite (which I have for the second time) is nice, but I find corian just as attractive, and I imagine plenty of folks would be fine with it. It's also not a huge expense should someone need to replace it later.

You may or may not have to redo your bathrooms. If you're in a hot area and the house is great otherwise, it'll still sell. It just won't sell for as high as if you had new baths, and it might not sell quite as immediately. New baths did help me sell my fairfax townhouse faster, but I willingly bought my current arlington SFH with older baths.

I'm 8:42 -- Thanks for giving me hope PP. However, I think we're going to have to bite the bullet and do both. We're in Western Fairfax County and, although our home sits on an awesome lot, most people will be looking for those updates in our neighborhood. I just have to figure out the timing so we can get the bathroom work done without too much upheaval.

kitchen. It is big, but outdated and contractor grade everything.
1. yucky laminate flooring. It looks like there are random "melted" places in it, and it never looks really clean.
2. dishwasher is in an akward corner of cabinets...so you can unload the dishes onto the counter, but to put them away in the cabinets above, you have to close the dishwasher.
3. CABINETS. Lots of them, but they are the crappy golden oak MDF, and there is no pantry.
4. shallow kitchen sink
5. Huge fluorescent light fixture
I can deal with the formica countertops for now, and I am happy that at least we don't have to deal with wallpaper, and the appliances still work, so that's good. Still beats my former home's updated galley kitchen!

I don't think we'll be able to afford to redo all at once, so I am thinking that we'll tile the floors first within the next 12 months and then move on to replace cabinets,sink,appliances,countertops, and lighting as money allows.

lack of mudroom

8:42PP - if the corian looks nice, I wouldn't replace it with granite. Granite (which I have for the second time) is nice, but I find corian just as attractive, and I imagine plenty of folks would be fine with it. It's also not a huge expense should someone need to replace it later.

You may or may not have to redo your bathrooms. If you're in a hot area and the house is great otherwise, it'll still sell. It just won't sell for as high as if you had new baths, and it might not sell quite as immediately. New baths did help me sell my fairfax townhouse faster, but I willingly bought my current arlington SFH with older baths.

Lack of closet space in general, especially in the master bedroom. (my daughter's closet is fabulous, but her room is much smaller.) Front hall closet has no coat rod.

The bathrooms aren't redone, and apparently I need to replace the pipes before I gut and redo them. Ugh.

a really shallow thing: the kitchen cabinet where I keep my plates/bowls has a door hung the wrong way. It should open to the left and it opens to the right. It's incredibly annoying. I wonder if I can switch it out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have thousands of dollars of deferred maintenance and repairs - most of which do not make our daily life nicer:
- needs a new roof and facia boards and gutters
- needs a new floor and ceiling in the basement
- lead paint on outdoor railing and trim
- my kids (oops, did I say that out load?)
- needs a new water heater
- fuse box (yep, "fuse" box) should be updated
- no insulation in most of the walls and no way to get it in there
- crumbling chimney
- huge dying tree hanging over my house (est. +$5k to remove)

OK, I've got to go to sleep now.

I feel your pain. I'd deal with this one ASAP however if it's a fire hazard. Unfortunately a new electric box is $2,500 or so depending on size of the house.

Strictly from a safety standpoint, I do not worry about the fuse box. It's not that old (1970) and fuses are safe until someone puts in the wrong fuse (hard to do because the threads are different for each amperage) or someone inserts a penny. We have a dozen 120v circuits for a small rambler so we don't blow fuses.

But I know that insurance companies know that if they insure 100 houses with fuses and 100 houses with circuit breakers, they are more likely to have fires with the fused houses because the likelihood of someone doing something dumb with their fuse box is much higher than the chance of a circuit breaker going bad (which has happened to me in a previous home). When we sell the house, I know that it is something that will have to be replaced (sound of more money being flushed).

Why the previous owner updated the original fuse box with a new fuse box in 1970 (and where he found it) instead of circuit breakers will remain a mystery.

Anonymous wrote:2 story family room...HATE IT!!!

What's wrong with the two story family room? Is it just due to heating/cooling bills?

Anonymous wrote:Four levels. Kids bedrooms on the top floor, laundry in the basement. At least the kids are getting old enough to carry their own laundry baskets (if I can stand waiting for them to actually do it!)

This is why I love our laundry shoot. We live in a 3-story house and we actually did not mind having washer and dryer in the lower level. Now, if only I can stop my 2 yo from throwing toys down there.

We're probably going to have to put the house on the market next year and I'm dreading having the realtor come in. I know she's going to want us to put granite in the kitchen (we currently have corian) and redo our two bathrooms. We are probably going to have to reasphalt our driveway too. We've already done a lot of work to the house but knowing that those big projects are coming up even before we declutter and complete the other required projects for putting the house up for sale is depressing.

My wife and I aimed low in what we could buy, so we could afford to fix up many of the annoyances. We moved out generator from our old house and put in new ceiling light fixtures through out the house, a new roof/gutter guards, a beefed-up alarm system, a ceiling fan in the bathroom (that only ran us $1,000), HVAC ductwork through the rest of the basement, fixed a few things that were broken -- basically, we were able to fix *everything* listed on the home inspector's report and include a few things we wanted to have.

Two major peeves that I figure we'll get to in the next five years...
* The basement seems to have a problem heating up. I'm not sure if the furnace just isn't able to pump hot air through the entire house, if the hot air gets sucked back up the ceiling HVAC outlet, or what. Fortunately, there are baseboard heaters throughout the basement so we can just heat up the room we're in.
* The backyard is graded so that drainage from our neighbors' sump pumps/backyards ends up in our backyard. Between March-May and October-November, the otherwise usable backyard becomes unusable unless it's been over 50 and not raining for a few days (Sunday she was able to play). During the summer, though, everything dries up often enough that it's not a problem, and (most fortunately) the house itself is not affected.

But first on our list is getting a deck table and some deck chairs to supplement the Adirondack chairs and old deck chairs we do have -- as we're guaranteed that for X hundred dollars, we'll get patio furniture that'll let us have breakfast outside, etc., etc., as opposed to the potential money holes the other two are.

Ditto on the closet. Ours is a half closet and holds six coats, max. We somewhat solved the problem with two coat trees in a corner of the front hall, one adult size and one at kid level. Don't love having the coats in view, but it's better than nothing!

2 story family room...HATE IT!!!

The master bath, a 1952 original with horrific pink tile in poor shape, a pink sink in a laminate vanity, and nasty-looking shower doors. We need to re-do it but have been delaying (for 10 years!) because of the money involved.

At least this house has a foyer/front hall. Our last house, a 1940s postwar colonial (they are ubiquitous in this area), had no foyer at all - you walked in the front door, right into the living room, with the stairway a couple of feet in front of you. It made me nuts not to have a place to put backpacks, shoes, coats, etc.

Anonymous wrote:Our front hall closet is too small, too. It is the only closet on the main level, so between the various coats/jackets for our whole family, we can't offer to hang up coats for guests - we usually end up just laying them out across a bench we have near the front door.

We do plan to fix this soon by installing a long shelf with coat hooks along the wall above the bench. Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

The other thing that bugs me is that when we purchased the house, the previous owners had it repainted before putting it up for sale. By repainting, I mean they apparently had someone come in and paint everything floor to ceiling (including beautiful crown molding!) an off-white color that looks a bit like old newspaper. We repainted all the walls before we moved in, but what still bugs me is that they also painted the railings and bannisters. They just look awful painted like that, as they are metal!

The quote to replace them was insane, so we are fixing this by painstakingly going through and removing the paint with chemicals. It is a total PITA.

Hence the "insane" quote!

Our front hall closet is too small, too. It is the only closet on the main level, so between the various coats/jackets for our whole family, we can't offer to hang up coats for guests - we usually end up just laying them out across a bench we have near the front door.

We do plan to fix this soon by installing a long shelf with coat hooks along the wall above the bench. Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

The other thing that bugs me is that when we purchased the house, the previous owners had it repainted before putting it up for sale. By repainting, I mean they apparently had someone come in and paint everything floor to ceiling (including beautiful crown molding!) an off-white color that looks a bit like old newspaper. We repainted all the walls before we moved in, but what still bugs me is that they also painted the railings and bannisters. They just look awful painted like that, as they are metal!

The quote to replace them was insane, so we are fixing this by painstakingly going through and removing the paint with chemicals. It is a total PITA.