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'Flipping' Our House
My husband and I moved to a new region knowing that we would only be here for 2-5 years. We decided that we would buy a home instead of rent, and try to "flip" it - mostly for fun, and to learn more about real estate and to see if it's something we'd like to get more involved with. We watched a 1987 ranch home sit on the market for at least 6 months before buying it, and we were able to get it for $15,000 less than the original asking price. We're pretty sure that no one wanted it because of the 1400sf of textured walls. We figured that was a cosmetic renovation that we'd be able to handle - and we did! The walls are de-textured and look fantastic, and it only cost about 100 bucks to do 
I was also able to fix up the main bathroom (I know that bathrooms sell houses), and that's nice and sparkly new looking now. I'm going to use the same techniques to spiff up the master bath as well.
The house has a nice sized wrap around deck on the front/side, but it was old, shabby looking and painted a horrible shade of BLUE. We're in the process of flipping/sanding the boards, and we're going to replace the outdated spindle ballisters with some modern ones. We're also adding front steps and a path (there's no way to get to the front door from the driveway!) We expect the deck renovations to run us about $600 in lumber and skirting and stuff.
Anyway...here's what I need advice on...it looks like we're going to sell soonish (we've been here a year and a half and hate the region so we're going to leave sooner than later). We're trying to figure out a few last minute projects. The house has a family room and a pretty long (12X24) living room. I realized that if I put the dining room table (have one of those living/dining combo rooms) in the living room since it's so long, than I can expand the kitchen from 12X12 to 12X24. It would probably cost around $800 (give or take) (the existing cabinets look nice, but they're cheap-o contractor grade materials).
Also, we have a weird room in the center of the house that has no windows. I'm trying to figure out how to stage this. The house doesn't have a lot of storage, so I'm considering building a wall in the middle of it (there's 2 doors, go figure) and having a large walk in closet, and a small "bonus" room (8 or 9x12ish) (stage it like a craft room or something). No one will want a room with no windows, but I figure that if it's just a tiny little "bonus" room, it's not going to turn buyers off, right?
Lastly - the paint job. Most of the rooms are tan, but we have a green accent wall in the living room and a red accent in the kitchen. Should I leave the accents? They make the tan less "blah" but I don't know if it's a preference thing. Also, our baby boy's room is tan, but I spent a million hours painting stripes on the bottom half of the wall (thought we'd be here longer).I'm not sure if I should leave them for the time being (being that the room is going to remain "staged" as a nursery).
Thanks for your thoughts!!
Re: 'Flipping' Our House
Wow, incredibly long post.
1) I don't really understand what you're saying about the kitchen and dining areas. Yes, getting rid of builder grade anything is always good, but what would a person do with a 12x24 kitchen? That's ridiculously long. Do you mean to have a casual eating area there in addition to the formal DR you're moving into the LR?
Rather than splitting the house into two 12x24 halves, could you not take down the wall between the kitchen and LR to make the spaces less bowling alley? What if you ran the cabinets all along the exterior wall of the house (the wall that's now half kitchen and half LR) and then put a big island facing bedroom 3, then have a keeping area staged with comfy chairs and ottomans beside the eating area.
2) Stage it as a bedroom, office, or craft room. Don't build any walls. Let the next people figure out what to do with it.
3) Leave the paint. A little personality is a good thing.
My Pinterest
The Googlesites Paint Bio
Thinking of doing cosmetic updates to a dated home? These were our costs.
Yeah, I was thinking like...extra cabinets (there's really no storage in the existing kitchen) and an island with stools (no appliances, that would make it lose functionality). Right now, the kitchen is just incredibly small and it looks like something you would find in an apartment it's 12X12 but has a laundry/utility closet in it so it's really more like 9X12. There's a window in the current "dining" area, so that breaks up the space. There's really no way to do anything about the "bowling alley" (due to a load bearing wall) but I find that if I can at least make half of the living room a "dining area" it breaks it up and makes the incredibly long space look intentional.
I wish I could, again, that's a load bearing wall. It's not that it's impossible to do that, it's just that it doesn't make sense to invest in for a flip.
Thanks, that's easy enough. I was thinking about maybe putting in french doors between that room and the living room...but I worry that it'll make the dining space look to cluttered with so many things going on.
I hope that turns out to be the general consensus...I'm getting really sick of painting :P The people we bought the house from painted every room, and we just ended up re-painting it, and they wasted all of that time.
Great idea for that space, but I bet the plumbing and venting costs will be prohibitive, esp since OP is trying to sell.
My Pinterest
The Googlesites Paint Bio
Thinking of doing cosmetic updates to a dated home? These were our costs.
Possibly, but the bathroom plumbing doesn't appear to be that far and if the plumbing runs through the basement, it really wouldn't be that costly to add a water line into the room.
The dryer could probably be vented up through the attic.
The cost would all really depend on if there is an attic and a basement. If there is I don't think it would be much more than tearing down walls.
I also suggest taking down the wall between the kitchen and the living room. It isn't expensive to have a wall taken down (even if it is load bearing) and it isn't expensive to resecure that area in the attic to compensate for the lack of wall. I think opening up that area, then adding an island with some bar stools would prove to be valuable when the house is marketed to sell. If you watch house hunters, most people on there want a kitchen open to the living room for "entertaining" (I always wonder how many of those couples actually entertain, you know?). I would leave the dining room as is.
As far as the third bedroom, I would probably stage it as an office area - add some shelves or if you are really handy, add built ins to that room and make it look kind of manly so it could be an office/man room kind of space since man rooms are the in thing right now.
Ah, I always forget about basements since this is slab/crawlspace country because of the water table. A basement would make that much easier.
My Pinterest
The Googlesites Paint Bio
Thinking of doing cosmetic updates to a dated home? These were our costs.
Did ALL of the other posts where we went into extensive detail about what layout would work best with your house get thrown out the window? I remember you having very long posts with massive lists of must haves in the house and as we gave suggestions you kept coming up with more and more requirements. Then I drew up new floor plans for you. Do you remember that? Because I do. This was just one of them. But yet you keep coming on here posts as if you're new and hoping for different responses.