Beating the Foreclosure

OK, we are trying to get the place "sell-able" before the bank steps in. Paul (our son) has been out of work and housing prices, especially in the case of "butt-ugly" condos, has been dropping. The question is, how do we (yes, Paul is 25 and his parents are still helping for he has been in school and other parental prerogatives) change ugly to fantastic or cool on a very, very little budget?  Well, we do most of the work ourselves is one way to keep costs low.Now, it seems I'm always giving advise to buyers on how to tear down and fix up but I don't do a lot of it MYSELF, usually pay someone else to do it. But here we are.

I have had so many clients that do this kind of thing, for themselves, and some, for a living. This is a free-for-all on the "recommend" to me and Paul, throw in your two cents, give us tips, what ever!

Here's what we had: one bedroom near Southcenter, built in the mid-70's, was all original with popcorn ceilings, horrible particle board cabinets where the veneer was peeling off and they were chipped. Ugly tile in kitchen and bath and around the fireplace. Wood two-tone vaulted ceiling, galley kitchen, 650 sq ft, 3rd floor walk-up, view of Mount Rainier, two parking spaces.

What we've done so far:  popcorn gone (Mary, I did it myself), ugly bath and kitchen tile gone, cabinets gone, carpet gone. We think we're going to also remove the tile around the fire place and around the tub. This night we decided to remove half the wall (Sybil, listen up) in the kitchen to open the place up and make it look more like this century. Wow. What a difference! 

We have painted the whole place with a great find from Parker Paint in Bellevue: 10 gals of no voc, off-white reject, for $3.00 per gallon in two - five gallon containers. We have new carpet that we got from one of my clients, thank you Jeff and Kathleen. They went with hardwoods in their new place and gave us the almost new used off-white, high quality carpet. Hard to believe that the low cost paint and free carpet are the exact same color!!! The biggest decision we're making now is whether or not to paint the two-tone wood ceiling: it is dark brown beams and natural wood color "car-decking".  We're pretty sure we are going to paint with a half-way-between almost-dark brown/gray. The color is from Benjamin Moore TEXAS LEATHER .  Right now it seems like there is too much going on.  We need to go least expensive with cabinets like the basic black from IKEA. We don't think it would look so good with the raw wood, plus dealing with wood floor colors (for the kitchen/dining area).

Tomorrow is running some electrical and deciding if I have what it takes to tile. Please, feel free to comment and follow.