To hate sellers 'sprucing up' properties to sell, with hideous effect?

[pandarific]

...and then of course putting the price up to a turn-key condition level, when you know you'd need to rip out half of it. Honestly, a nice bucket of white paint applied throughout would be fine!

You don't need to install a nice new bathroom in floor-to-ceiling beige-brown tile. Or deck over/concrete over every blade of grass in otherwise substantially sized garden. Or install 'fancy' kitchen cupboards in the well known poplar neutral shades of gloss red and black. Or paint dado rails in matching fancy colours.

Augh!

I’ve just had my flat redecorated with a view to selling and you’ll be glad to know I chose white, cream, pale blue, lavender and more white. New wood laminate floor in a neutral brown and various bits of diy done. It probably needs a new bathroom and kitchen but the next owner will want to choose those themselves.

Carpeted....... Doors???

Someone in the 1980s spent a lot of time and money building a semicircle of brick between my living and dining rooms, around the base of the archway between the two rooms. It wasn't even nice brickwork, it looked like he'd nicked a load of cheap housebricks from a cut-price building site and bunged them in. I can imagine him standing back to admire his handiwork, and I wish I could timetravel back to stand next to him and bellow, "NO, ROY, IT DOES NOT LOOK BLOODY BRILLIANT".
Kids and I LOVED sledgehammering it all out. Unfortunately the bastard had covered the original fireplace with the same stuff but it's not as easy to demolish that without bringing the chimney breast down with it. I'm pretty sure that behind it is the original arched fireplace but I wouldn't put it past Mr 1980s to have got rid of it somehow.
I bought the house because it was (then) big enough and cheap enough for us.

Diagram, @HarrietSchulenberg? I am boggling somewhat trying to imagine what it looked like. How high was it? Like a little waist-height wall, inside?

Pandarfic diagram attached. It was 2.5ft high and circled round the archway. Drawing the diagram reminded me that he'd not only bricked across the fireplaces but also the corner alcoves. I don't know what was going through his head bit the same man built a shed over the drain cover in the garden.

When we sold our last house we just freshend paint, cleaned and de cluttered. The carpets were clean but 5 years old and cost £1.99/sq m when we bought them. The house sold quickly and for the asking price.
When the house went up for sale 5 years later it had the same carpets, same colours but a feature wall of red flowers in the living room,wooden worktops replaced but the same 25 year old toilet and sink that a work colleague had fitted when they owned the house. Those £1.99 carpets were great compared to what's available now.
The house we have now is an old cottage, it had blocked up books next to the fireplaces, an upstairs room that had been made into a large empty dressing room and over 5000 loose bricks forming the garden structures 😣 and wallpaper lined with polystyrene to help keep heat in. The walls moved and the doors were all mismatched but it had been loved.

When you said brick semi circle, I thought you meant some sort of bodge job arch.

An actual wall. 2.5 feet high. In the house?

We have been viewing houses and I'm horrified at the state of some of the houses we have seen. Why would anyone lay laminate over carpet . And fake grass what the hell is that about? One house we went to view had newly painted every room a different colour. Green bedroom, blue bathroom, red living room and a pale peach kitchen. One had just had a plastic porch put in. Why? Why don't their estate agents tell them? Do these people actually want to sell?

Also, have been doing up mum's house for selling and think we're nearly there.
Invested in 2 wallpaper strippers. Took whole family nearly a month to scrape off every single bastard scrap of wood chip.
Polystyrene ceiling tiles gone.
Had a plasterer in to skim over the bad bits.
Painted everything white.
New sockets, ceiling pendants and light switches.
Biggest expense was new carpets throughout. Grey. Sorry.
Kitchen is cleaned within an inch of it's life.

Only downside is no bath. But ... bathroom with huge shower is only 2 years old and very clean
Everywhere de cluttered and furniture is bare minimum.
Garden is lovely anyway but we have creosoted fence and shed and DD3 has pressure washed drive.

It's not rocket science - all common sense stuff. We haven't spent a fortune - mostly elbow grease and time.

I walked into a 'newly refurbished' house that had magnolia everywhere.

Aside: as far as I'm concerned, magnolia is the most 'institutional' colour I can imagine. It's the colour of council offices, office blinds and cheap landlords.

The place was shoddily done up to turn a profit and it showed. I walked into one room, stood on a loose floorboard and a bit of skirting fell off the wall.

He put wooden boards over the wall to make very deep shelves. Deep enough to put an old, deep-backed TV on with room to spare at the front. You can see a tiny bit of it in the first pic from about 10 years ago. Second pic is what it looks like now with my attempt to minimise the horror of the crap-brick chimney.

So something like an entertainment 'system'/fireplace/shelving unit?

Runawaycat yes really lovely mustard carpet the agent suggested it was to keep the heat in

Done to bring in extra £££ which is then a hiding to nothing as the improvements are often hideous

But that's a win for the sellers, surely?

1. They get extra £££.
2. They don't have to live with the hideous "improvements"

We toyed with replacing our ancient carpet to sell. Glad we didn't as the new owners took it out straight away and replaced it with laminate.

Argh woodchip, wallpaper of the devil!
I will never move into a house with woodchip ever again.

We're busy trashing the world as a place for our children and grandchildren to live in by our insatiable appetite for new stuff and throwing out perfectly serviceable "unfashionable" stuff. And now fashion has crept into housing and people are criticising using phrases like "are we still in the 1990's?"

Harriet I really like that picture in front of the fireplace....looks like tiles...is it actually tiles or a painting?

At least if you're buying you can redo to your taste.

Have you seen what you can be stuck with if you're renting?

I live in a 1970s house. The previous owner or the one before that even put in a country style wooden kitchen that doesn't suit the style of the house at all. I didn't particularly like gloss kitchens but was thinking of putting a white one in as the kitchen is north facing and fairly dull.

If that's a bad idea can anyone suggest what to put in instead? Just a plain white kitchen? I'd love marble worktops but don't see the point if someone is just going to rip out in a year or two or even straight away.

Apart from that I'm just neutralising the obvious love of Victoriana the previous owners had - brass curly door handles and wall lights etc. I've painted it white throughout. Will tidy the garden. In total I think I'll have spent £10k including the kitchen, electrics, plumbing and some garden work I need to pay someone for.

Unfortunately fashion has always been part of housing. In the 1960s beautiful panelled doors were clad in plywood, lovely plasterwork, fireplaces, tiles and other stuff were all stripped out. Our house has a wonderful inglenook fireplace which was apparently covered in ply with a gas fire hung on it at one stage.

My bet is that in ten years time people will be sneering at laminate floors and grey kitchens will be the equivalent of avocado bathroom suites.

We've just done the declutter, paint white and clean like demons thing to go on the market. We've also recarpeted throughout with the best selling carpet the shop had and refitted the bathroom. The kitchen needs updating but we decided not to second guess the buyer's taste and price accordingly.

As a PP said, this is the legacy of Sarah Beeney et al. They will convince the vendor - who has had property on market for yonks with no takers - to spend a grand or two on new carpets, kitchen doors/paint existing doors, paint kitchen & bathroom tiles (WTAF?!) and they miraculously get full asking price offers before the month is out 🤔

Unfortunately fashion has always been part of housing. it has, but in the 50s/60s (and dreadful things were done then) there didn't seem to be quite the rapid change in housing fashion, not the need to update simply because it was unfashionable. You did things in the latest style for a more efficient kitchen, or because the redecoration needed doing, and not simply chucking out kitchen units and replacing them because they were "out of date".

I like some of the features of the 1970s.

As long as the wiring is sound and everything is in working order, everything else can be painted white and changed when the money's there.

Vintage furniture is of a better quality than a lot of the modern shite and changing trims and door handles isn't a massive chore.

And in defence of ‘house doctoring’, all Anne Maurice ever said was to declutter,(inc extra furniture), paint everything neutral and add accent colours you could take with you and make sure it’s spotlessly clean.

All quite inoffensive and really works.

We'd to sell a house 12 months after moving in because of job relocation and when we showed it to the first estate agent (damp proofing had just been done and we'd stripped all the carpets so there were no skirting boards or carpet in the upstairs) he nearly fainted and said we would never sell it in that state. It went, over asking price, in about a week. (This in like 2010 mind you). I think even some of the estate agents have a messed up idea of what people are wanting - there are plenty of people who are happy to buy a place they can work on, and if you're going to sell a place as needing nothing done then the standard of the decoration needs to be very high.