Affordable Update

We were hired to help get a house ready for sale. The elderly owner died, and his daughter did the hard work of cleaning out years of gathered possessions. Then she painted the interior walls and kitchen cabinets white, and hired someone to replace most of the flooring with new wood-look laminate.

With the clean white look, the age of the tile—pink on the master bath vanity counter and back splash, pink around the master tub, pink laminate counter in the second bathroom, pink kitchen backsplash, tired beige kitchen laminate counters, and pink toilets—really showed. 

The construction was good quality, definitely not a fixer upper, but it still needed a boost out of the 1960's colors to list at its best..

We came in and replaced the toilets with new white low flow models, bought new faucets for all the sinks, deep cleaned years of soap scum out of the showers and tub and polished them.

We hired a company to spray epoxy paint on the master tub tiles (something we'll do ourselves next time, since Matthew and Michael on crew are great painters), and then used  Giani stone paint systems to give a marble-like appearance on all the countertops, both tile and laminate. It was a multi-step process that took several days. The paint kits are reasonably priced, and even paying our labor costs, the price was thousands less than replacing the counters with new tile or stone, and eve less than installing new laminate. 

The house is going on the market soon, and the listing broker called the results wonderful, and a "no brainer" financially in terms of making the house much more marketable. 

We're glad to have our research into new refinishing techniques produce such nice effects. We'll definitely use this method again for an inexpensive update. See for yourself: Here's a slideshow of before and after.