well. Because the house was built out of cinder block, making changes to it would be difficult and more costly. Then there was the overall appear- ance of the home. It had absolutely no curb appeal and lacked style of any kind. It was going to take some serious creativity to overcome this hurdle. Houses with as many issues as this one are perfect for an extreme makeover. Because of their many issues, these homes sit on the market longer and offer an opportunity to be purchased for a much lower price. Given the number of things wrong with the home, buyers and investors stayed away from purchasing it. PUT YOUR IDEAS ON PAPER FIRST Taking on any extreme makeover almost always starts on paper. Seeing the additions on paper first will help you visualize the possibilities. It is much easier to erase a bad idea on paper than it is to stand back, see it in full form, and realize you really just made an expensive mistake! By putting your ideas on paper, you’ll be able to better determine whether you can realistically carry them out. Your creative juices will flow as you apply your ideas to paper. Seeing them in front of you will help you in the overall creative process. The more hands on and involved you are, the better chance you’ll have of turning out a beautiful product. Don’t worry that you’re not a drafter or a talented artist. You just have to be able to play with and get creative with some ideas on paper. Once you come up with a floor plan you think will work, you can have it professionally drafted and engineered, if needed.
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areas had ample square footage for adding a large laundry room and an extra-large master suite with a giant master bathroom and walk-in closet. Because the home sits on more than two acres, there was plenty of room to add a separate garage to the side of the house. Working around the cinder blocks. With the square footage problem solved, the cinder block issue need- ed to be addressed—there’s always concern when renovating a home built out of cinder block. There’s an even greater concern if you’re planning to do an extreme makeover on the home. Every kind of work you need to do to renovate a home built out of cinder block is much harder. Think about adding new electrical, new plumbing, drywall, moving walls, or adding a window with cinder blocks as your walls. Even hanging a picture becomes that much harder! Anything is possible with a little ingenuity, and this is where creativity plays a role. Working around and through all these hurdles takes thinking outside
BRINGING THE IDEAS TO LIFE With extreme makeovers there is no cutting corners. If you are not all in, you shouldn’t take the project on. Increasing the square footage. A big part of getting a return on your investment on a property like this rests with increasing the home’s square footage. Increasing the size, even if it’s only 500 square feet, will benefit you. To bring in more buyers to justify the work and effort for this project, the home needed at least three bedrooms with two bathrooms. It also needed a laundry room to compete with other homes for sale in the area. Trying to find this additional square footage required some creativity. A large walk-through breezeway connected the garage to the house and led to a creative solution. The garage was on the smaller side and the breezeway served no real purpose, so they were the perfect areas to rework. The two
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