How to Do High-End Finish (w/ pics!)

[Juan Diaz]

High-End Kitchen

High end finishes start in the kitchen. The kitchen is your most important room in all flips, and so it should demand the bulk of attention for finishes. The possibilities for finishing a kitchen are immense—you’ve got cabinets, counters, backsplash, sink, flooring and appliances to worry about.

In a high-end kitchen your appliances will always be stainless steel. No other style has proved as durably popular, and no other style is as neutral. Stainless steel always looks good, no matter what style of kitchen it finds itself in. Depending on how high-end the neighborhood is, you may also need to invest in a gourmet-quality range. Some neighborhoods are much less picky—usually you can get away with the cheapest stainless steel appliances you can find in your neighborhood appliance store.

Cabinets are almost as important as the appliances to a high-end home. They won’t be the focal point of the design that appliances and countertops will be, but they are important elements of design. Your cabinets will take up the majority of the visual space of your kitchen, so it’s important that you find a suitable color scheme. Your high-end cabinets are usually going to be painted white or black, or wood stained light or dark. Another popular feature of high-end cabinets is to have a glass face, although these cabinets should only be used as foci of the design, not as the primary cabinet-type.

Countertops, along with appliances, are the major foci of the kitchen. If you’re finishing a high-end kitchen, you’ll need to have a countertop made out of stone. Usually you’ll go with natural stone, a granite, quartz or marble, although there are some good man-made stone options out there as well. Remember that your countertops need to match with your cabinets, as these are going to be the primary colors of your kitchen. Whatever type of countertop that you choose, it has to match.

The backsplash in high-end kitchens is another high-light feature. While not as important as countertops and cabinets, a custom tile backsplash can make the difference between a good kitchen and an amazing kitchen. And if you are doing high-end, I strongly recommend doing a custom tile backsplash. For lower in the high-end spectrum you can get away with doing a subway tile backsplash, but a custom tile backsplash in the kitchen costs only a little more, and provides that visual pop that can make your kitchen absolutely stunning.

The sink is an opportunity to create another gorgeous little detail in your kitchen. It’s not vitally important, but it’s a case where spending an extra $20 can make it look like you spent an extra $500. The key to maxing out the value of your sink in high-end flips is to look for a faucet that is different from your usual faucet. What you’re looking for is something that doesn’t look like it came from Wal-Mart, but that otherwise is similar to mainstream faucets.

Lastly, the flooring is another key element. While you might be working on the flooring for the whole house, it’s imperative that the flooring in the kitchen be either hardwood or tile that flow with any other hardwood or tile in the house. It might seem common-sense, but I’ve seen homes in neighborhoods that had carpeting in the kitchen!

High End Bathroom

Like the kitchen, the high-end bathroom is going to need certain touches to get the best return on your investment. The high-end bathroom requires attention paid to the shower and bath enclosure, vanity, backsplash and wall, and flooring.

The vanity and shower are going to be the big focal points of the bathroom’s design, while the tiling and flooring are going to play the role of the cabinets. When you remodel the bathroom, the tiling and the flooring are almost one entity. Your floors are going to be tile in the vast majority of circumstances, and if they’re not, only rarely should you think about another surface. What a tile floor and tiling on the walls mean is that your bathroom floor and wall tiles are perceived to flow together almost as one design element. This almost requires that the coloring should be similar from the floor to the wall. When you’ve got high-quality flooring and wall tiling in light colors that are cleaned to shining, this creates an optical illusion that makes the bathroom seem immense—much more than it actually is.

Some high-end bathrooms will be tiled floor-to-ceiling, but you will more likely find yourself in a situation where you’re tiling a section near the vanities and a section around the shower. In this case, carefully choosing the paint or textured wallpaper can give the illusion of floor-to-ceiling tiling, and thus make your remodeled bathroom appear more expensive than it actually is.

The focal points of the high-end bathroom, the shower or bath and the vanity, are a little more complex. If you’re doing true high-end flip, you’ll want to make sure that your shower enclosure has, at the very least, tiling on the interior of the shower area. Tub and shower combos that include a plastic shower surround are absolutely out of the question—tiling is the way to go.

The other aspect of the shower that’s vitally important for high-end homes is the shower door or curtain. Almost all high-end bathrooms will have a clear glass shower enclosure. I have yet to see a high-end home that uses a curtain instead of glass. Some glass shower enclosures will also have metal dividers and metal on top of panes of glass. These showers are better than curtains, but in general, the less metal the better for high-end flips.

As far as tubs are concerned, most high end flips will have a separate tub and shower. Freestanding tubs are the way to go for high-end flips, although surprisingly not all high-end flips will require a tub. High-end flips will always require a shower, however.

Lastly, you’ve got your vanity. When you’re flipping high-end homes, you want your vanities to look as custom as possible, which usually means freestanding, or the appearance of freestanding. Pedestal sinks, as well as double-vanities are other popular touches for high-end vanities.

High End – the Rest of the House

Now that you know what to do with the kitchen and bathroom, you’re ready to pay attention to the rest of the house. Fortunately, the rest of the house won’t require the same sort of custom touches. Most of the detailing of the rest of the house is going to come through staging.

One place you can add detailing is the trim. Usually older houses will already possess good-looking trim that can simply be retouched to look as good as the day it was made. If you don’t have existent good-looking trim, fortunately you can use a slightly different paint color to make the trim truly pop.

Light fixtures are another good option that can help add value. Recessed lighting is popular, but also expensive. It’s surprisingly easy to create the feeling of recessed lighting by selecting fixtures that are flush with the ceiling, and come in a more expensive-looking finish (usually rubbed bronze). You can install these fixtures throughout the house, and then choose more custom lighting for the kitchen or bathroom. Buying a chandelier for the kitchen or dining room and custom lighting for the bathroom can make it seem like you’ve done expensive custom lighting throughout.

On the exterior of the house, driveways and landscaping are good ways of adding curb appeal and pop to your high-end flip. There are many ways of making the landscaping and the driveway look custom, and for ideas, I encourage you to look at the internet. Different areas will have different standards, but there’s always a large variety of options. Regardless of what you do put in for landscaping, you will want to put in fresh turf and built-in irrigation on a timer shortly before the open house.

The last word of advice that will help your high-end flips have success is this: work with a designer. If you can find a good-quality designer, they will usually be able to produce a plan for you that includes specifications for interior and exterior colors, finishes, vanities, and fixtures, all for under $500. If you’re a beginning flipper that doesn’t know where to start, these specs can be a valuable starting point, and they are usually free if your promise to use their staging as well. As a beginning flipper, this is incredibly valuable, as they will not only help you plan the look of the house, but also bring staging that will match the finishes.