All Forum Posts by: Marcus Auerbach

Oh boy, I have the same dilemma all the time, although it seems a lot easier to give advise on someone else's project...

I would leave the color of the siding, pressure washing and some fresh caulk will go a long way. The siding works with the roof - that's quite important, I have found out the hard way. My contractor (at the time, don't hire that guy) ordered shingles in a different color. Later I found out that he had paint left that would have worked with the roof and he wanted to give me a great deal. So instead of a nice dark brown warm looking roof with tan siding it's now grey/blue. Also, I have noticed that not all grey roofs will go with tan siding, some have a little bit of a green or blue in them and that looks weird with a siding that has too warm of a color.

OK, I am getting side tracked, when I show homes, it seems that people don't care too much about the exterior color, especially not in this price bracket. Kitchens and bathrooms sell houses, this is where I would focus the money. I think by the time your buyers have seen the house, walked through the front door and have seen the inside, the kitchen, etc.. they will pretty much know if they like it or not. I don't think the exterior on the backside is a major consideration at that point. And if it is, you can always offer to paint before closing.

Thanks Darren, sounds like the way to go. Just got the text from my heat guy, he estimateds $4500 to put in a forced air system, because of all the ductwork. But now that I think about it the house must have ductwork to run the AC, I cant imagine it cools the baseboards?? He said its better to rip it out because of all the maintenance issues. What is he talking about?

Something new with every house: I have a 1300 sft ranch under contract that needs major work and it also happens to have hydronic heating. The heat source seems old and I will replace it, which I normally do with the forced air systems anyway, but now the question is stay with hydronic or convert the house to forced air? I guess I would have to patch up the HWF and install all the ductwork in the basement. The house also had AC (got vandalized), but I think I have to go back and look how that even works with a hydronic system. Does anyone have experience with this?? Thanks guys.

I am wrestling with the same question: my rental houses are typically 50 years old and I spend about 25k for a complete makeover. Sanding and staining is not a commercially viable option - too much labor involved for the value of a non-historic 3/2 ranch, so we usually try to clean the trim up and use a good wipe-on polyurethane to reseal them. If we refinish the floors we replace the quarter rounds. We do the same with the hollow core doors and the window trim, to keep everything in the same look and finish. The result is a clean house with trim that can be wiped down wet if necessary. But of course you can still see imperfections sealed into the poly. So the last house we tried painting the trim white. Now, to keep the uniform look you have to spray also all the room and closet doors white. And to get really nice results you need to sand, fill, sand more and prep everything nicely before you spray the two coats. In the end I was tempted to also replace the hardware, because after all the time and money we had spent the hinges the doorknobs looked old on those new looking white doors. Bottom line for me is that it's totally not worth it. Either its good enough and cleans up or if its past that point of revival then the only option is to take 100% trims and doors out and replace with new quality stuff. That's the most expensive option, but it will look nice again for the next 50 years. At least that's what I hope ;-)