Making your outdoor living areas beautiful pays off. Today, buyers are always looking for more space. Because of the current banking climate, buyers must often settle for smaller spaces in order to afford the house they settle on – making those small spaces seem bigger is an important part of your home styling for sale. Making entertainment areas available outside is one sure way to do that according to house stylists. Sydney buyers love an outside entertainment area.
If your patio or veranda is tired old concrete, you can give it a whole new look with a bit of colour. If the concrete itself is in good shape, smooth and level, you might use one of the easy to use concrete stains to give it a facelift. It will probably take most of a day to get the staining done, depending on how much prep is necessary. (If your grill has been used on that surface, be sure to pay extra attention in cleaning around that area. Grease spills can make the stain refuse to absorb into the concrete.) This is a wonderful way to attract attention to your outdoor room for a relatively small expenditure of cash and elbow grease.
If your concrete area needs more than a bit of colour, consider stencilling on a pattern that makes the place look like expensive tile work or even stone. The stencil world is full of great possibilities that can absolutely transform your outdoor entertainment area. Be prepared to spend some time on your knees getting the stencil in place, then painting in the sections.
Follow the instructions that come with the stencil carefully for a very inexpensive but astonishing transformation.
If your outdoor room’s ‘flooring’ is cracked and worn, your choices include resurfacing it or adding pavers.
From a cost perspective, resurfacing can be less expensive than re-working it with pavers or stone. This depends on how much of the work you can and are willing to do on your own. If you’re handy and the work is small in scope, you can repair cracked or damaged concrete in an afternoon with a bag of cement mix. If you’ve never worked with it, concrete can be intensely unforgiving. Call in a contractor to do the repairs.
You can always stain or stencil the newly worked surface. Be aware though, that some stains require a waiting period of at least 28 days before applying stain to new concrete.
Probably the most expensive project would be to re-do the entire area in stone or pavers. It could involve tearing up the old concrete and starting fresh. This is another job for a contractor unless you’re very bold and intrepid to the core.
Another excellent way to call attention to your outdoor areas is to install a pergola, arbour, or an entire gazebo. Such components will provide shelter and make the area useable even on hot summer afternoons. These additions are available in kits, or can be custom-designed and built to your specifications. Here again, the level of difficulty can vary and the cost is just as diverse. The ultimate resource – your home stylist – can help you to find the solution that works best with your DIY capabilities and your budgetary constraints.
If you’re going all-out to make your outdoor room full-service, talk to your stylist about constructing an outdoor kitchen complete with appliances and plumbing to make your space an entertainment mecca. Such an addition is certain to catch the eye of buyers. Even if they’ve never done such lavish entertaining, they will imagine that they will. However – and here is a big, important caveat – whatever upgrades you want to make to your outdoor rooms be careful not to spend yourself out of the market.
It’s very easy to upgrade your house so thoroughly that it no longer fits into the neighbourhood where it lives. In other words, if you spend big dollars and raise the value of your house too much, you may not be able to get your investment back out. Again, your best resource is your home styling expert. They work with problems like this all the time and will have answers at the ready. Rely always upon your home stager for answers to the tough questions.
Image courtesy of Garden Trading.
