The bathroom can make or break the sales campaign for your home – if it looks old and rundown many buyers will run a mile for fear of the costs to remodel.
I always tell homeowners that they can adopt one of three strategies with their bathroom:
- If it’s seen better days, you can rip and replace. You’ll spend upwards of $15,000 on the average project but it should pay dividends when the time comes to sell.
- You can just shrug your shoulders and leave the shabby bathroom to the next owner to fix. You’ll take a price hit, for sure. And you’ll also exclude lots of potential buyers. It’s not an unreasonable strategy but I don’t usually recommend it.
- The third option is if you have a bathroom that is “good enough”. What measures can you take to pep it up without digging deep into your bank balance?
As an experienced real estate agent, I have learnt over the years that many owners have some great bathroom hacks that make their average bathroom really sparkle – and they barely spent a dime doing it. So here’s a list of some clever ways to bring your bathroom back to life.
- Let there be light – Dust accumulates on bulbs in the bathroom. So, unscrew them from the fixture and wipe with a dry cloth. A clean bulb can increase the light output by up to 25%. Additional light in any room always makes it feel bigger.
- Oops – If you drop a bulb on the tile floor – and that’s been done before – the best trick to pick shards off a hard surface is by wiping the area slowly with a slice of bread!
- Exhausting, but – Use soapy water to clean the mold, grime and dust that builds up on your exhaust fan. It’s unhealthy and it looks horrible. It’s not a fun job but it needs to be done.
- What’s cooking? – A spray can of cooking oil will do a great job of removing dirt and scum from your tub and around all the faucets. Wipe them down with a paper towel that you can throw away. If you use a microfiber cloth, you’ll have to clean it in hot water before you can reuse it.
- Hair-raising – Picking up hairs from within the shower, basin and off the floor is gross, let’s face it. Put on a pair of rubber gloves to get this task completed easily – and then dispose of the hair in a trash can – not down the sink!
- Pipe cleaner – Older bathrooms often have unpleasant odors build up in the pipes of overflows, sinks and showers. You can tip disinfectant down there, but a better solution is a cup of baking soda and lemon juice. The first step is to run hot water down the pipes for about five minutes. Then pour the contents of the cup down the pipe. You’ll hear the lemon juice and baking soda fizz as it hit the grime and hairs down there. Eek!
- Brush every day – Not your teeth, but your shower! Keep a kitchen scrubbing brush in your shower and give it a regular scrub at shower time. If your brush is designed to hold washing-up liquid, then fill the storage cavity with vinegar as this will help stop mold settling on the tile grout.