I loaded a closeup photo of the bath floor tile to give a better perspective of the style
I love that tile. Not a fan of pebbles which is not what this tile is. It seriously rocks! Your tile guy did a fabulous job, and the grout and the other tile go well with it.
The whites and greens look like sea glass ! I like the dark gray-turquoise cabinets better with the floor than the light gray-green but they certainly both go.
That is gorgeous!
Ooooh, so many nice colors to choose among! Even the woody tones would be nice. I’m sure you’ll find something that suits and doesn’t break the budget.
I searched the whole project today to try and find a small scrap of tile to take with me to IKEA. Couldn’t even find one broken stone anywhere. I’m just going to have to try to match on memory. I dropped one of the kitchen dark walnut doors down on it and it didn’t suck, but I can do better. I would love to find something in the exact same wood tones as the stone in the tile. Did I mention that the tile was $22/ sq ft!!! More than I’ve ever spent before, but I couldn’t help it…it was beyond beautiful.
More potential buyers
Yesterday my agent went to the weekly meeting at the La Mesa office of her brokerage. She presented the property as ‘Coming Soon’. As soon as I found out, I changed all priorities and it’s all hands on deck out front working on our curb appeal. This means I need to hurry up and get my exterior colors picked out. In general, I’ve decided to go dark on the body of the house, a lighter color on the breeze block and a fun color for front door.
As I suspected, two agents came right over after the meeting and one brought her client back over yesterday evening. Guess what!! Retired empty nester. Couldn’t tell if he was married or not. The house ticks all his boxes for what he’s looking for, large garage, single level, view and privacy. But he did not like the style at all. He didn’t like the breeze block in front or the huge fireplace.
That’s the 3rd retired person coming through. I still think I missed the mark on target market. But, I’m pretty much batting 100 on failing to pin the target market on each flip. Someone completely different than what I imagined always ends up buying these houses
But the good news is we have a lot of interest!
I don’t remember - what do/did you think is the target market for this house?
I thought it would be a young ‘move up’ couple with kids that wants the hip Mid Century Modern contemporary style with the funky breeze block on the exterior. Instead, I am getting a bunch of retired people that don’t like the funky retro style. I’m guessing that move up buyers don’t want to live in this neighborhood and/or not shopping in this price range.
CB, you are in good company. Remember Toyota coming up with Scion brand to target younger folks? Their boxy cars became a hit with the 50+ crowd because of the room they offered. 
So maybe you don’t have to be concerned with MCM staging and do retiree staging instead ( if that’s even a thing). Not sure where the line is between “hip retro” and “that what my Grandma’s house looked like”.
Also many of us retirees are MCM ourselves - born in the mid century and consider ourselves modern because we can, you know, like tweet and stuff.
I would not bother with “authentic” MCM furniture for staging either. Just avoid very puffy couches and recliners, use clean lines and minimalism, add a few MCM planters from IKEA, and you should be fine.
If anyone wants to kill a few minutes looking at MCM “furniture porn,” take a look at Knoll. I want their Platner table so bad!! :((
I agree clean lines is key to staging the house. Perhaps more of the younger folks can’t affford houses so not as many looking as retirees? Maybe school district isn’t great?
I bet that the rambler style is what is appealing to the MCM peeps!
older retires are the ones who will be afford your home, and they are looking for 1 level homes in a temperate climate where they can safely and comfortably live out the rest of their days.
cb, the house hasn’t even been marketed yet, so don’t draw any conclusions. The right buyer will come along.
Madly working on exterior colors.
Yesterday my young painter called from Home Depot and wanted to know if I wanted Ultra Pure White paint for the exterior trim or ‘medium base’. He kept insisting that he always uses ‘medium base’. Well, I get to the project and medium base is some kind of creamy white with yellow undertones. Uhhhhhh… NO!!! We have brand new white flashing and white gutters. The creamy white did not blend in with the new flashing and gutters. He said 'Oh… I’ll just paint the gutters and flashing". Nope… that adds more cost to the project and we have no need to paint gutters or flashing because it will just start peeling in the future.
So, I made him go back and get the Pure White that I wanted to begin with and now he has to repaint the fascia in the front. In the long run, repainting the fascia boards in front is going to cost less than going around the whole house and priming/painting all the new flashing. We’ll use the medium base white to paint out the garage and garage ceiling, if we can ever clear it out enough to get to the walls and ceiling
I have loaded a photo of a mockup of exterior paint colors. The photo has a really dark stucco base color, I might tone that down a bit
Haha… Retiree staging is probably two giant Barcoloungers in fake leather surrounding a TV
PROGRESS
We are starting to paint the exterior in a mad rush to get our curb appeal finished. Had to take out some plants in order to get to be able to paint the breeze block thoroughly. I love the dark dramatic color for the house. We are going with charcoal grey with a creamy light grey (more like a putty color) for the breeze block and some trim and pure white for the courtyard ceiling. Now I have to decide a fun color for the front door.
We also have a lot of detail work to tie in the new roof/flashing to some under eave damage that needs to be waterproofed and stuccoed.
As usual, I have to move some outlets in the kitchens and baths after we get things installed. We put in some filler to move the oven away from the pantry and that caused one of the wall outlets to be right behind the stove. Ooops!!!, we have to get that outlet pulled out. And, I’m having some electrical problems with the outlets and switches installed so the electrician had to come back and fix some stuff. He had the nerve to charge me for the hour of troubleshooting… claiming that my guys had pulled the outlets out of the wall to troubleshoot, so it was not his fault. So, there’s some last minute dang drywall patches going on everywhere!
Countertops installed last week and now we are installing the appliances. Sink all plumbed in with faucet and garbage disposal, oven getting installed and cooktop getting installed. Because the cooktop was a floor model, we are missing a bunch of little parts and pieces such as the gas pressure regulator and the clips that hold the cooktop in place. Pressure regulator is easy, finding the right clips to hold in the cooktop is another problem
Photos loaded of paint going on