<p>dstark – We had that wallpaper experience – we did not need to have the drywall redone, but we did need it to be recoated/mudded. You might want to get a quote. Our house had at least one wall of wallpaper in virtually every room of the house, but luckily all had been painted first other than the dining room. I never met the lady, but she had quite the design theory. Black and gold flocked paper in one bathroom – the Las Vegas room, and orange and yellow Peter Max wallpaper on every wall and ceiling of the master bathroom. Behind that was a ton of mold. Yuck. And a shower head that hit about chest level. I figure she must have had one of those beehive do’s.</p>
<p>I have to do the drywall in one room…I’m not ripping up wallpaper…</p>
<p>I was just stating the cost…</p>
<p>I did get bad news the last few days…</p>
<p>I was hoping to avoid this, but I do have to tear up part of my concrete deck…or deck made out of aggregate…to fix drain issues. A root has gotten into it that is more than 5 inches thick and it has torn up the drain pipe. Now the torn up part…after it is fixed will not match the rest of the deck. Plus I will have to explain there was a problem with that drain. Can’t hide it now…</p>
<p>Hopefully…the problem will just be in the corner of the deck…</p>
<p>And I put in a new deck above my family room because I had a leak…and I still have a leak…turns out the door that leads to the deck leaks. It was an indoor door when it should have been an outdoor door. When I bought the house 25 years ago…my construction guy didn’t catch that…and the inspector I have now didn’t catch that…</p>
<p>So…now I am putting in an outdoor door. The outdoor door better not leak because that will delay the date I can put the house on the market…</p>
<p>The good news…I have a guy working on my bathrooms and I haven’t got a call yet of imminent diasaster…:)</p>
<p>I’d like to see the people on that show on HGTV who get homes ready for sale for $2,000…get my house ready for $2,000…lol</p>
<p>arabrab…your house didn’t sound too appealing…hopefully you got a good price when you bought it…:)</p>
<p>On the disparity between agents… Well, I had a neighbor sell their house on the first day, at the price recommended by the local agent (who’d sold several houses on the street). The agent that sold our house was furious, because she said the agent had shorted the sellers around 10% just to get the fast sale.</p>
<p>I think arches is a good thing - I’ve had a number of clients who have wanted them either because they didn’t have them or they wanted more of them. Current builders are too cheap to put them in their houses, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth having.</p>
<p>I thought those links of archways were okay, second one more nicely detailed that the first one.</p>
<p>How the formica and metal edge I’ve only seen a few people who really pulled off that look.</p>
<p>When we bought our house, we had ugly wallpaper in virtually every room and hallway. Some of that stuff would make your head spin. No one ever likes someone else’s choice in wallpaper, but some of that stuff had us shaking our heads saying “what were they thinking?”</p>
<p>I bought a steam stripper and removed it all, fortunately there was plaster underneath, no drywall.</p>
<p>
If the wallpaper is in good shape, why not just paint over it?</p>
<p>We have moved several times to different parts of the country. Twice we have made our offers on the new house contingent upon the removal of all wallpaper. The sellers did in each case. We even asked for a new carpet allowance in one and got it.</p>
<p>It’s not wallpaper…it’s 50 year old wood. By the time I sand it down and paint it mutiple times…it’s not going to be worth it…and it will look more like an office…</p>
<p>I want that room to look like a bedroom. I think I will get more money when I sell if that room is advertised as a bedroom instead of an office…</p>
<p>Then the buyer can make that room an office…:)</p>
<p>I’ve also removed wallpaper from many (six) rooms in my house; much of it metallic. A friend commented that the pink and silver paisley in the powder room looked “like a bad LSD trip”. I was also working with plaster, which makes it easier.</p>
<p>The $2000 home-shows do not pay for labor, they get stuff at a discount for mentioning stores on the show, the designer has a storage locker full of stuff bought on sale, scratch ‘n’ dent, or bought a long time ago. Furthermore, often the homeowner will pay out-of-pocket for things like new carpeting or granite which is not included in the $2000. </p>
<p>I’ve even seen them create a ‘faux tv’ out of a black frame and some window-film just to make it look like the owner’s have a flat-screen! </p>
<p>About the only thing you could do, dstark, to make the patio all one color again is to put those thin slate tiles or flagstones down over the whole thing. But that wouldn’t be inexpensive. Maybe you can do something in the yard to draw buyer’s attention away from that area? Big pink flowers? Big pink flamingos? Saw some at Lowe’s that light up!</p>
<p>And if you ever see a guy with a camera crew at your local store trying to find someone to take him home to do some ‘contracting’…grab him! <em>Especially</em> if it’s the cute one who does bathrooms…</p>
<p>“Holmes Inspection” on HGTV had a house last night where an interior door was used in at an external exit and there were drainage problems – and the inspector had said it was OK!</p>
<p>dstark, maybe you should call him…</p>
<p>We looked at one house that orange velveteen and gold paisley wallpaper in the bathroom…OMG. It narrowly beat out the colonial where the wife had moved out and the ex-H had the MBR set up in black foil and mirrors, and furniture that looked like it came straight from the original Star Trek series…I wish I’d had a camera!</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions on wall repair…Novelisto, that is a great link. Have bookmarked it already!</p>
<p>Under the cheezy pine paneling on one wall of the living room was a wall of 1950’s harlequin diamond pattern in a green and brown gold and pink. The rest of our living room was painted bubble gum pink. I think though that those foil and velveteen wallpapers are the worst.</p>
<p>^^^Betcha it cost a fortune.</p>
<p>It all adds up – the foil and flocked wallpapers – the green naugahyde on the family room walls with the 2x4s nailed up in an attractive western pattern – the glass lights with the spikes on them – the indoor-outdoor carpet in the basement – the orange freestanding fireplace that hadn’t been installed with proper clearance, leaving charred timbers behind. Luckily, we were young and put a whole lot of sweat equity into that house. (And I’ve never been willing to have wallpaper in our current house, though I’m thinking about some fancy Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper in my dining room – lots of windows and openings and a 14’ ceiling. I’m probably nuts.)</p>
<p>^My former house would have looked great with Bradbury and Bradbury wallpaper but I was always too cheap to put it in.</p>
<p>
A lot of what they do looks good through the camera, but I wonder how good it looks up close, sometimes the things they do seem kind of cheesy.</p>
<p>
One of our bedrooms had a floral pattern of small flowers on a white background. The flowers were arranged in a triangular pattern, so no matter where you stood, some of the flowers would line up in rows in three directions. And as you turned your head or moved through the room, the rows would follow you around and flash in and out of your vision. OMG was it annoying.</p>
<p>When you get ready to list your house, here are some tips on things to avoid:</p>
<p>[Bad</a> MLS Photos](<a href=“http://hookedonhouses.net/bad-mls-photos/]Bad”>Funny Real Estate Archives - Hooked on Houses)</p>
<p>Counting Down: Skim coat will repair the walls. I’ve done it myself, but it is time consuming and messy (think dry wall sanding). Most painters should be able to do it for you. It’s not rocket science, so don’t feel like you need to hire a “big name” painting contractor.</p>
<p>notrichenough – Over on one of the boards I frequent they are <em>still</em> talking about the decorator who had the owners paint the hinges on the cabinets. The minute anybody moved a door that paint must have flaked right off! </p>
<p>I have seen wallpaper done on just one wall, as an accent, which looked very nice. It seems to be kind of a European thing to do. But the whole room floor-to-ceiling of one pattern is crazy! At least break it up with some chair railing or something! I had 10 ft ceilings in one house and the previous owner had done floor-to-ceiling stripes alternating with small flowers in one of the bathrooms. Man, when you were sitting in there you felt like you were at the bottom of a deep itty-bitty-floral mine. It was the first room I stripped!</p>
<p>vballmom–That link to Bad MLS listings is like watching a train wreck. Can’t peel my eyes away!</p>
<p>I will NEVER wallpaper a house again. When we looked at our first house, DH and I actually had a “disagreement” about the wallpaper we had seen in the main bathroom. He said it was striped…I said it was flowered. It was ugly regardless and we knew we were going to take it down…it was that “oil cloth” type of wall paper. Well…at the preclosing inspection we about died laughing. THREE walls were stripes and one was flowers…brown, burnt orange, white and harvest gold flowers…and stripes. You get the picture…oh with those little bitty mosaic tiles on the floor, harvest gold bathtub and toilet and an ORANGE (yes you are reading that right) sink. The real estate broker tried to convince us the owners paid extra for an “accent sink”. </p>
<p>No wallpaper…none.</p>