If you want to get the “awesome” response from your friends and neighbors, be sure to take lots of pictures before starting your remodeling project. Before and after photos are a great way to impress friends and increase the value of your home when it comes time to sell it. Real estate agents and potential buyers love before and after photos.
I took advantage of the “before and after” photos of the first home I bought and sold. It was a Sears catalog house from the 1930s in Milwaukee. I was getting a HUD loan so I had to fix it up a bit before I could close it. An old woman whose guardian son had died owned the house and had to move to an assisted living facility. Unfortunately, I found out how her son died when I was hanging from the attic window scraping paint. A guy passed on his bike, stopped, looked at me and said. “Too bad about Herb.”
Herb? I thought, who the hell is Herb? So I replied “Oh yeah, what happened to him?” The guy said with a sheepish smile, “died up there in the attic, had a heart attack.” “Gulp,” I replied. “Wow, look at the time,” the sun started to set and I didn’t stand there alone with Herb’s ghost behind me. I wasn’t really surprised by the heart attack, from what I’d found in the attic, it was evident that Herb spent a lot of time there.
But I digress. I tidied up the house to get loan approval, then remodeled the kitchen and bathroom, put a loft in the attic to create an upstairs master bedroom and bathroom. And because we had great before and after photos, the Milwaukee Journal featured our remodel project in its inception section. A couple of years later, when we decided to move to a bigger house, we sold our house in just one week thanks to our scrapbook of before and after photos.
So many people I know have created incredible changes in their homes and they don’t have old photos to show what they have done or been through. Here are some “before” tips to start your next remodeling adventure.
1) Take tons of before photos from every possible angle. Heck, with a digital camera it costs you nothing to take pictures and store them on your computer.
2) When the remodel is complete, take photos from the same angles as the previous photos. Make sure to do a little staging with flowers or suitable accessories.
3) Print the best images and combine before and after photos into a scrapbook, or create your own coffee table book on a photo website.
Remodeling your home can be an exciting time in your life. You have worked hard to be able to invest in your property, so make sure you have enough evidence to be able to boast of what you have accomplished.