why is everyone so surprised...
When they are shown an over budget home and then told they need to buy a fixer upper. I'm sure some of it is staged, but some of them just FREAK OUT. It's CRAZY
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It's pretty much all staged. They always show a house outside the clients' budget, then say they can buy a cheaper home and renovate for the same results.
So, there's no way anyone who's seen the show would not know that's what they're getting themselves into when they ask the brothers for help.
I am always appalled about how the prospective buyers will complain about little things, like "the carpet is old" or "the colors are dated". Do they not know what fixer upper means? Do they not know you can paint walls any new color you want? They seems so dumb.
shareThe problem is, most people can't see beyond the physicality. Very few people have the imagination to see beyond what they're physically looking at right then and there. I'm lucky. In a lot of cases, I can look at a wall or a room and see what could be, not what is. As a result, when I redid my home, I was able to see what my designer was talking about, and even came up with a few ideas (which were realistic and worked) of my own. Ergo, the end result of my home turned out beautifully.
Example: Before I redid my kitchen, I had a wall separating my "laundry room" from my kitchen, and I had a wide but shallow pantry on the kitchen side. Every time I was in the kitchen and looked at the pantry, I saw a large built-in fridge there in my mind's eye instead. In the garage in a far corner was an alcove. I envisioned closing it off from the garage and opening it up to the kitchen to create a real laundry room (the existing one was just off the basement stairs, so one wrong move and I could trip and go careening down the stairs). So I did just that, and now I have my built-in fridge and a decent-sized laundry room with a sink and double-closet. With the leftover space where the old laundry room was, shelving was installed, and it's now a storage area.
It's all about being able to envision things, and unfortunately, most people can't. Even if it's just looking at old carpet and old paint.
EMOTICONS ARE BACK! YAY!
Oh I agree wholeheartedly! When buyers whine about color -- or for that matter, decide to buy a house because one of the selling points is that they like the color -- I want to shout at the television "you morons! Paint is quick and CHEAP!"
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"I'm sorry, but.." is a self-contained lie.