The Real Estate Podcast

Home Upgrades You WILL REGRET! | EP295

Last week, Ariel Kormendy and Adrian Trott discussed upgrades that homeowners loved, and this week, we’re flipping the script. From flooring choices to kitchen islands, we cover the top renovation regrets shared by real people. Whether you're planning a small upgrade or a major overhaul, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you avoid common pitfalls and make informed decisions for your home. Listen now so you don't miss out on KT Confidential Episode 295! ************************ 0:19 – Intro 1:10 – Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring 2:09 – Get an interior designer's opinion 4:31 – Basement bar 6:48 – Penny tile floors 11:30 – Small patio door size 12:22 – Farmhouse-style sinks 14:14 – A kitchen island with stove tops 15:00 – Chandeliers over beds 16:04 – Black Corian countertops 17:06 – Vessel sinks 17:56 – Open floor plans 19:15 – No detachable cushions 20:30 – Windows with hanging weights 21:29 – Outro/recap ************************ Want more real estate podcast discussions? Watch it here: youtu.be/uLhNb8fdHt4 Listen to it here: http://www.soundcloud.com/ktrealty Catch clips and highlights of the show here: http://www.instagram.com/kormendytrott ************************ Our Social: Instagram: www.instagram.com/kormendytrott  YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/kormendytrott  Facebook: www.facebook.com/kormendytrott  Twitter: www.twitter.com/KormendyTrott Soundcloud:http://www.soundcloud.com/ktrealty  LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/ktrealty  Pinterest: www.pinterest.ca/KormendyTrott  TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@kormendytrott?lang=en ************************ In 2011, Ariel Kormendy and Adrian Trott formed The Kormendy Trott Team, now often referred to as KT (thanks to our logo!). The foundation of KT is built on providing unmatched value and attention to detail in everything we do. From our ever-expanding, comprehensive list of exclusive services to our expertly trained team, you will receive the highest level of care throughout your entire real estate journey. Originally a team of two in Milton, Ontario, the KT Team has grown into a large team of exceptional REALTORS®, a client-care department, and now includes KT media, KT Commercial and KT Property Management to provide our clients with a complete lineup of genuine, professional, and proven services across Halton Region, Peel Region and the surrounding Regions within the Greater Toronto Area. We’d appreciate it if you’d subscribe and follow us for behind-the-scenes footage, real estate tips, industry secrets, exclusive listings, KT Confidential - the real estate podcast, and more!

Duration:: 24m
Broadcast on:: 08 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to Episode 295 of KT Confidential, the real estate podcast. Adrian and I are talking about homeowners biggest regrets with upgrades that they've done throughout the home. Enjoy. So today, today we were taught last week, we talked about upgrades that people were super excited that they did them. They were thrilled, they thought they were a great investment, things ranging from rave reviews, rave reviews from $20 upgrades to $20,000 upgrades. And if you're considering doing anything to your home, it might be a good place to start with that to get some ideas of what other people have been really thrilled about doing. And then come back here once you finish that and listen to what people regret doing. That's what we're talking about today. That's what we're talking about today. So there are 16 items that haven't read through them all, but there's a list of 16 items I haven't seen this list. So let's go. So this is on Buzzfeed. OK. And we'll start with number one. How about that? So this person says we had to renovate our basement due to a leak and we decided to rip out our old carpet and put down luxury vinyl playing flooring, we just flooring. We decided to pick out a trendy gray that everyone was using. Thought it was a good choice to lighten up the dark basement, but within a year, I hated that the flooring itself was fine and worked well for a busy family. But the gray was hard to decorate around and look cheap and tacky. So I don't agree that it would be hard to decorate with. Well, it could be if the way to decorate it doesn't align with their style. Like it sounds like maybe style or their like their if they're trying to just use furniture that they had with their carpet. One, that's probably the problem. But I will say that now everybody wants the natural look floors, the lighter, natural wood looking type of flooring. Yeah, I would agree. But I think the key with this is no matter what you're doing, get the professional's opinion, like they said they chose the trendy light gray because that's what was popular. Well, that doesn't always last. Get an interior designer if your contractor that's doing the work for you doesn't have contacts for that, which most of them do hop on to Instagram and just search interior designer and look for some in your area. Well, they'll do a consultation. I'll put a link in this in this podcast about to. So Sarah Berg's my close friend and client of ours and also a great local business owner, she's a designer by trade and they own a great little retail store selling accessories, furniture and paint. She wrote a blog and lighting. She wrote a blog for us and window coverings. She wrote a blog for us that we'll be posting very soon. We're actually going to her house on Tuesday to shoot a couple photographs to go in the blog. And she has some excellent tips on how to make decisions that are timeless and that do stick around and how to avoid the short lived styles like this person is suffering from. OK, next one. You know what I like about Sarah because she helped us in our design when we haven't released. Nobody's really seen our new office yet. You're getting a sneak peek of the kitchenette here. Yes. And coming soon, you'll get a sneak peek or the full peak of our podcast studio. Full peak. I like that. But she helped in the consultation part of things when we were designing this space and you and I have very different tastes and she was a great mediator and great to compliment what we both wanted to get out of. Although you did kind of give us a lot of free rain. I was very surprised. I had. I think it's important to. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'll hold that in my back pocket for when I need to use that. You already did with the fire. That's another podcast. Yeah, we should do a podcast on that. Yeah. How Adrian almost blew up the phone and you back and forth back and forth. OK, number two, my husband insisted in putting a bar in our basement when we remodeled it. I can probably count the amount of times we've used it on one hand. Very few people use actual bar areas in their basement. They think it's a good idea. Right. Now, if you have the space, if you've got a 5,000 square foot home and your basement is 2,500 square feet, go nuts. Yeah, if you're not, if you're not sacrificing anything, right. And by bar area, in my mind, what I'm picturing is a bar where you can stand on one side and serve your guests who are sitting on the other side. Right. Versus what I did in my house is I had enough space against one wall to put a wet bar, right. And that's my bar. So there's storage, there's a counter space, there's a sink. Do you ever do any shelving or anything on top of the counter? That's the only thing in the basement that's unfinished. So there's nothing there. And I have two electrical outlets that are awaiting slides. No. In eight years. Yeah, I know. OK. Well, that's kind of goes back to last week's podcast about. You're going to do it when you sell the house. Small upgrades you should do before you sell. Yeah. Yes. Um, but I would agree with this person. That's something to really consider. If you're limited on a space, I would say a bar, a functional bar like that is would be very low on my list. Conversely, the benefit of having an added sink and added refrigerator. Mm. Adds a lot of functionality to your value, a lot of value and a lot of functionality. Yeah. If you have kids, think of kids birthday parties. I use them all the time. Yeah. So do I. I'm watching a movie or playing video games. I can go get a glass of water right behind me. Yeah. My little bar fridge. Yep. I don't use a whole lot anymore, but it's nice to have. You're still not drinking. A little bit, but not really. Actually, I got a humidor from Father's Day. So I'd like to, if you want to indulge in a cigar and some scotch or something. You have some cigars. You have some scotch. Well, I don't have scotch, but I have Jack Daniels. Yeah. Which is my preference. Yeah. OK, next, when redecorating my baths for my chose penny tile for the floor, for the shower, it always looks good on TV makeover shows, but really, I'm really sorry. I did it. I would agree. I would agree too. I have actually, I think we have the same. Look right behind you, though. Yeah. So the floor for the floor, I would agree for the floor. Yeah. So I have more. It's a hexagonal tile, a hexagon tile, which is what I have. Right. Very small, a lot of grout. It does look great, but you're using a lot more grout. So your costs go up. The tiles more expensive. Fuck the cost of the grout cleaning the fucking grout is what's the pain in the ass. That too. Yeah, that's hard to clean, more expensive. The product's more expensive. The grout's more expensive. You know how much grout I used on that wall and what I remember that. That's maybe what? Sixteen square feet. If that not even, not even. And how do you think that's 16 square feet? That's not even four by four. No. Oh, yeah, I'm singing eight by eight. Oh my God. Yeah. Good thing you leave the numbers to me. That's right. See, we have our place in this company. Yeah. I would agree, though. I would say bigger tiles are better. They may not look as nice, but you could do like a penny towel in a niche. Where it doesn't require as much cleaning. Right. You can do accents, but it does matter as to what color of grout you're going to choose. Yeah. And if I had to recommend a certain color, I would opt for almost like an in-between color. So not too light and not too dark. More or less black with mine. Which it's hard to get. Soap scum and dust, calcium, soap scum, all that stuff. But you know what I did get it. But black grout is actually easy to fill in with a Sharpie and just cover it up. I can't put a Sharpie on the road in a shower. Try it. I'm going to try it. Do a spot test and try to take take a little video. Yeah. And we'll have Robbie edited into one of the podcasts. I got to come out of the shower with 30 or feet. Then I went into it. Well, you're not doing it while you're in the shower. Actually, that's a good question. When you clean the shower, are you in the shower having a shower? Like naked. Yeah. Like your basic. No, I'm showering with my bathing suit. I'm not trying to picture. I'm just curious because I remember this conversation on a radio show once. And I think that's how I do it. I think that's the only way to really do it properly. I've, if I'm doing the whole bathroom. I wonder how, when I have a cleaner, which we don't anymore, how did she, how did she do it? What do you mean? How, how did she clean my bath? Because I don't have a handheld rinse thing. They use a bucket. Okay. All right. Jesus, you're a little slow sometimes. It's not as easy though. It's not good to be a thorough bathroom. You see, I don't do the whole bathroom very often all together. Okay. I'll do like the shower can go. And that's my bathroom. Nobody else uses my bathroom. Right. So I shower twice a day. When I'm in there, I'll, or when I go in, I'll just spray the cleaning vinegar. Right. And I'll let it soak for a couple minutes. Yeah. And then I'll have the shower and I have my little bucket and my little scrub thing right there anyway. And I'll just scrub down the. You should be careful what products are using too, depending on the type of tylers you're getting. Yes. Slate, probably. If you have a travertine. Yeah. You shouldn't probably have that in your shower anyways. But unless you seal it. You know what's great. Here's a one of my best tips for people that have glass showers is clean it. So it's the cleanest that's ever been. And then put an application of rain X on it. And it will save, save your life. I don't clean my shower often, but I squeegee it every single time. Yeah. I'm not a squeegeer, but now with rain X that solves my problem. It sounds like a commercial. Although one thing I got that's helpful is the attachments for my drill. The brush attachments. Oh, yes. That's really very careful on using those on your grout. Because if the bristles of those attachments are too hard. You will actually take grout out of the tile. The area that grout is in. Right. Yeah. Okay. Next one. We had an eight foot sliding patio door in the family room. It was too big and we decided to decrease it to six feet. We happened to see a set of six foot French doors on sale and jumped at the opportunity. And we regret reducing the size of the door. I think any time you can make windows doors bigger is a good idea. Yes. You never want to go smaller. I'm surprised they don't regret the French doors versus the sliding door. They do. Oh. The actual opening part of it. She doesn't say that in here. Just the size. And that's entirely but just talks about the size. But the only time I can see like we have double doors on our front door now. I could see us going to a single door but an oversized door. That would be okay. But otherwise I don't think you should ever go smaller. Yeah. Bigger is better with windows and doors for sure. Absolutely. Number five. A large single basin farmhouse style sink. Never again. Oh, back to the sink debate. We talked about this last week though. So there's a couple of things with the farmhouse sinks. Farmhouse is a little different. So one is and this is just from research. I love farmhouse sinks. I do too but one thing that you get a common issue with these is if you get water on the outside of the farmhouse sink it drips down and gets on your cabinet. Doors very easily. Yes. So you'll see a lot of people now where they put a strip of your countertop material under the sink to catch that before it gets to the door. But without that your doors will wear prematurely. But otherwise I love them. Yeah. I don't know this person talking about. You know what you can do now too. Depends on the, I guess the finish and the color of your cabinetry. Yeah. But a lot of people are protecting certain areas with things that you would protect your car with. Yeah. So whether it's like the 3M tape or there's actual applications that you can seal, I guess, the paint. Yeah. On... When some people are doing vinyl wrapped kitchen for renovating instead of painting. Have you seen, I don't know if you've seen this on TikTok or Insta but people are mapping their fridges? Oh, I don't know if I've seen that but I know about it. I think it's a great idea. It is. I think it's excellent. Okay, we should have done that here. Got a white fridge and had it wrapped. That would be cool. Yeah. Next one is... This isn't something they did but something they absolutely don't want on their list as they are out actively house hunting. And that is a kitchen island with a stove top. Oh, that drives me nuts. I think it's a horrible idea. Like you're gonna burn all your friends with splashing oil. Well, and then you have the range hood. Or you don't have any. That's right on... well, what are you gonna do have a down draft one then? I don't know how functional those are. You don't... I don't think code requires one. Oh, well, they've got the ones where the... it can pop up. Yeah, but they pop up like four inches. No, no, you have ones that like really pop up. No, they don't. Yeah. I've never seen it. You have to show me. Why? Because I don't believe you. Okay. Next one, there was a point about 10 years ago where chandeliers over the bed were in and this person regrets ever having one. I think chandeliers over beds are fine as long as you've got it at the right height, so you're not bonking your head on it. No comment? No, I'm looking up the down draft. You're going to be disappointed. No, I've seen them. I'll look for it later. Okay, next one is we've chandeliers. Do anybody... does anybody really... Well, I don't know if they mean by... My bedroom's not big enough for a chandelier. No, but there's houses now where 10-foot ceilings on the second floor is common. Yeah, so sure, why not? It was just the same as putting one over the... 10-foot ceiling, I don't know. I don't know, I think it's fine. As long as it's at the right height, like everything has an appropriate height where it starts to look funny if you're too low or too high, just like having one over the dining room table. Right. The next one is we put in black cori on countertops. I can attest to this. Black counters in the kitchen. I had black counter in my first house, and it was... I think it was granite. Could have been quartz, I don't remember. But it was hard to... It was granite. I think so, yeah. It was hard to get clean, hard to get rid of fingerprints. Like I had to really clean it, and I would never do black again. Well, people say don't do white. White stains? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. You can seal them. There's less of a problem, but it does happen. I've had some stains that are... Well, that's the problem harder to get in. People don't seal them, and they don't continue to seal them. Yeah. Because just because you seal it once, doesn't mean that that's a lifetime application. Yeah, I agree. Red wine, just if you leave some of them... Or kids, markers, pain, whatever. Dirty, and you leave a dirty dish. Tumeric. Oil. Tumeric is brutal. It is. And I love tumeric. Next one, put a vessel sink in. They say water gets everywhere. I don't know why water would get everywhere with a vessel sink. I don't know. What's a vessel sink? It sits on top of the counter. Oh, right. Yes. They're shallower, typically. Yeah, I don't like them. It's harder to clean. I like a sink where it's recessed, and you can just... I think in a powder room, it can look really nice, though. I mean, sometimes fashion over function. You know, I think... Yeah, we have a vessel sink in our main bath, and that's the bathroom that gets used the least. But it's still... Yeah, it looks nice. It can look nice. It's just harder to clean, and then splashing, depending on the depth of it and whatnot. Next one is an open floor plan, which is funny, because a lot of people now, they start to have the preference of having some... Degree of separation. Degree of separation, where they want the privacy of a separate dining room. Yeah, and certain cultures want a different room for the men and the women. So I think that's kind of coming around again, or has been for a while, actually. It's not new. So I think that is a mistake. So if someone's building a custom home, you know, unless you're planning on dying in it, or you just don't care about the resale... Nice way of putting it. The resale value of it so much. You know, it would take these things into consideration. I'm skipping some of these, because they're a bit silly, but... There's so many of them. Are there any that you regret in your home? Things that I did? Yeah. No. No. Color choices. Mom, I talk about my back splash. I don't regret it. I mean, you probably didn't regret your back splash in the first few years. No, no, not at all. I still don't mind it. It's just... I certainly would never do it again. Yeah, it's outdated, right? I don't know if it was ever inundated. Indated? Yeah, it's just the opposite of outdated. Is it? In my mind, it is. We spent forever looking for a new couch, and on my must-have list was no... detachable cushions. Why would you not want the detachable cushions? Why would you not want detachable cushions? I would not want the detachable cushions. That's not the five-year-old Cheetos still crumming away in there. Yeah. It had one in my childhood, and all we did was constantly reconstruct the couch. This prison had rough childhood. Yeah, well, kids... Along comes a salesman who sold us on this over-budget, large sectional with detachable cushions. But these cushions had Velcro, and we were repeatedly reassured they would stay out. I mean, it seems weird. Aren't most couches detachable cushions? Like, they just... Well, I don't know what this person's problem is, but wouldn't you prefer to be able to clean? Right. You're so far? Like, can you imagine how much crap is going to get in the crevices of your... I don't know. Anyways... And yes, kids love taking apart the couch. Yes. They use them as forts and... Here's a person that had a 1920s home and they paid to restore all the beautiful old windows, wood windows, complete with hanging weights. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Just wish we would replace them with new ones. I get it. I mean, so there's some houses, so we have a beautiful home on Pine Street for sale, and they had kept a couple of the windows, but they're decorative. So they put a solid, updated, insulated pane of glass on the outside, kept the interior swinging, hinged windows for design purposes, but they're not practical if you're using them, because they're not efficient. They're just going to let all the air, cold air out or hot air out, whatever. So I would agree that that was a waste of money for them, unless you're putting a proper window in front of it to continue to use it for decorative purposes. Any others? Well, here's the last one. I haven't read it. We'll see what it is. This was my first house and I didn't know what to do, so I didn't know what to do. What? I didn't know what to do to renovate an entire house, so I bought into the whole rustic farmhouse trend since it was all over Pinterest. No hate to the people who did farmhouse and love it. It just isn't my vibe, and I didn't realize that until the moment. That's a stylistic thing. That's personal preference. Well, that just goes back to our conversation about getting a second opinion. Well, it's not a... So hang on, I do want to say this, because we talk about getting an interior designer, or somebody that is going to provide a consultation and give you an opinion, and hopefully a professional opinion. Your tastes will change and probably change quicker than you anticipate, whether it's the color you paint your walls, the type of sofa, the color of your sofa, the floors, the backsplash, all of those selections. Two, three years later, you might go to somebody else's home or see some photos, or something on Instagram or Pinterest, or whatever and be like, "Oh, that's actually what I want," or "That's actually what I like." And I think the biggest mistake that people make is not making the change in their house to something that they like. So they end up living with what they actually don't like anymore, and you should live in a space that you truly enjoy, that'll make you feel better at home. So it's easy to paint the walls a new color. Flooring can be hit or miss, but you can cover up floors with area rides. Area rides for sure, yeah. Yeah, you can offset the ugly floors with beautiful walls. You can add things like Wayne Scottinger. Now there's a lot of different wall accessories and wall products that really can add an element of design to it. Having the right artwork is huge to designing a room, and things like sofas, while you have cushions and throws and things that you can change the look, whether it's seasonally or as your taste changed. So don't be afraid to shake things up, because some of these regrets were stylistic. Stylistic. I like it. Yeah. Good chat. All right. That's it. That's it. I think we're good. Good. All right. See. Bye. As always, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Please leave us a comment and let us know what did you regret doing around your house? We'd love to know. No. (beep) You