Episode 9: The Big Surfaces

Scott Williams: Sweet Home Santa Barbara where the skies are so blue. Sweet Home, Santa Barbara, what’s worked for me, can work for you.

Jonathan Robinson: Welcome back friends to Sweet Home Santa Barbara, I’m the co-host, Jonathan Robinson, and with my friend and Realtor…

Scott Williams: Scott Williams.

Jonathan: So today we’re going to be talking about what you called the biggest surfaces first to explain what the big surfaces are.

Scott: Well, these are the parts of your home. That have the biggest impact on the buyer’s impression of your home. If you think of things like your walls, your floor’s, the landscape. These are big surfaces. And that’s what we’re going to address today.

Jonathan: That’s a big topic. We’ll try and do an overview today, and maybe a deep dive into some of these later episodes. So, when you think of helping people prepare their house and the big surfaces, what’s the first thing you tend to think about?

Scott: Well, we’ve mentioned the color of your house and how important it is, we are going to start out there, talk about a couple more things in the front and then we’re going to step inside the front door.

Jonathan: Okay. So, we’re stepping in the front door, what happens? We’re transported to a magical land where everybody wants to buy your house.

Scott: Okay. Well, the most important flooring in the house. We mentioned this once before is your entry flooring, this should be the most expensive flooring in your house. Often times, not any bigger than the entry itself, if we’re doing any kind of floor work, we will generally be doing a little bit of thinking about that particular surface. That’s the first thing you step onto. But leaving that behind your eyes are going to go up on to the walls. So, let’s talk about your interior walls of your house.

Jonathan: And what occurs to me is of course the shape that they’re in, but also the color.

Scott: Shape and color. Just as we had discussed the way we pick colors for the outside of house, the inside also goes through certain amount of fashion trends for about 10 years at a time, will tend to be working with creams, tans, some form of a light brown. And by light brown, I mean, a cream color. This is the most common neutral color. We are generally going with neutrals, and we’re going to generally go with one color throughout the entire house.

Jonathan: And like the color of houses on the outside, this changes quite a bit, and you don’t want to be caught with the wrong color walls.

Scott: That’s true. When we leave behind the great world of Tans and creams and Browns, we usually go to the Greys for a few years and then we come back to the Tans and creams and Browns, and we have recently passed through a gray phase, and we’ve come back into the Tans and creams and that’s where in tansy creams right now. So that’s you just want to be aware if it’s gone gray that you may want to go there and if it’s not gray then you shouldn’t go there.

Jonathan: Got you, okay. I find it funny and what other big surfaces come next?

Scott: Well, let’s talk about. The ceilings. The ceilings are generally painted white, the trims around the doors and the baseboards. And if there are Crown moldings, those are generally painted quite white as well.

Jonathan: So that’s simple. And how about carpeting is that considered a big surface?

Scott: Carpeting is a big surface. Carpeting itself has gone out of fashion about 10 years ago. So these days, our floors are generally a hard surface with our climate in Southern California. I know you’re in Northern California while we’re talking right now, you’re more likely to have carpeting there because you get more cold temperatures than we do. But in Santa Barbara the predominant thought is that you want a hard surface floor and that might be a wood floor, that might be a porcelain, or tile or stone floor. It also might be a luxury vinyl plank floor which looks very much like wood it is very practical as used it, many price ranges as of homes, including very expensive homes. All of these are what you would mostly be picking for your floors.

Jonathan: I find it fascinating that these things go in and out of fashion and at one time, lime green, and bright orange carpeting where like the in thing. And now if you saw that you would run away screaming.

Scott: That’s true. You would have also had silver and gold foil on your walls. Very psychedelic.

Jonathan: Uh-huh. That means I will have to take off the lime green and gold foil on my walls before I sell my house. It’s good to know. Okay, well, what comes next is terms of big surfaces.

Scott: Okay. So, your carpeting is probably going to be out and you’re going to probably have a hard surface on your floor. We’re going to– Let’s step into those two big important expensive rooms that have cabinets in them. Those would be our kitchens and our baths. We’re going to need to do a little bit of evaluating whether or not your cabinets are really up to Snuff, if they’re a wooden cabinet can we refinish them, if they need refinishing can we still keep the look of wood or are they gone sufficient long period of time that they really need to be painted a light color or a white color. And then we go down the road with painted cabinets. Excuse me, rather than the wood ones. Big decision.

Jonathan: I know when you worked on my house and sold that, we had a very old kitchen cabinet from 1940s or something. And instead of replacing all it, we just painted, and it looked fantastic. I was like, why didn’t I do this before? It’s amazing. What’s a good paint job can do?

Scott: Paint job can make a big difference. At the same time, we do that paint job of your cabinets, and this would apply to bathrooms as well. We generally change the knobs and we often time change the hinges to something that would be contemporary. That would probably be a brushed nickel or oil rubbed, bronze. And this helps to really bring those cabinets up to us. High condition, as we can get without replacing them.

Jonathan: Right. Smart stuff. Okay, and what comes next in terms of big surfaces?

Scott: Okay, let’s go out into the yard, we know that it’s what’s up front, that counts so  that the front yard is much more important. But let’s address the backyard which is often times another large surface of the house. There we will have things like patios or decks. We generally clear them off to show them as much space as possible, maybe with a patio set or a table or chairs, but we often find patio furniture has been sitting outside at people’s homes for quite a few years and is probably past its prime that we pitch, throw away and often times we all have stagers bring in new stuff to show if the owners don’t want to buy new stuff but you know, barbecues and many things that might be out in the art are been out on that patio for years in the rain, and the weather, and we get rid of a lot of that sort of stuff. Stepping off of the deck or the patio we’re out into, still many times will be grass. Grass is becoming less fashionable and less desirable from an environmental standpoint. Because it takes a lot of water to take care of it. And Santa Barbara, we’re really in a desert here and grass doesn’t make much sense from the economic standpoint, but often times, then we, if the grass is in good condition will maintain it and sell it as grass. If it’s not, they’ve discontinued watering it, which is a fairly common item. We will cover it up with mulches or barks and just show it a clean but something that the new people are going to have to take care of.

Jonathan: A little bit of landscaping like that can make a huge difference in how things look, and anything else in terms of big surfaces.

Scott: Well, we’re going to end with the windows and the window coverings. Windows, there’s a lot of choices in Window Coverings, we generally are not using mini blinds or draperies for that matter. We do pick a lot of other nicer choices than those but commonly, probably, more than half of the time we go without, and we show the home just nice and light and bright but without window coverings at all. Sometimes we just have the painters take them down and we never put them back up. That’s a common thing. But what about the window?

Jonathan: Why do you do that?

Scott: Well, the house looks bright. It is a decorating choice that the people have to make. Whether they want plantation shutters, they went blinds, they want Roman Shades. There’s a lot of beautiful choices and some of them are fairly expensive and the house looks really good and shows really well without anything hang on the Windows.

Jonathan: Uh-huh, there’s a science to all this. I appreciate that. You know, the science, you’ve been in the business for over 40 years. So, Scott, is there anything else about windows that would be good for people to know.

Scott: I don’t recommend in most cases that we actually replace the windows. It’s a fairly expensive operation and unless we’re going to do a whole house remodel. It returns less than 50 cents on the dollar. It’s one of those things that just does not return very well at this time in the marketplace.

Jonathan: And since some things return like eight hundred percent on the dollar you might as well work on those first.

Scott: Let’s pick those big winners first.

Jonathan: How do people get hold of you? if they’re interested in knowing more or talking to you.

Scott: Okay, the name is Scott Williams, and the email is my name, scott@ScottWilliams.com.

Jonathan: Well, great. And in future episodes, we’ll probably go a little bit more into depth about some of these surfaces and tell people how they can get top dollar for their house. We look forward to seeing you then thanks for joining. Sweet Home, Santa Barbara.

Scott: Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, folks, for listening.

Scott Williams: Thank you for listening, please, subscribe to our podcast on your favorite app. If you know someone preparing to sell their home, please tell them about the podcast. Visit scottwilliams.com to contact me and download the two free E-Booklets. “Is My House Saleable Now?” and “How Not To Buy A Money Pit”. Thank you for listening.