Selling a house: it’s one of those simple-sounding goals that’s just so immensely complicated. All you want to do is sign a few papers, get paid and move on, but as anyone who’s ever done it knows, there’s a lot to do between making the decision to sell and getting that nice, fat paycheck.
One thing many people over-look that we have found just about indispensable at Prestige Painting, the painting company Mountain Brook and Alabama have come to trust with their homes, is the paint! When you’re living in a place, and you see it every day, the paint can become something you really don’t look at closely anymore, and that could mean that you’re looking past a few serious blemishes that a potential buyer might notice.
Of course, with any major damage, you’re gonna want to it leave to the pros, but there’s a good chance that you can fix up small problem spots on your own. When deciding for yourself, use this easy checklist to determine if you have a problem, and if so, what you should do about it.
1. Check the house thoroughly.
This means looking at as many square inches of your wall space as you can. We mean gettin’ behind that armoire, looking up in the corners of rooms and taking a serious stock of the situation, because you never know what will catch a buyer’s eye.
When doing this, watch for any scratches, chipped areas, dented walls, water damage, sun damage, holes or any other damage, and mark down in a notebook where each bit is and to what extent the area is damaged.
2. Decide whether the damage needs to be fixed.
After step 1 is finished, take note of everything you wrote down and decide whether there is enough damage to get serious about fixing it up before you move on. This is a great time to bring in an outside set of eyes, such as a realtor, who will see the house differently than you and can be a helpful judge.
Now, a house with no damage to the paint at all, meaning not even a shade has been changed by the sun, is pretty much an impossibility, but that doesn’t mean that all paint jobs need to be touched up. A little fading from the sun isn’t enough to warrant that a whole room be repainted, but a big dent with chipped off paint might be worth the effort.
3. Take stock of your painting inventory.
Once you’ve decided to fix up the paint a bit, your next decision is whether or not you can do it yourself, or you need an expert’s help. The key to this decision is threefold:
First, do you have the paint color in question? This is important, as you’ll probably need professional assistance to try and match it if you don’t. Hopefully, however, you’ve got a bucket or two left-over from the original paint job that you can use.
Before you just go slapping that paint on the wall, though, paint a little on something like a piece of cardboard and let it dry. Hold it up against the wall in question, and see if they’re the same. Paint can change both in the can and on the wall, and if they no longer match up, you’ll need to get a sample from the wall to take to a store with a color-matching machine.
Next, you need to figure out if you have the correct tools. You should always re-apply paint with the same set of tools that were originally used on the wall, so if you don’t have and can’t get those brushes or rollers, you’ll want to call an expert.
Finally, you need to make sure you have enough of the paint for the job. While sometimes it’s okay to fix a small chip with just a little paint, the best results always come from repainting a whole wall. If you think that’s the route for you, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got enough paint left for the job. If not, once again, just hit those experts up!
4. Be honest about your ability, and make your decision.
Now, we know a lot of you are DIY experts, but not everyone has those skills. The last thing you want to do is to further mess-up a wall in a house you just want to sell, so be honest with yourself and decide if you’ve got the skills for the job. There’s no shame in calling in the pros, and in fact it can sometimes be cheaper to do so!
Keeping those four steps in mind, and moving through them methodically, should cut down on the stress and questions when eyeing up the paint in your house before you sell. If you think you need to re-paint, you’ve got all the right tools and the skills to use ‘em, have at it! But, if you start to have doubts or concerns, put your valuable home in the hands of some experts like your friends at Prestige, and we’ll have your walls looking sparkling new in days.
