On “Fixer to Fabulous,” Dave and Jenny Marrs know that many homes lack personality, even in a beautiful setting. But that’s something these Bentonville, AR, remodeling experts can easily solve.

On the Season 5 episode “Forever Home on the Lake,” Dave and Jenny meet Rick and Lisa Phillips, who’ve bought a lake house where they hope their adult son will visit them often, maybe with grandkids one day. Problem is, this lake house seems plain. The Phillipses have a generous budget of $225,000 to add some pizzazz to this property.

As Jenny and Dave roll up their sleeves to make the house feel unique and inviting, they reveal some smart ways to make any home stand out. Plus, they cop to making one extremely amateur mistake that most of us have done at some point. It’s a good reminder that even the pros aren’t perfect!

Play down the garage

“When you first drive up to the house, you see a lot of garage,” says Rick. “Just the garage. You don’t see much of the house. So we’re hoping to freshen up the color, or do something to add a little more depth and dimension so you see the rest of the house.”

Jenny knows just how to do that.

“If we paint dark on the brick, it makes it feel like it’s all consistent and more modern,” she says. “The plan out here is to modernize the space, so we will paint the trim, paint the brick, get new modern lighting, a new front door, update the landscaping, and that’ll do it.”

Sure enough, it does.

Sticky stone can fix an ugly fireplace

“I just don’t feel the brick on the fireplace feels ‘lakey’ to me,” says Jenny. “So I’m going to get some stone. We can just do a sticky stone that basically goes just right on top of the brick and will just freshen that whole thing up and make it feel more appropriate for the lake.”

When the sticky stone arrives, it’s a little darker than Jenny anticipated, so they do a mortar wash over it to lighten it up a bit. They also add a new oak mantel. The changes are dramatic.

Make sure things fit through the front door

Dave and Jenny purchased a massive custom slider for the living room. But when they go to install it, they find it’s too big to fit in the front door no matter how they turn it. Talk about a rookie mistake!

Dave and his brother decide to power it through, and while the glass makes it inside intact, the door casing is worse for the wear—they’ve scratched and nicked it.

“I guess it’s a good thing we’re changing the front door,” Dave says with a laugh.

Brighten up the bunk beds

Bunk beds are a great way to allow a guest room to accommodate more kids, so why not make them fun?

Jenny wants to add a touch that takes advantage of the lake style, so she goes searching for an old boat that Dave can fashion into bunk beds. Dave cuts the boat in half, attaches each half to the wall, and fashions them with a sort of bedside table. What kid wouldn’t want to sleep in that?

“When Lisa and Rick’s friends come, they’re going to climb up in their boat bunks,” Jenny says. “That’s going to be fun!”

Dress up a tray ceiling

Ideally, Dave and Jenny would like to vault the tray ceiling in the living room, but when Dave crawls up into the attic, he finds that it can’t be done.

But there must be some way they can glam it up, right?

Jenny decides to make the ceiling more attractive by installing wood planks and a modern ceiling fan.

“You had this tray ceiling here before,” says Jenny. “So we just embraced it, rather than flattening it off, because you didn’t want to go lower.”

When all is said and done, this boring lake house is completely transformed.

“We just left you guys an open book, and you nailed it,” says Rick. “You’ve made this into a place where we want to spend our future.”

“Lisa and Rick bought this home because of the location on the lake,” says Jenny. “But it didn’t feel like the lake, like their house. Now it feels very much like them. It feels like it caters to what they wanted. They can see themselves here for a long time, and that’s what’s important to us.”

The post Even Dave and Jenny Marrs of ‘Fixer to Fabulous’ Still Make This Rookie Renovation Mistake—You, Too? appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

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