The house had great “curb appeal,” and had an 8 page glossy full color brochure to go with it. The neighborhood supported the curb appeal with incredible views of Mt Rainier and Lake Washington. The yard was meticulously manicured.
I would have expected the interior of the home to reflect the sales pitch.
On first glance it did—-
—-but it did not take long for the gloss—-and the color—-to go out of the picture.
The main upstairs bathroom looked “sparkling” with bright white tiles and shiny brown border tiles that seemed inconsistent with the age of the home. At first I thought nothing of it, because often the condition of the interior of the home merely reflects how well the home was cared for—-or not.
In this case the entire bathroom was tiled—-walls and floor. They even went to the trouble of matching the window trim the same color as the tiles.
So why did it look so nice?
All the tile work had been painted. The tile trim and wood trim were the same color because they were both painted the same color—-no color matching involved. When you looked close—it was obvious. At first glance it was not obvious. My buyer had been in the bathroom at previous visits to the home and had never noticed. The buyer’s agent had never noticed. It totally gave itself away under the toilet—where the painting was not complete.
How many of you know the trick of how to clean dried paint out of a plastic bucket or a glass container? What you do is fill it up with hot water—wait a few minutes—-and all the paint peels from the inside of the container in one piece—-a floppy shape of the container it was once in.
So, now, imagine the shower walls after a nice hot shower. Me thinks the buyer would have been “hot” and seeing “red,” instead of the nice “white” tiles.
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Charles Buell, Seattle Home Inspector
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