Customize Your Rent House
Sometimes it’s just not the right time to buy a home, and that’s okay. A great example of “not the time to buy” is relocating due to your career. It is always, and I mean ALWAYS, better to get to know the area you are moving to and pick the best location for your budget rather then picking the nice house in the bad neighborhood. And yes, I am absolutely 110% speaking from experience. Recently my husband and I have moved back to the Tahlequah area due to my husbands’ career. After owning our last two houses we are once again renters and learning how it definitely has an upside.
UPSIDE
Cheaper then purchasing a house.
Not held responsible for the repair bill when something goes wrong.
This gives you a chance to see what neighborhood you would like to purchase a home in.
Also allows time to figure out a budget for a house with the new income.
If you don’t like the new job, you aren’t stuck because you have a 30 year mortgage.
Usually landlords will let you paint or make improvements because that helps them.
Now, all of you know that I live and love interior design and making my house my own. I have made improvements to every single rental property I have lived in. However, I wouldn’t suggest keeping your landlord in the dark about the improvements that you want to make for several reasons.
ASK PERMISSION, NOT FORGIVENESS
Unless you know what you are doing, something could go wrong that you cannot fix.
Your landlord may be super picky about style.
Your landlord may even charge less for rent if you are making improvements to the property.
All of this to say, renting is not a bad option and you can still make it your own. I thought you guys would like to see before and after pictures of our living room. The house that we are renting is much larger than the house we were living in before which is great! The paint on the walls however, not so great.
In the pictures below you can see that the previous tenant painted one wall a dark navy as an accent wall and the rest of the walls are white along with white trim. The accent wall you could tell had previously been white and they only used one coat of cheap navy paint on the wall because you could see white showing through. P.S. the blue trim you see in the picture is just tape to protect the trim and ceiling from getting paint on it.
Needless to say, I had to fix it because that would have driven me crazy. The color that we used on the walls in the living room and kitchen was “Wet Pavement” by Valspar. With using paint+primer (highly suggest) we only needed one coat to cover all of the walls, yes, even the navy wall.
The first thing that we did in this “new to us” rent house was paint. I know I have said it before and I will say it again, you can do SO MUCH WITH PAINT! Is painting a pain in the butt? Absolutely! But it’s worth it! Keep in mind that you want to stick with neutral colors for a rent house and decorate with splashes of color. Your landlords will thank you and so will the tenants after you. If you go back and look at the before pictures you can see that the fireplace does not have a mantle. So, the next thing we did was build a new mantle for this fireplace. We moved our furniture in and decorated and that was it for this room. Check it out!
More before and after pictures coming soon! Can't wait to show you the rest of this house!
Thanks for reading!