Valencia Home Makes TV, Market

By Jessica Marks
Signal Staff Writer

Monday November 6, 2006

Approximately 100 lookey-loos peaked around the open house of a Valencia home Sunday afternoon, the first to see the professionally redecorated home that will air on HGTV's hit show "Designed to Sell."

Many neighbors and local residents came seeking tips on how to decorate their own homes, after the show's highly reviewed interior decorator and a team of Designed to Sell carpenters, painters and handymen fixed up the house trying to get a faster sale or a higher price.

The home belonging to Jack and Cat Knight, located at 27228 Blakely Place, was accessorized, repainted and de-cluttered courtesy of a $2,000 budget courtesy of the show, and the results were widely favorable.

"It didn't look like this at all when we first showed," said real estate agent Wade Reynolds. "Having it look good and staged well is very, very important."

It is also very popular as well, as visitors took a keen interest in the dining room, the living room and the upstairs bathroom - the rooms the "Designed to Sell" team concentrated their focus.

"I thought it was very well done, very tasteful," Joel Miller of Valencia said. "The simple colors ... it was really ingenious."

A key point was the wainscoting which added a rich-looking paneling to the house, an element that was appreciated by many.

The three-bedroom, three-bathroom home was described as "small" by several people, so the color choice and the size of the furniture was impressive to many people who had lived for years in similar homes themselves.

Michelle Ries, who lives just a few doors down, especially liked the way fixtured mirrors looked in the bathroom.

"We might go and do that, too," she said.

But the home hadn't always looked that nice, the show's television host Clive Pearse said.

"This is one of the better ones we've done," Pearse said, who pointed out that initially, the house had a piano and a pile of diapers that were in the front room, instead of the charming conversation and sitting area that exists now.

Pearse, who has worked on dozens of similar projects, said that it's common for the homeowners to come back on the day of the open house and say, "Why didn't we live like this in the first place?"

The home's Realtors, Wade and Terry Reynolds, estimate that the work the show did added between $10,000 and $15,000 worth of value overall.

The show is expected to air on the HGTV channel in approximately four months.
Copyright:The Signal