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‘Bargain Mansions': Tamara paints bedroom walls black, gives old and dilapidated house modern look with $120K

The bold use of black throughout the house maintained uniformity in the suite, showing viewers that the shade is not a scary color to paint houses with

HGTV’s ‘Bargain Mansions’ stars mother, designer and television host Tamara Day who gives crumbling Kansas City estate homes massive overhauls and adds stunning style to them. Season 3 of the show had more than 26 million viewers running in to watch Tamara, a busy mother of four, buy dilapidated manors at surprisingly affordable rates then use budget-conscious design to turn them into forever homes for families.

The first episode of Season 4 premiered on Monday, November 9, and we saw Tamara and her dad and mentor, Ward Schraeder, flipping a house that Tamara likes to call “confused mid-century modern house”. Tamara bought the house for $350,000 and she wanted to spend not more than $120,000 on renovation. As she successfully was able to renovate most of the house within $70,000 in a little less than two months, she had one week left to renovate the master suite. She has $50,000 left and way too many ideas.

The first thing Tamara did to the giant bedroom was to paint the walls black. The bold use of black throughout the house maintained the uniformity in the suite, showing the viewers that black is not a scary colour to paint houses with. It gives the house a very sheek, modern and masculine look. The bedroom suite in the house was unique as it led to a semi-spacious washroom that has a bathtub and a walk-in shower and a door that leads to the backyard porch. The unique architecture of the house immediately got Tamara excited as she had both her dad and the viewers overwhelmed by laying down her revamp plan.

Tamara put modern fixtures and lights on the freshly painted black walls that have beautiful gold detailing. She also put a chandelier that had a very modern look. In the washroom she decided to continue the black theme by putting black-and-white tile all over the walls. She removed the dated light and loft that held the lights and replaced them with modern lighting attached to the ceiling. Tamara also replaced the existing bathtub with a slightly smaller one that would fit perfectly in that space. She stored the bigger bathtub in her storage for future use, giving us a glimpse of how to reuse existing good-condition stuff instead of getting rid of it. The bathroom was redesigned with heated floors.

The space in the backyard was as Ward said “a forest”. We could see shrubs growing all over the place and a badly executed wooden slab in the middle of it. The entire place was cleaned up before Tamara brought in her Cedar wood detailing and gray pavers. She also decided on treating the walls with pebble tiles. The $50,000 fund was spent well as potential buyers came to see the house after it opened up for viewing. They seemed to love it, while their kids felt very comfortable in the house.

Catch 'Bargain Mansions' every Monday at 9 pm ET only on HGTV.