'Love It or List It': Hilary Farr transforms Dave and Dana's 'house of horrors' with a beautiful renovation
The new episode of 'Love It or List It' was more challenging than a lot of episodes that you might've seen in the past. It featured a 100-year-old house, owned by a couple, Dave and Dana that lived in the house along with their baby. Their house was made up of three separate apartments. They lived in the first one, and they had people renting the other two apartments. However, this arrangement stopped working for them after they had their baby. After they welcomed their child, they had the other two apartments vacated and were ready to have a bigger space for themselves so that the house was functional enough for the entire family. Currently, the second apartment was being used as storage and the third one was recently renovated. Nothing great, just some surface renovations were carried out in apartment three which was then occupied by Dana's mother.
As much as Dana liked her house, she believed that the scope of work in terms was renovations was too vast and it would be better if they moved into a new space altogether. On the other hand, Dave believed that their existing house would work for them if they could do a couple of renovations. The couple enlisted the help of show hosts David Visentin (realtor) and Hilary Farr (designer) to help them find a new house as well as renovate their existing house. Just like Dana, Hilary too was not a fan of the house and neither was David. The latter was ready to show them a few new houses that they could immediately move into by selling the existing one while Hilary had a couple of ideas as to how she could reimagine, reconfigure and reconstruct the house they lived in. The budget that she was allotted to renovate this "house full of horrors" was $145,000. The couple gave David a limit of $475,000 to find potential houses for them.
Except for one, Dave and Dana loved all the options that David had in store for them. They believed that their house-hunting journey had come to an end after being blown away completely after they took a tour of one house that didn't just have an ample amount of space for them and their baby but also had a 1300 sqft suite that could have served as Dana's mom's private sanctuary. To top that, the house was priced at $50,000 below their budget, making it a win-win situation.
Coming to their existing house, Hilary was able to transform it beautifully but she couldn't update the bedroom that was being occupied by Dana's mother. Even though an updated room for her was requisite, Hilary could not do so due to budget constraints. Even though a new house was a much better option for them, given it was closer to the convenience stores, playground, schools and had something for all members of their family as well as very well-priced, Dana and Dave chose to stick with their newly renovated existing house. What sealed the deal for them was the kitchen renovation, they couldn't have had a better option anywhere else. The shelving, the storage space, the countertops, and the island, everything came together wonderfully. They were also blown away by how cohesive the house looked after Hilary combined apartment 1 and apartment 2. The walk-in closets were an added bonus, the couple had never dreamt that their space could house those.
All in all, this was just another win for Hilary. On the way back to their own destinations from the couple's home, she jokingly rubbed the fact into David's face that this time around, he almost had it in the bag. She said if he could have mentioned that the couple could make some extra dollars if they got renters on board for the extra space in the house he found for them, they definitely would've listed the house instead of keeping it. Hilary besting David once again. Classic!
Catch the rerun of this episode on Sept 22 at 12 am ET. 'Love It or List It' airs Mondays at 9 pm ET only on HGTV.