Decorating your home for maximum buyer appeal

A friend of mine is selling her home. It's a nicely-sized 3 bedroom victorian terrace with 2 reception rooms, a huge kitchen, front garden, rear yard/driveway and is close to local amenities - yet it's been on the market for ages; almost a year in fact. I didn't realise it'd been on for so long until I saw her the other day and she happened to moan about it. I've seen enough episodes of House doctor to know a little about buyer appeal, so I said I'd go and have a look around her house for her.

As I approached her house I tried to ignore the fact that i'd been there before and tried to remain objective, as if seeing it for the first time. With Ann Maurice's voice echoing in my head I firstly checked out her 'kerb appeal'. The paint on her white front door was weather-worn, her bay windows needed cleaning, and the garden needed tidying up. Entering the hallway via a dark, dingy porch in need of a coat of paint I noticed that despite the high ceilings and wide stairway the hall seemed almost claustrophobic. She has a thing for rich, dark colours and had painted the walls in a deep dusky-rose shade. The doors were white gloss on flat panels of plywood. I knew for a fact that behind the plywood were proper panelled doors, so I encouraged her to strip the plywood off and expose the original panelling.

The living room wasn't too bad; she had a beige carpet, white walls, rich chocolate brown suite and a coal-effect fireplace. The only real work that needed doing was the fire surround - a black marble effect that had seen better days. Unfortunately my friend has two bearded collie dogs, and because they have long hair they moult in clumps; which were all over the carpet.

The dining room wasn't. There was a dining set in there, but the room had been used as a junk room for years and had accumulated lots of spare bits of furniture and - because her husband is a mechanic - engine parts. Not a brilliant way to showcase a dining room, I told her.

Going into the kitchen was a breath of fresh air. This is one room my friend really takes pride in, and it was spotless. Pristine white kitchen units, white and grey marble-effect worktops, light grey walls and a grey cord carpet, and no dog smell. Unfortunately the one thing that let it down was the view of the ugly back yard from the nice big clean windows.

As I went upstairs I suggested she may want to remove more of that awful plywood panelling from the bannister - suspecting there may be attractive balustrades behind it. The upstairs hallway was ok, apart from needing a coat of paint on the doors - thankfully minus the plywood (hence how I knew the doors downstairs would have nice panelling)! The bedrooms weren't too bad, except for her daughters which was the typical childish mess of clothes, toys and books. the bathroom needed a good clean, as the slimy scum usually found in dirty bathrooms seemed to be everywhere. Luckily the bathroom suite was white, but as the walls were a kind of pea-green it looked dingy. She also had those god-awful tile transfers on the tiles in a random formation - a bevy of peeling seahorses dancing around her bath. The shower and window curtains had brownish mildew and needed a good wash.

Finally, we went outside to the rear yard. It's a good size - easily big enough to park a car in, and is protected by heavy wooden gates. Her mechanic husband considers this his domain, so I tracked him down - hiding in his neighbour's garage - and tackled him about the oil patches, the dog mess, the weatherworn paint on the walls and the engine parts lying around (a spillover from the dining room!).

As I went around I suggested various ways in which they could better present their house: remove the dog hair (and dog smell) from the house, especially the living room and bedrooms. All the woodwork in the house would need a fresh coat of white gloss, using waterproof gloss in the bathroom and kitchen. The front garden is quite small with 5 diamonds of soil - one in each corner and one in the middle, so I suggested they plant some flowers in these and maybe even get a power-washer to clean the concrete and crazy-paving path up to the door. I said they must paint the front door, steps and windowsills as they looked terrible with the paint peeling.

The hallway was the one place my friend was dreading changing. Being a victorian style house the ceiling was extremely high, and alongside the stairs the walls reached a straight 2 storeys - not easy reaching up that high! Fortunately the bannister is sturdy so I suggested getting a ladder and a thick plank of wood, putting the ladder at the top of the stairs, and balancing the wood with one end on the ladder and the other on the bannister opposite. She could then reach to paint up to the ceiling. Of course she made her hubby do this! I suggested a simple white or off-white for the hallway to make it look bigger, and trusted in Ann Maurice's tip of using a long mirror on a blank wall to open the room up further.

One other thing I suggested which would make a big difference, not only to buyer appeal but also to the value of the house: central heating. My friend moved into the house in the 80's before radiators were the norm; nowadays central heating can increase the value of a house enormously. I also suggested she get heating insurance, because the last thing she'd need is for the boiler to break down when a viewing is due!

I won't go into minute detail about every single thing that needed doing, but I'm glad to say that my friend is taking my advice and is probably up to her elbows in white gloss and old plywood as I type! She's taken the house off the market for now to give them time to get it all presentable. Hopefully they'll be done by the middle of spring and she can get it back on the market for summer.