Bargain Block: The Scandinavian House

The Scandinavian House from Bargain Block featured a more pared-back design, which ultimately helped to prove that Keith and Evan’s long-term plans for the show are working.

The third season of HGTV’s fan-favorite Detroit-based home flipping show, Bargain Block, is now well underway, and so far Keith and Evan have really outdone themselves.

Before this third season even started, Evan (one half of Bargain Block’s talented hosting duo) shared that he had learned that “there actually might be some houses we should skip over,” while filming this season of the show.

And now that the “The Scandinavian House” episode has aired, we know exactly why.

The Scandinavian House’s final design

When this episode opens, Keith (Bargain Block’s resident designer and Evan’s other half) begrudgingly explains that they purchased this dilapidated house (sight unseen), because it was the only home left on the block.

However, as always, Evan and Keith set out to do the seemingly impossible and intend to completely transform the home into a minimalist Scandy-inspired starter home.

And while it seemed for a moment that this huge home may actually become the first in Bargain Block history to make Keith, Evan and their realtor, Shea, throw in the towel, they actually pulled it off.

By the time the open house rolled around, The Scandinavian House had been completely transformed.

It became a modest family home, with a fully custom hand-made wooden dining table, plenty of beautiful natural woodwork on the backsplash and throughout the bedroom, beautiful blonde oak floors and penny-tile in the bathrooms, a custom-built open staircase and an overall light, minimal and neutral design palette which is sure to appeal to most buyers.

The Scandinavian House before and after

Keith and Evan did an incredible amount of work in this episode to reconstruct and reconfigure this home to make it more livable.

This ultimately helped them to increase its value quite a fair bit (even though they sacrificed one bedroom), as follows:

Hallmarks of the Scandinavian interior design style

For those unfamiliar with the newest design trends, the Scandinavian design style has been enjoying quite a bit of attention recently, as it provides a great framework for creating minimal, clean and modern designs.

And this is what Keith was referring to as the “spaceship” look in the episode.

And it is exactly this ‘less is more’ approach which allowed the usually out-there Keith to pare back his design to a more neutral, open and airy space.

This ultimately made The Scandinavian House feel much larger and much more sophisticated, even though Keith likely saved a whole lot of money when it came to its décor, art and furniture expenses.

Did The Scandinavian House sell?

Sometimes Keith’s over-the-top, personality-filled designs can raise questions about the mass-appeal of the Bargain Block homes.

But this time around, Shea and  the potential buyers who showed up at the open house for The Scandinavian House, seemed pretty certain that the home’s neutral and clean design would make it sell, fast.

And they were right. It was revealed in the last few moments of this episode that The Scandinavian House did sell within just two weeks and that the home even managed to sell for $10,000 more than the listing price.

When all was said and done, Keith and Evan secured a profit of over $32,000 on this home.

The Scandinavian House proves that Evan and Keith’s plan is working

Longtime Bargain Block viewers will already know that the show’s story goes much deeper than simply flipping a few starter homes.

In fact, Keith and Evan have been very open about the fact that they are trying to transform Detroit’s failing housing market “one house at a time”, by systematically increasing the values of entire blocks at a time.

And The Scandinavian House may be the best example yet, that this dynamic duo (assisted by Shea, of course) has managed to do just that.

While $7,500 was quite a lot of money to spend on this home initially, it was not the first home in the neighborhood that the Bargain Block team had flipped.

In the end, the higher average home price in this neighborhood meant that Keith and Evan secured a higher-than-asking-price offer fairly quickly.

Even though this was one of the largest homes that they have ever endeavored to sell on the show, it indicates that the housing market in this area has already started shifting.