On “Unsellable Houses,” Leslie Davis and Lyndsay Lamb know that sometimes a home for sale that sits on the market needs just a couple of cosmetic changes to appeal to buyers. And on the latest episode, these twin sister/real estate agents prove just how easy and inexpensive those tweaks can be.

In the episode “Old Ranch to New Nest,” Davis and Lamb meet homeowner Dick and his daughter, Nicole. They’re hoping to sell their incredibly dated family home to pay for Dick’s new retirement pad, but so far no buyers have come forward.

Watch how Lamb and Davis pinpoint a few problem areas and turn them around with minimal effort. Their changes—both inside and out in the yard—provide some smart inspiration we could all use on giving an old home a new vibe, all without changing too much.

When Lamb and Davis walk into Dick’s home, they’re pleasantly surprised by the living room and the wood feature wall. As it turns out, Dick installed this feature himself decades ago.

“You’re, like, ahead of the trends,” Davis says.

Still, the room does look dated, so the sisters paint the fireplace green and the wood-burning stove a matte black. These simple color changes help the wood wall pop and give the room a contemporary look.

While Davis and Lamb don’t change the living room much, they do alter the kitchen quite a bit. They switch out the cabinets and counters, and they add a new terra-cotta backsplash that’s perfect for Lamb’s Southwest ranch design.

The twins’ contractor, Jeff Lawrence, points out that terra cotta isn’t the easiest material to work with.

“We have to seal every tile before we put it in,” he explains. “We have to order extra; it has a tendency of breaking.”

Still, the tile looks lovely once it’s up, making the extra work well worth it.

While Davis and Lamb completely redo the dated kitchen, their choice in tile shows how even one relatively inexpensive feature can make a big impression. The terra cotta stands out in the space, giving the kitchen a unique look and a definite Southwest ranch vibe.

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In one bedroom, a space the HGTV stars decide to stage as an office, the sisters want to add a desk with a shelf feature above it.

“Instead of a feature wall in our office, we’re going to do a feature bookshelf,” Lamb says.

They hand-paint simple lines on the wall, creating a design behind two floating, live-edge shelves.

“It’s like a floating fake bookshelf,” Davis says.

While a floating fake bookshelf might sound strange, this DIY arch adds a lot more personality than these floating shelves would have done on their own.

While the terra cotta looks great in the kitchen, Lamb isn’t done with tile selections. She chooses a lot of uniquely patterned tiles for each bathroom, the entry, and even the laundry room, prompting Davis to say at the design meeting, “This is a lot of patterns.”

But Lamb insists that a lot of patterns isn’t a bad thing.

“With the Southwest ranch style in this house, I think it’s totally safe to do different patterns in each room,” Lamb says. “My trick here is not to layer pattern on top of pattern in the same room.”

When the home is finished, there are indeed a lot of patterned tiles around the house, but somehow, they work. While the house was filled with dark wood in almost every room, the addition of some fun and colorful tile breaks up the midcentury wood look. The many tile patterns are a good look that can easily be emulated.

Out back, this house has one unique feature: a pigeon coop. Dick has housed pigeons here for years, but Lamb and Davis know that most buyers wouldn’t want to find dozens of pigeons in their new backyard.

“This is a major issue for me, OK,” Davis says. “This was one of the main reasons this house was unsellable. I mean, who wants to buy a house with 40 pigeons?”

Luckily, Davis has a plan to turn this structure into a chicken coop, which should be more attractive to buyers. Plus, she wants to make it match the house.

“We’re going to paint the structure the same color as the house and garage so it’s not so distracting,” Davis explains. “I’m going to make this chicken coop the coolest chicken coop on the block.”

Before the renovation, Dick and Nicole were unable to sell Dick’s house at $545,000. After Lamb and Davis step in, they invest $80,000 to give the house a new look and a new list price of $700,000.

Once on the market, Dick and Nicole are shocked when they get an offer for $770,000. After Lamb and Davis get back their investment and other expenses are factored in, these sisters net half the profits of $57,000. That’s an impressive windfall for some new tile and a few coats of paint!

Jillian Pretzel is a Southern California writer who covers lifestyle, relationships, home, and money management.