Sigh. It’s not as if the ‘list’ isn’t long enough already, but I keep finding more stuff to add. I just keep thinking that whoever walks through our front door as a prospective buyer, I want to knock their socks off! I still have yet to finish painting most of the interior doors (in our home) in addition to the trim on three large windows in our bedroom. Ordinarily, I’d take care of the fence, too, but my husband has offered to handle it. It’s a huge job and will require much more energy than I have to give. I will be involved, however. I get to paint all of the support beams under the carport that the paint company we hired back in 2017 managed to miss. I’m also taking care of all of the prep work (sweeping up all of the paint ‘chips’ that were removed by the pressure washer and affixing plastic (to the ground) with tape around all of the fence posts in order to avoid spraying the sidewalk). I also have to wrap the mailbox (which is built into the fence) and a few other minor things.
Doesn’t sound like much? Oh, my friends, that’s only the beginning! Why? Because every time I look around, I think of ‘one more thing’ we should do to make our house more marketable. Yesterday, I finally got around to applying high gloss sealer to the slate floor in our front entry. The slate was filthy and had seen better days. After spending about 3 hours scrubbing the floor (the other night) on my hands and knees, I thought I’d better not waste another minute applying the sealer. I thought I had a pretty good system worked out, I started on the stairs in our sunken livingroom and then worked my way through the entryway and up to where the regular livingroom starts. The problem was (I soon discovered) that after applying sealer to the stairs, I wasn’t able to return to the sunken living room in order to turn off the cassette player that I had on ‘continuous play’. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the music on the cassette. But the love started to fade after I heard each song at least 4 times.
I considered letting it play all night and then shutting it off in the morning (once the sealer had cured) but I knew the music would keep me up all night. Fortunately, I had at least one functioning brain cell left that reminded me about the electrical (breaker) panel in the gym. After testing a couple of the switches, I managed to find the one that controlled the power to the sunken livingroom. And with one click, ‘voila’, that was the end of ‘continuous play’. Thank God!! It certainly wasn’t the end to the projects in the room, which I was 99% certain I had finally completed. A quick glance out one of the picture windows changed all that! Not only did I discover how filthy the windows were (we never use the room), I also noticed all of the places in the wood trim the window installers had damaged (when we first purchased the house). They looked embarrassingly bad. I knew that if a potential buyer opened the curtains, they would immediately cry ‘foul’! As a result, I added another item to my list, filling all of the gouges with wood putty and applying a fresh coat of paint to all of the trim.
It doesn’t end there, of course. Because after I applied the high gloss sealer to the slate floor in the entryway, I noticed how unsightly all of the floor registers were. They were originally a silver color but that was no longer the case. The ‘color’ was more in the ‘rust family’. My husband intended to purchase all new registers but I didn’t see the point. I knew with a wire brush, some elbow grease, and Rustoleum primer and paint, they’d look good as new, and wouldn’t put as much of a dent in our pocketbook. Initially, my husband scoffed at the idea of refurbishing the old floor registers, but once I revealed the finished product, he was quite impressed. All it cost was a little bit of my time and energy, along with $4.98 for a can of spray paint from my local Ace Hardware (I already had the primer). My husband was out for most of the morning and afternoon. He took the day off from working on the house and went fishing instead. But once he got home, he added one more thing to my list. After ‘surveying’ my work in the sunken livingroom and noticing that most of the trim was loose, he proceeded to shoot hundreds of nails into it to sturdy it up.
Once I painted all of the trim under the windows, I thought I was done. Not anymore! I now get to ‘touch up’ all of the places he repaired/fixed the trim on either side of the windows. Wunderbar. Hey, on a positive note, at least I got to add something else to the list (today) that doesn’t necessarily involve ‘work’ but will involve some driving. The ‘ISO’ ad I placed on Craigslist the other day, the one that stated I was in need of moving boxes? I actually got a legitimate person that answered my ad and offered all of her boxes from her recent move. I made sure I did my homework this time and looked at photos of them before I made a commitment. I am a little worried because she indicated I must take them ‘all’, so in addition to bringing our short-bed pickup truck, we’re bringing my small SUV. She also wants them ‘gone’ by tomorrow. After my husband returned from fishing, he wasn’t thrilled to hear about my plans (for us) because he had plans of his own (to paint the fence). He also wanted me to explain where we’re going to store the boxes when the house is being shown.
Ugh. I suggested the shed but I’m not sure it’s big enough. I guess we’ll find out. Fortunately, the carpet squares are gone so that freed up quite a bit of room. “Couldn’t you have waited to get moving boxes until after we had shown the house and it was under contract?” my husband asked me, a slight edge to his voice. My response? “When opportunity knocks, you answer.” I probably could have waited but ‘free’ moving boxes don’t pop up every single day on Craigslist. Yes, I have to drive 40 minutes to get them but it’s worth the expense (time and gas money). Hopefully, we’ll be able to ‘secret them away’ somewhere that won’t negatively impact people when they walk through the property. Oh my gosh, I just thought of something! We’re going to be doing that very thing here shortly! Once our house goes under contract and the sale is finalized, we’re going to be ‘on the hunt for a home’ ourselves. With that in mind, we called a gal who we used as a realtor in the past and let her know that we’d like her to represent us. She was beyond thrilled!
I’ll be honest, I really didn’t want to use her. She’s lovely but she’s exhausting. She talks a mile a minute and constantly goes off on tangents. By the time we got off the phone, my husband and I needed a nap. The great thing about having her on ‘our team’ is that she’s a fighter and will fight to the finish to ensure we find a house we’re happy with. I had to laugh because she said to ‘call anytime with questions’. My husband told her that she might regret that statement because I’m a night owl and have a tendency to stay up until around three o’clock in the morning. Even with the warning, she insisted that she meant it. “I’m here for you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” she assured us, “Call anytime.” As tempting as that sounds, I would never do that to her. The only time I’m picking up the phone at three in the morning is if there’s an emergency. Knock on wood, that has yet to happen. I have to put her on the backburner at the moment anyway. We still have to select a realtor locally as our selling agent.
Thus far we’ve met up with three different realtors to obtain a CMA (comparative market analysis). Tomorrow is going to be a significant day because it’s ‘Decision Day’. We’re going to sit down and review the packets each realtor has provided and make a decision as to which one we’re moving forward with. My husband doesn’t have a lot of confidence that we’ll be able to reach a decision. I hope he’s not right (although he usually is). The thing is, we’re under a time crunch now and cannot continue to delay the process of picking a suitable realtor and listing our home. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to sell our home because (according to the lady we just selected as our buying agent) most interest dries up after the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July?! Ack!! That’s right around the corner! With that in mind, I had better get some ‘beauty rest’. I’m exhausted from all the work I’ve done over the last few days and there is still so much yet to do before we can list the property. That said, I bid you ‘Goodnight’. Wish us luck on selecting a realtor tomorrow. I guess if we cannot reach a decision, we can always ‘flip a coin’ but I sure hope it doesn’t come down to that!
My entire family is insane. 