We’re trying to get everything ready around here to put the house on the market. Chris did all the work of finding us a highly-recommended realtor, and he set up a meeting with her a couple of weeks ago. She was very nice, very professional, and clearly knows what she’s doing in this business.
She pointed out a few things we could do (like adding a fresh layer of dirt and mulch to our front flowerbed, so that it won’t look like our steps are going to erode away) and agreed with a few things we already planned to do (like cleaning the carpets, touching up the baseboards, and re-painting the kids’ brightly colored rooms). I was really flattered when she mentioned that she loved some of my decorating choices and said “Don’t change that at all!”
After she left, we started a flurry of activity – we found a guy to fix the window with the broken seal. He’s already been out to fix it; super service!
We found a guy to do all the painting – and then we got his estimate and decided to scale back on ALL the stuff we thought needed to be painted. Now we’re just having the kids’ rooms done; once the weather cooperates he’ll come back and do the front door, shutters, and garage door. (He needs three or four days in a row of temps above 40* overnight. It’ll probably be April before that happens.) He’s got us on his schedule for Thursday and Friday of this week, unless he has to change his work days due to heavy snow – he drives a snow plow as a side business!
We had a guy here to look at the carpets, but when he tried to convince me that it was pointless to clean them and we should replace all of it, throughout the whole house, we decided to find someone else. Chris found the new guy, who has given us an estimate over the phone and will come out after the painter is done.
In the meantime, I have been decluttering the house and boxing up things that we can probably live without for the next five months. I took down all but two of our personal photos, packed up my collection of crosses, and my Willow Tree angels too. We weeded out toys in the playroom buy taking apart the toy cubbies and only leaving six (we had 12!).
Today I filled in all our nail holes and scrubbed the walls and baseboards in our room. I still need to scrub the walls in the hallway and do the baseboards… oh, throughout the rest of the house!
We’re planning to add new ceramic knobs to our kitchen cabinets, so I need to pick up 28 of those at Home Depot and get out my trusty drill.
When Chris is off next weekend, he’ll pick up the dirt and mulch to fix the front bed/stair issue.
And then I think we’ll finally be ready to call our realtor, sign the papers, and get the photographer out here to put this listing out there.
