Well, I’ll say one thing for me and hubby: once we decide to move on something, we really move on it. A couple of weeks ago, we made the decision to sell our house next year. We’ve given ourselves a year’s advance warning because after 20 years of some serious being-lived-in, the old homestead is in need of some equally serious TLC.
We don’t just want to randomly throw money at multiple projects, however. As any real estate agent will tell you, some things are worth doing, and others, not so much. Which is why we had a real estate agent come through the place last night to go over where we should be focusing our efforts.
Hubby and I had already decided on a long list of projects that included taking down the vines from the exterior, painting the siding and trim, redoing the landing below the front porch, replacing the wood around the raised vegetable gardens, redoing the roadside slope of the front garden, replacing the back windows and door, restaining all the fences and the back porch, replacing the front porch railing, re-parging the front stairs and part of the basement wall, cleaning and re-sealing the deck around the pool, and repairing the drain along the front of the garage. And that was just the outside.
Inside, we wanted to repaint the kitchen cabinets, put finishing touches (trim, paint) to the basement family room, clean the basement carpets and have them restretched, repaint the main living area (kitchen, dining room, living room, stairs, hallway) and one bedroom, put new flooring and countertops in the kitchen, paint the shower stall in the master bathroom (they actually make a paint for exactly that nowadays!), put new flooring in the one bedroom we haven’t yet done, new tile in the basement hallway and bathroom, and do a general decluttering. Hubby also thought we should finish the laundry room, the only unfinished corner of the basement.
So how close were we? According to our real estate agent, very. A couple of things have been taken off the table, including the replacement of the back windows (which are less of an issue than we thought), completing the laundry room (I got to tell hubby “I told you so” on that one, lol), and the front slope of the garden (which needs only a tidy-up and not a complete redo…phew! 😉 ).
Predictably, of course, other things were added: redoing the master bedroom ensuite (including putting in a shower insert rather than painting the tile), replacing the tiles in the suspended ceiling in the basement, and painting the interior of the garage. I’ll admit that last one surprised me, but apparently clean, well-organized garages are a more important selling feature than I knew.
Because there will likely still be snow on the ground when we put the house on the market, our agent also suggested we have the pool certified so we’ll have proof that it’s functioning. That never would have occurred to us, so already we’re glad to be going the agent route rather than doing this on our own.
Anyway, put all that into an official to-do list, and our upcoming ten months look…rather busy. 😯 We’re breaking it down into complete projects as much as we can, however (mostly to keep me from hiding in a closet and refusing to come out). The exterior of the house has become Phase One, with our June looking something like this:
- hire help to remove remainder of the vines from the house
- seal pool deck, pressure-wash storage bins, and put pool area back together
- get estimates on pressure-washing and repainting the siding (to include caulking, painting eavestrough, and painting trim…though I’ll do much of the latter bit myself)
- replace back door
- have house painted
- replace wood around vegetable gardens
- plant vegetables (now that I’m not redoing the front garden from scratch, I’ll have time! :D)
- get estimates for re-parging the basement wall and front porch.
Oh, yes, and before I forget, I’ll also be finding an apartment for the daughter who’s moving back from Newfoundland this summer (yay!!!! 🙂 ) and finishing up (and editing) the final book of the Grigori Legacy, Sins of the Warrior in time for its September release.
Because really, how hard can all that be to accomplish, right?
Right?!? 😯
P.S. Stay tuned for progress reports, and please feel free to tell me in a comment what your plans are for the summer…if nothing else, I can live vicariously through you! 😉
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