We made it! As of yesterday, 2/28, our house was officially listed for sale. We've had the sign in the yard since Wednesday, which is still weird.
If you happen to know of anyone looking to buy a FANTASTIC house in the Triangle, please pass on our info!
Fortunately, we've had lots of help getting things ready. Many thanks to:
- Grandpa: insane number of hours and expertise for all of our DIY projects in the last few months
- Grandma: cleaning; watching the kids while we worked on projects
- The Palmer Family: yard work--weeding, raking, mulching, weed whacking
- The Snider Family: hauling brush, watching kids
- The Davis Family: hauling brush, use of table saw
Unfortunately, the weather is awful (raining sideways and 35 degrees) so we've had no showings on our opening weekend. In fact, due to the volume of rain the back yard is more flooded than it's ever been, so that's not great if someone does happen to come. Here is the view out Ripken's window from around noon today...it's rained for 10 more hours since this picture was taken, so the standing water is getting bad out there!
And now it's supposed to snow a few inches tonight, which will mean several more days before any showings. Sigh. In the meantime, we are working on keeping everything spotless, picked up, and ready to be shown every time we leave the house. This means Tracy & the kids were almost an hour late to church today :0 I'm sure a) we will get faster and b) we will lower our standards as time goes on. But man, it is SO clean and clutter-free right now! (Our cars, however, have LOTS of random things in them!)
We still have a few last things to do, which we couldn't finish on Friday because of the approaching rain:
- Paint the exterior door to the shed.
- Fix the mailbox
- Steam clean the carpets
- Power-wash the siding
None of these things are very noticeable (OK, the mailbox kinda is). The rest are more Tracy being a perfectionist. So I guess we have some time to get these things done given the weather. And, since in the Triangle the average number of days on the market is 100, we may have a LOT of days to get these things done!
The final list of everything we've done. We did all this in about 5 weeks!
- Painted kitchen
- Painted upstairs guest bathroom
- Fixed the porch
- Fixed the deck
- Fixed some paint issues in Ripken's bedroom
- Figured out how to list the house
- Fixed toilets
- Fixed electrical line to pond fountain
- Front porch painted
- Back door painted
- Closets: SO many boxes removed
- Fence & Gates fixed
- Extra furniture gone
- Tree work: 100 sweet gum trees cut down in back yard
- Stained bench for pond area
- New pebbles around pond
- Painted exterior windows, doors
- Fixed faucet
- New front door hardware
- Fixed ceiling from when Ainsleigh flooded the upstairs bathroom
- Scrubbed walls inside the pantry, laundry areas, all closets
- Dog relocated
- Trim, pantry, french doors painted in kitchen
- Pantry & cabinets organized
- Yard work: weeded, pruned, mulched, planted annuals, planted hanging baskets, pond cleaned
- Computer desk, other furniture out
- Wood laminate kitchen floor installed
- Painted high-traffic walls
- Painted in trim all 3 bathrooms, several interior windows, and various other places
- Stained deck (notice how this was left for last! The ABSOLUTE WORST home improvement task).
- Clean
- Clean
- Clean
- Re-write MLS listing for our Realtor
- Re-take pictures for our Realtor
- Make feature sheets for showings
