Frog and Goat

When we met with our realtor last week, she did a walk-through of the house and pointed out things that we should repair, paint or replace so that we’d be in a better position to get a buyer to write us a nice fat check for the house. Last Friday afternoon we went to Home Depot and filled a cart with all manner of supplies. The cart was full. The bottom rack was full too.

On Saturday and Sunday while fighting off colds (with varying degrees of success), we managed to repair the silverware drawer, replace 3 bathroom faucets (one bathroom has two sinks) and installed a light fixture in the master bath.

Every time I open the silverware drawer I chuckle to myself. I usually yank it open with lots of force because it has been broken for the almost 9 years we’ve lived there. Now, it just glides open without so much a squeak. It makes me chuckle that the repair cost us $3 and an hour of our time.

The bathroom light fixture replaces the two wires (complete with wire nuts) that have been hanging down out of the ceiling for almost 9 years. The new fixture doesn’t cover the hole so that will get repaired soon. In case you are gasping that we haven’t had overhead light in our master bath for 9 years, please take a deep breath and realize we have another light that does a nice enough job. You can, however, go back to gasping about the fact that we’ve had wires hanging out of the ceiling for 9 years. I gasp and I live like that. The new light doesn’t get turned on much because I forget that the switch now works. I’ve walked past that impotent switch for years. That’s a habit I probably won’t break in the time we’ll live with that new light.

The remaining home work list is still pretty long but some of it is easy stuff–painting our bedroom, installing recessed lighting in the hall bathroom and getting someone else to scrape and re-gravel the driveway. There are some bigger jobs and one I hope we tackle this weekend is putting vinyl tile in the kitchen. The tiles have been sitting in the dining room acclimating to the house and we have all the necessary supplies (cleaner, floor leveling compound, trowels, etc). The current kitchen floor is atrocious and is part of the reason I’ve always hated the kitchen.

Don’t worry there’s no reason to think we’ll take a look at the results of our labor and decide not to sell. Dressing up the house is one thing but that kitchen will never get any bigger.

With a pound and half of teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling and clothes-rending, we’ve decided to sell our house. The whole renovate the kitchen and basement has had us frozen, indecisive and hand-wringy. It would be really expensive to do and, frankly, we’re just not the ones to do it.

Today at noon we’re meeting with the realtor who helped us through the home-buying process years ago. We’re actually going to look at a house in the Hanover Courthouse area and then our realtor is going to come to our house and see what’s happened in the last 9 years. Hopefully, we’ll be able to put the house on the market in the next month. We need to get B-Dry to do the last stretch of basement wall. We left that small piece out of the original project because we thought that piece was going to be part of the renovation. I really can’t leave the house only 90% dry. It will be interesting to see what else the realtor thinks we should do to make our house sell, sell, sell.