So Much Work to Sell a House!

As we had found a new rolling home, it was time to get serious with making our house listing ready. While Scott was away for the weekend helping a friend move, I decided to bring our very colorful living room back to neutral.

For those of you that don’t know me… I love color! The living area in my house was an open concept and I had four different colors on the walls among the kitchen/dining, living room, and entry plus two blues as accents. They were all part of the Global Spice pallet by HGTV/Sherwin Williams, so it all worked, but it was definitely not something that would help a potential buyer imagine their furniture in the space. So, it was all painted to a neutral “Canvas Tan”, also from the collection. What I thought would take one weekend for me to repaint, was really 3 and I needed Scott’s help.

In addition to painting, we needed to touch up the baseboards and trim, have the carpet replaced in the main living area, and clean up the yard (normal spring weeding plus patching the grass). I mapped it all out with the hopes that we could have it done by the end of March. I was so wrong! We finally had it ready at the end of April.

Downsizing our possessions wasn’t very difficult. While we had maintained empty cabinets and I had made a point to never store anything in the attic, we had a lot of stuff that we weren’t really using. Part of me wishes I had been able to have one big push and put it all out for a yard sale, but with everything else going on, I didn’t have it in me to coordinate one. Instead, we made multiple trips down to the thrift store to drop it off. It was a very freeing process. In the end, we do have a small storage unit for some furniture, Christmas items, and boxes of mementos, but it is really nice to know that the vast majority of my belongings are contained in a 36’ x 8’ house.

One thing that I am so grateful we did, was to have professional pictures taken for the listing. While it wasn’t really my house once all of the color had been toned down, they showcased the house beautifully and made me want to buy it myself!

They say not to drive past your house once you have sold it because it will inevitably have changed. I have not, and I am so glad I didn’t because I heard from a friend that changes were made and it hurts my heart to think things I spent so much time on, are no longer. But, its all for the best!