House Sold
The house sold for 380,000. We had 6 offers in the first two days it was listed. All the offers were for over the listed price of 373,000. It was a sellers market with very few houses available for sale. We accepted a cash offer from a rental company because we were afraid it wouldn’t appraise high enough for people to get a loan. It took a little over a week to close and there was no appraisal or inspection. We had hired mom’s apartment manager (who is also a realtor) to sell the house. She and her partner were so nice.
It took a long time to get the house ready to sell. First we had to get my mom’s stuff out. That took many loads and days. I helped her get her house set up so she could get things put away so we could bring more things over. While we were doing that, I cleaned out under the deck and cleaned out the shed. There was a bunch of stuff I had to load up in a trailer to get rid of such as wood, and pvc pipes, and things John’s dad had left. I also sold all the wood pellets that were stacked under the deck and in the shed. I also got moved out all the other boxes, such as Christmas stuff, etc.
Next I started fixing up the upstairs in the bedrooms. I filled nail holes, caulked windows, did touch up painting, and cleaned blinds.
Next, I worked on the living room. The trim hadn’t been caulked and nail holes hadn’t been filled after the new floor was put in, so I did that and then painted the trim. It was hard to find a matching color of paint for the walls. I went back and forth to Home Depot several times.
We areplaced all the light switches in the house from small, ugly, shiny, yellow ones to large cream ones. We also replaced all the lightbulbs. We had 60 watt in the lights before and it was so dim. The LED doesn’t get hot like incandescent, so I was able to put 100 watt bulbs in. It really brightened up the house. I also got small rugs to separate the carpeted areas and kitchen flooring from the new flooring because they didn’t really match, and the rugs were a great transitional color.
I also did touch up painting in the kitchen and dining room, caulked and painted the windows, painted the trim, and painted the pantry. Painting really helped it look so much better. I hired Irene, Siara’s house cleaner, to clean the kitchen. She also did the bathrooms, swept and mopped, and cleaned some blinds. I was glad not to clean out cupboards, the oven, and the bathtub and shower.
I also bought a new fridge for the kitchen. I thought it was the same one we had before, but this one had wire shelves.
I painted in the bathrooms and the ceilings.
I also cleaned all the windows, inside and out. Then we had a mud storm and it got all the outside windows dirty again. The mud storm was so bad my car looked like it was completely coated in ice. It was weird. I went straight to the carwash because I couldn’t see out of the windows. There were lines at the car wash for days.
I repainted the worn spots on the banister, and painted the entry closet and trim, which was a mess!
The downstairs bedroom carpet was ruined from cat pee and throw up. I hired a carpet cleaner, and he came three times trying to get the stains and smell out, but he couldn’t. He was able to clean the upstairs carpet though. I had to replace the downstairs carpet. I got a builders grade carpet, and it cost 860 to replace the carpet in both rooms. I also painted the walls, a couple of times. I couldn’t match the paint, so I couldn’t do touch ups and had to repaint everything.
As I painted the walls downstairs, I noticed that the fireplace didn’t match the paint. The fireplace was a sandstone red color with black. It didn’t match anything. So I whitewashed the fireplace, which was a lot of work. Then I spray- painted it a light brown. When I was done, it matched the carpet on the stairs and the color of the walls and made things look so much nicer and modern downstairs.
Before
I also painted doors, storage closets, walls, and trim downstairs. John helped me paint under the stairs. It was grey concrete before with an old rug on it. We took the rug out and painted the walls and floor.
The hall entrance had chipped paint and was stained, and the trim had never been caulked or painted, so I fixed and painted the hall trim, floor, and railing.
The last thing we did was clean out all the stuff in the garage, and then we blew out the cupboards. The wall on the right of the garage had holes, and the seams needed to be taped and puttied. John wanted to fix that, so he worked on it. It looked so much better when he was done. By then we had accepted an offer on the house, but I went ahead and painted the wall. The floor also had huge cracks in it, probably from tree roots pushing the concrete up, so we filled those in. I also patched a hole in the side foundation of the house where the concrete had chipped and the rebar was exposed. I wanted to make sure everything looked okay for the inspection, but they didn’t do one. Our realtor told them about the leaky window in the kitchen, but she said they didn’t seem concerned.
Remi went with me for the final walk through. She wanted to be in each picture. Here we are leaving for the last time. It had been a lot of work getting the house ready to sell, but it looked amazing when it was done.
We will miss this house. It was perfect for us. It was a real blessing to find it. But with John’s illness, I couldn’t keep up with all the repairs and maintenance a house this old needs. It was too stressful. It was time to move on. We now had the money in the bank to build a new, small cottage.
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