Well here is a short update on the wedding,moving, home buying,home selling front.
Less than 6 days until the wedding. We are so excited. I have a few wedding projects to show after the wedding, but not before the big event.
The City House is really sold. The home buyers sold their home almost immediately. We will be out of our house June 21.
We have started the loan process. What a pain.
No new home on the horizon. We have looked at 6 houses but none of the sang to me. After the wedding we are going to get serious but the reality is that we will be moving a bunch into storage and living at Star Hill temporarily.
I just have to believe the perfect home is out there waiting for us.
I started this post Monday and By George, I want to post it. Just read to the bottom where the big news is located, pretty please.
Well we have bee making steady progress on the City House as we prepare to move. We have lived in the same house for 14 years and it is amazing to me the things that we just ignored since moving in or put on the back burner when we were doing projects. I told my husband we should call this our 85% house because it seems we finish every project about 85% of the way before we lose interest or move on to another project. It has caught up with us now because all those “mostly finished” or “gonna get to one day” projects have to be done before we can start showing the home for sale. With my drive to the new job most of the work has fallen onto Hubby. So far he has replaced some Sheetrock that was damaged before we ever moved in, he has painted the garage, which had literally not been done since the home was built, and replaced leaking faucets outside. (z
He re-caulked the bathtub in one bath, fixed works in one of the toilets, cleaned up the back yard, painted some trim that had never been painted, and fixed a light switch. We have trimmed and weeded the flower beds, installed granite counter tops in all three bathrooms and spruced up the side yard. This week Baby Boy helped to move excess furniture and boxes to storage. I thought we would get the house on the market by Memorial Day… But I have big news. Giant news.
A friend came over to look at our home a few weeks ago. It was not a good fit for her family because she wants a big back yard, but she did like the house and told some of her friends at book club. One of them was interested and came over to look at the house.
They loved our house as much as we have. They want to buy our house! Yay. Double yay. No realtors’ comission, no keeping the house show ready for months, no worrying about the pets when the house is being shown. The couple have their house currently on the market so keep your fingers and toes crossed that this will all work out. If their home has not sold by end of July they are planning to lease their home and purchase ours anyway. Amazing right? I SURE THINK SO. Now back to my brag about how nice the city house looks in preparation for getting it on the market. Here are the photos of the clean house that should have followed the work pictures. Hooray for storage buildings. You can jam a lot of stuff in a 10 X 10 storage unit when Mr. Master Packer (aka Hubby) is packing it.
Oh! My friend who visited the house gets the pink chair I rescued from the trash as her commission. When she finds another home I have something else in store for her… she will just have to wait.
And this is how the house looked the day before the housekeeper comes! Yippee!
Our city home is on a funny lot. We have a great big corner lot with established trees and a huge side yard but our back yard is a narrow L shaped space. This lack of a private back yard has not been a problem for us. This is a front yard neighborhood. We hang out with our neighbors, their kids and grandkids. We have watched them practice baseball, walk to the bus stop, learn to ride bikes and even learn to drive. Years ago Hubby, the kids, and I put in a rock walkway and flower beds back there along with a pergola. The rock we chose did not hold up well, sooo out it had to come. The flower beds haven’t had the care they needed the past two years so they were a weedy mess. Hubby has done all the work up to today, but I have been recruited, drafted, enslaved to get the back yard finished up and ready for its close up inspection.
Ye
Yep. This weedy mess was our backyard.
Gross.
Don’t judge us. We work a lot of hours. I know, it is pretty gross right?
Step 1- power washing the concrete. We were able to borrow a power washer which saved us a ton and allowed us to use it in stages as needed. It is amazing how much better the concrete looks clean.
It was too icky for me to even be outside. I had to wash the windows when he was done.
Step 2– lay down landscape fabric under the path. This really does help keep the weeds out and in the sub-tropical climate we live in weeds are ever present.
Step 3– the heavy lifting. Moving 700 lbs of flagstone and 2 yards of crushed granite, adding sand under the rocks as needed to level them. This took a while. Hubby sprayed down the house with a pump up sprayer full of diluted bleach to kill the mildew on the siding while we took a break for lunch. There was some yelling during this point. We were both hot and tired. 87 degrees in March.
Step 4– Power washing the siding and laying a tarp down on the path to throw the weeds on. We then weeded the beds. It looks better already, but by this time the dirt yard was closed. Hubby had to get mulch after work Monday.
Step 5-adding some color, cleaning the windows and sprucing up. We have a borrowed bistro set in the back yard. It got the power wash treatment along with everything else. I added a tough hanging basket that should survive our neglect and new plants to the wall hanger along with a few annual plants are all we are doing because we are afraid of the upkeep right now. The two chairs where the kitchen patio is we’re faded so they got spray painted turquoise fusion paint. A metal table from the hoard, a chandelier I bought on clearance last year and some votive candle stakes added a little more interest.
Here is the almost finished project. We still need to add in annual plants to the beds. What do you think? I wish we had done this sooner so we could have enjoyed it more. We will be getting colorful plants once the wind dies down.
Well, we saw several homes on our first real estate adventure. I am not sure we found our home but we definitely ruled some out and have a better idea of the area we want to live.
Our first stop was a definite no. I LOVED the home but, it was way out in the boonies, next to a power line, and smelled like cows. Nope.
The next stop is a definite maybe. I liked the look of the house, the neighborhood was fine and their was an empty lot next door that is for sale so Hubby could potentially have the full acre he wants.
Next, we went to another home in the same neighborhood that is under construction. I would have input in the color etc. but I really did not like the style of the home. It was a very formal and more fancy than we are.
The next home was cute as could be, had a great lay out and was a real deal
That was what we thought until we discovered there was major foundation issues. Too bad.
Our final stop was to show Hubby what was out there with acreage. It sat on 5 acres.
A definite no.
It did inspire me to get my home ready to sale. I think we will have it ready to go soon.
Today we are going to look at four homes in three communities as we try to figure out where we are going to actually purchase a home. I will post pictures and tell you about our options tonight. Wish us luck, but pray for our realtor!
Well, I did it. If you have followed my blog lately I talked about a stressful week and tough decisions. That stressful week resulted me ( with the support of my husband) making a huge life decision here in the third quarter of our lives. I have made the incredibly hard decision to leave the school district that I have worked for 22 years and take on a new challenge. I will be opening another Early College High School in a town about an hour away from here. I am passionate about education and I know from my own family what having the chance to go to college does for a person and their family. We are going to sell the city house where we have lived the past 14 years and move closer to the lake house. Crazy huh? Because I am crazy, I am going to take you all on this journey as we prepare our home to sell, decide where we want to live, buy a new house and make it a home…all while opening a new school and getting ready our daughter’s wedding in Charlotte, North Carolina this summer. I sure could use advice on packing, storage, and home staging. I hope you all are up for this. Once a week I am going to post a room in the house and ask you guys what I need to get out of the house, move around, and in general- improve. I hope you guys are up for the challenge.
