2025, books, Family, home, Uncategorized

Making It Pretty

23 Comments

This Thursday a photographer is coming over to take pictures of the house and yard for the real estate listing. We spent the weekend packing eight more bankers boxes full of books and sheet music and stowed them and the fourteen boxes of books we packed last weekend in the empty closets in the basement bedrooms. Then we put all the basement furniture back in place as the painter finished up painting the basement last Friday. We also took lots of unwanted things from the shelving in the furnace room and put them in Husband’s truck so he can take them to the landfill tomorrow. I straightened out the remaining items on the furnace room shelves so they look neat. Our new house has tons of storage and we don’t need to take any shelving with us. We hope to use the furnace room shelving as an added enticement to buy our ND house.

Today I am painting the front door and a couple of small garage doors and touching up some chipped interior paint upstairs. My goal then is to stow anything that might make the upstairs look cluttered in the upstairs closets. It will come out after the photographer is done on Thursday. I also plan to straighten up the work benches in the garage so they look neat and tidy. All this is an exhausting nuisance, but I guess this is the game you play when you sell your house. There is some consolation in knowing that everything we box up or toss out will make the final move that much easier.

I am thankful our realtor thinks our house looks nice enough as is (now that the basement is newly painted) without asking us to do any more “prettying up”. The idea to paint the doors was mine. (I intended to paint the front door 10 years ago when we had new siding put on, but never got around to it.) We will have to be vigilant about keeping the house as clean and uncluttered as possible though, for when the realtor has people over for a showing.

What kind of “prettying up” would you need to do sell your house? Any long put off chores for you?

23 thoughts on “Making It Pretty”

  1. My niece and her husband bought a house in March, and are still uncovering issues that need to be addressed. The house passed its inspection, but the inspector didn’t look all that closely at what was beneath the surface. The house still has knob and tube wiring. Also it’s pretty poorly insulated, and the attic and wall spaces that lack insulation have that wiring running through them.

    They also discovered that the house didn’t heat properly. (Thankfully the weather wasn’t too bad in mid-March.) The furnace would run continually without keeping the house at a normal temperature. Now that we’ve had a heat wave, it’s become clear that the central air isn’t up to its job either. The heating and cooling deficit seems to be much greater than you would expect to result from poor insulation alone, so they are thinking there may some sort of expensive surprise there.

    On the plus side, the roof is new. The previous owner also installed one of the commercial gutter filtration systems, so the gutters won’t require cleaning.

    Just yesterday my niece wondered aloud why the owner put money into the gutter system while ignoring the electrical and heating issues. Her husband commented, “They were putting lipstick on a pig, to sell it.” I thought of that immediately when I saw the header photo today.

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  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Our basement family room, guest room and bathroom needs a new coat of paint. The upstairs would need a few touch ups and a door installed. Right now I am in the process of getting a guy who takes small jobs to rebuild my front entry steps–I am dissatisfied with the current set up.

    Renee, this is all moving pretty fast for you–I thought you would not move for some time yet?

    OT: we are living in the world of discouraging family news right now. Last week Lou had a 3 day period in which his LBD brought on new symptoms. Then he seemed to rally. His daughter is here visiting, which helped as well. Then our little Phoebe again reacted mildly to a vaccine. We are collaborating with the vet to determine what to do about that, if anything. Several weeks ago we got the news that Lou’s younger brother was ill with some symptoms that did not bode well. Saturday the news came that he has Stage 4 prostate cancer and will not be with us much longer. This brother and I had major conflict about his hate speech and how he treated Lou, so we have not had a lot of contact for years, but Lou does want to see him to say good-bye, so we are trying to get a plan together for that.

    But I have lots of cherries in the freezer! And I am 95% recovered from the hip procedure and mobile now. But really! On the positive front, in CA they are glitter bombing ICE agents to identify them to the public. Now that is ingenious resistance.

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    2. Hospice made changes to Sandra’s treatment that amount to making her comfortable for this last period of time before she dies, which is an indeterminate period. For instance she can only have soft food or groundup food because she has trouble swallowing the little that she eats. She sleeps almost all the time. But true to form, she will often laugh when she first wakes.
      Clyde

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    3. Oh my!!! I’m so sorry to hear about Lou’s new symptoms. I hope they go away soon. I’m sorry about his brother too. I’m glad you’re almost back to normal. That’s great to hear!

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  3. Except for the dog stealing and chewing up a clean mini roller brush, my painting is coming along nicely today. I hope that after this week things slow down. There are still a couple of cosmetic improvements such as new blinds in one of the bedrooms and some very monor carpet patching, but after that we just sit until October. Getting those books and sheet music packed was a major accomplishment. The movers will pack theorist of our stuff.

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  4. We have a couple of non-working ceiling fans that we should fix NOW so we can enjoy them. I see that walls in the kitchen and perhaps elsewhere, could use fresh paint, but I would think the new owners should do that and choose their color?

    Outdoors, we need a new rotary clothesline out back… The sheetrock garage walls need some replacing in spots.
    Some of the siding needs to be power washed, but I may just try to scrub the worst spots.
    Uffda!

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  6. I’ve done a lot of work on the main level of my home since 2020. I’ve got a new furnace and AC; the association had new roofs and siding put on due to hail damage in 2022; I got new quartz countertops last year, and new flooring on the main level last fall. The kitchen, bathroom, and living rooms were painted in spring 2021.

    I haven’t done much improvement upstairs except get a new washer and dryer. I’m not going to do much more. The carpet is old and worn, and it probably should be repainted, but I’m going to let it go. Right now I’m comfortable. I don’t think further improvements would make a big difference at this point.

    I guess I’m pretty well caught up.

    I know it’s stressful to go through a move. It sounds like you’re excited about your new home. You’ll get through this one step at a time!

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  8. I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot recently because there have been 2 neighbors who have moved or are about to move. They’re doing a lot of work two houses down. Not so much the house next-door. The list of stuff that could get done in my house is too long to even start here. Actually a little depressing. But I feel like we’re getting around to stuff slowly, but surely.

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