North Port Florida

Now in North Port, Florida

We are now in Del Rio Texas

We are now in Del Rio Texas

First Open House

Sunday, January 29, we held our first open house.  No one came, except for Chas who has no money!  We think that part of the problem was that the local newspaper failed to post the ad.  Also, we think we may have the house priced to high.  So we are going to lower the price and have another open house at the end of February.

We had the house in "eat off the floor" shape with all of the lights on and all of the inside doors open.  We had candles burning with the sent of flowers in spring and balloons tied to the For Sale Sign and to the mailbox.  That morning I even repainted four doors that had a few scratches on them. We were ready.  About an hour in to the Open House, we here car doors and our mood brightened.  Damn, it's Chas!  Chas swaggers in and says this is a lovely house and he is prepared to purchase it with the millions he has from his recent win of the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.  Wouldn't that be friggin nice!  So then every half and hour or so Chas would return to the house to pretend he was buying it.

At 3:00 we opened the wine and by 4:00 we closed up the Open House as we had enough excitement for the day and decided to take a nap.  After napping we went out to eat and relaxed.
OK, here we go!  The house is officially up for sale as we put the sign in the yard.  The yard is frozen even though the temperature is 47f.  We had to pour hot water on the ground where the sign feet go in so we could pound the sign into the ground.  Even with that the feet only are in maybe 2 inches.  It's now 3 hours later and the sign is leaning about 20deg, we will need to hammer more tomorrow morning.

The big event is still the open house that is advertised in the newspapers for this Sunday.  We think we will get mostly Realtors.  All it takes is just one "right" buyer and we are out of here!!  I hope Patty is right in that she thinks the house will sell quick.  I love her optimisim!
Junk...stuff...crap...all of it has to go somewhere! We cleaned closets, shelves, clutter. I still have way too many shoes! Size 5-1/2 anyone? I got rid of 28 pair and still have about 40 pair left! But all the rooms look UNcluttered and it's so much nicer!

2012 January 21

This week we finally finished the last item on our list before putting the house up for sale!  This was our list:
  • Replace water heater
  • Replace the water softener
  • Replace the Floor (carpet to vinyl) in the laundry room
  • Repaint the entire interior
  • Add a ceiling light to the walk-in closet in the master bedroom
  • Remove the carpet in the master and second bedroom to expose the hardwood floors
  • Refinish all of the hardwood floors (3 bedrooms, hallway, living room, and dining room)
  • Resurface the driveway
  • Paint the exterior trim
  • Resurface the foundation
  • Seal the wood deck patio
  • Re insulate the attic to bring it to R38
  • Replace the floor and slider vertical blinds in the family room
  • and the biggest task of all, de-clutter the entire house.  This has involved putting our hands on every item we own and deciding what to do with it; trash, going with us, charity or give away, sell, and storage.  Looks like storage will be only six 15 gallon plastic storage containers half of which are mostly pictures and home videos.
We started this work in October 2010 and just now finished in January 2012.



The last item to do was the family room where Patty's 23 year old (February Birthday) son Chas made his room for the past 5 years.  We made that the last room to spruce up so he could stay there as long as possible.  So three weeks ago we had Chas move back to a "real" bedroom so we could clean up and remake the room.  The room had become the "Party Palace" for Chas and his friends.



Chas said that was the end of his childhood when the room was taken apart. 
The room came out real nice!



The open house is scheduled for next week Sunday the 29th.  We are going to try to sell it on our own first and see if we can save both us and the buyer some money.  We did our research and have hired a lawyer, advertised in several newspapers, and bought a very nice professional yard sign.

So with the last house task complete, we decided to go to an RV show in Edison NJ on Saturday the 21st of January.  We haven't had snow since the freak storm in October.  We woke up to about 4 inches and still snowing. 



We decided to go anyway even though the show was about 50 miles away.  This was Route 10 on the way.


 We stopped and had breakfast to wait on the plows to do more before we set out again.  Surprise, all of the plow drivers were also at the diner on break!