For sale by owner

In February, we officially started trying to sell our house.  We decided to try selling by owner at first, since our area of town has lots of turnover with all the UF residents and grad students.

We had several showings in Feb-March (maybe 10?), which was always great, although a little nerve-wracking.  Since we are selling by owner, I'm the one who shows people through the house myself.  It's always interesting to look at our house through someone else's eyes.  You notice all the imperfections that you don't normally see on a day-to-day basis.  You know, just little things that you don't notice and that don't really matter, but with a picky home buyer you just never know.  Don't get me wrong - our house is very nice, and we love it.  But it's not perfect!

Anyway, we had a hope that we could perhaps sell it to an investor, who would rent it out some incoming residents or something like that.  We figured that an investor wouldn't care about all those small issues - they are just looking for a nice house for someone ELSE to live in!  They would care about our new roof (only 3 weeks old), 4-year-old HVAC unit, and low-maintenance yard. 

We got an offer from an investor in mid-March, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for so we passed on it.  To be honest, I was really kicking myself for a few weeks.  I dreaded every showing after that, and I couldn't help thinking "I could be done right now!  This could be over with!"  It was hard.  Garrett works a lot, so everything naturally falls to me and it wears down after a while.  One day, I spent six hours doing yard work by myself, including raking up 9 bags of leaves and then spreading out 11 bags worth of mulch around the house, just to have the new mulch covered in leaves a few days later, when we got a new roof and they blew out our gutters full of leaves (I had planned to clean out the gutters one morning later that week, after laying a tarp down under the ladder to protect the fresh mulch!).  Anyway, it was tiring.  I was ready to be done.

It was always our plan to list with an agency if April came along and we didn't have any offers yet.  So, last Monday, we finally signed with a Realtor - a great guy who was our buyers agent 4 years ago when we bought this house, and who we had been keeping in touch with.  In fact, he had kinda been giving us some guidance as we attempted to sell by owner, and he had brought over many potential buyers to see the house (we were willing to pay 3%  commission to a buyers' agent).  When we met with him to sign all the papers to list the house, he said, "Now, I have to be straight with you - I will be shocked if I don't have an offer for you in the next couple of hours."  It turns out, one of the first investors he had brought over was in the process of drawing up an offer for our house! So, he (our Realtor) had already included a clause in our listing paperwork that if this person bought our house, we would still only owe the original 3% buyers' agent commission (rather than 4-6% if anyone else bought it).

Two hours later, we got an offer.  We looked it over that night, and the next day I texted back and forth for a few hours with the Realtor, countering back and forth.  Finally we agreed upon the price and signed the contract!  It's actually a pretty good deal - since we are saving around $5k by not paying that second 3% commission, we essentially settled on an offer that was only $2k under our asking price.  And my favorite part - it's an AS IS deal, meaning the buyer cannot ask us to make any repairs after the inspection (we expect that they will not find much wrong anyway, but it's still nice that we won't spend the next several weeks making small repairs and fixes).

SO!  We are under contract.  A big weight lifted off our shoulders, for sure.  Now we can focus on enjoying our last few months in Florida, packing up our house, and figuring out how the heck to move all our stuff to Wisconsin (UHaul?  Budget truck?  ABF U-pack?  Zippy Shell?  Garrett and I can't agree, haha).

And side note, let me just toot my own horn and say I'm getting pretty good at negotiating.  Don't get me wrong - I HATE doing it.  It makes me SO nervous and SO uncomfortable.  But Garrett will NOT do it (nor does he have time to), so that leaves it all up to me.  I negotiated the price for our rental house in Wisconsin, I negotiated the price on our minivan that we bought (more on that later!), I negotiated a price for our new roof, and I negotiated for selling our house -- with a knot in my stomach every time, haha.  Just thinking about all that stresses me out, I'm so glad it's all behind me.  But I should probably call some moving truck companies before I chicken out too much...

101 in 1001 - painting shelves

In reality, I probably could have filled my entire 101 list with things I want to get done around the house.  There is so much I want to do - nothing major, but just little things here and there.  Some cosmetic things to the actual house, and some re-doing of furniture that we currently have.  I'm not in a hurry, though, and we certainly don't want to put much money into the house since we're only here 4-5 years, but it's still fun to think about what could be done (and, as an aside... I was just reading an article online that listed our city as the #3 city in the U.S. as far as smart places to buy real estate right now!  In the next 10 years, they think values here will go up 50%.  To be honest, I don't know how much I can really believe those kinds of "projections", but it sure was nice to see.).

Anyway.  One of the things I did list was to repaint the girls' dollhouse shelf (#76).  My parents gave it to them a couple years ago (they bought it at a flea market) and I've been wanting to paint it but just didn't know what exactly to do with it.

Here's the final product:

Although, I probably shouldn't say "final" product... I hope to eventually get some wood filler between the gaps, then paint over it so there is a more seamless look between the roof and shelves, for example.  But I really like how it turned out!  Lesson I learned: oil-based primer totally ruins your paintbrushes, and it reeks up your house.  I painted it in the office but it still made the whole house smell just terrible for a few hours.  But, it's just too humid right now to paint outside so maybe some future projects will have to wait.

So, the girls' room is coming along.  It's looking much better, considering it looked like this just a week or two ago:

Yes, bubble-gum pink - I don't know how they slept in there it was so bright.  As you can see in the first picture, I went with a very neutral color for the walls.  It was actually one of our options for the living room but we went another direction in there, so I used it for this room.  I hope to paint the bed soon too (glossy white).  The pack n play isn't in there anymore - Ellie is sleeping on her crib mattress on the floor until we can find a trundle bed.  There is a window in this room, too, that gives fabulous light (especially in the morning).  I'll share more pics as the room comes together.

So, I have two things done from my list! (The 101 header was also on my list, #81).  99 to go... not sure which one I'll take on next but I'm sure I'll blog about it once it's done.

Backyard fun

We are finally starting to make this house our own... I've spent the last two days painting and my legs are so sore from climbing up and down chairs and ladders all day.  There's still a long way to go but I'll share some pictures soon.

But, here's our back yard. This back yard is what sold us on this house.  As soon as Garrett and I saw it, we just loved it and knew it was perfect for us.

Despite what this picture make it seem like, the backyard is actually shaded for most of the day, which is why there's the big dirt area... it's hard to grow grass there!  Hopefully we can get that remedied soon.  We had the play set written into our contract, and that concrete pad is actually a half basketball court... perfect for the girls to ride their bikes on!

Along the back of the yard is a wire fence, with a huge wooded lot behind it.  Whoever owns the lot keeps animals on it, and we regularly have visitors!  We have seen cows and lots of goats so far.

Yeah.... the dirt spot is definitely a favorite place for Ellie to play.

The girls have never taken baths as often as they are now!

Day 46, Revisited

I skipped day 46 of my 50 Day Challenge because I just didn't have a chance to take all the pictures.  I decided to share some pictures of my house.  As it stands now, I haven't taken pictures of the bedrooms but I'll share the front room area.

Here's your viewpoint when you first walk into our apartment.  The entryway is just a little hallway.  Directly to the right is a little hallway area with three doors - one to a closet, one to the girls' bedroom, and one to the guest bathroom.

Here's a closer shot of those pictures on the wall.  Aren't they cute?  Garrett took them.

Here's our kitchen.  It's small but I like it and I love how open it is to the rest of the living area.  Beyond the kitchen (in that little alcove past the fridge) is our laundry room.  I love that we have a laundry area in the house (rather than having to go somewhere to do it).  That was definitely on our list of "must-haves".

Here's the dining room, just past the kitchen.  Those two pictures are from the places we have lived.  One is a picture of Mount Timpanogos (in Provo), and one is a picture that Garrett took of rural Georgia.

Here's the view from the dining room looking over to the living area.  If you look carefully, you can see that Garrett's bike is behind that chair.  There is also a ladder, a few boxes, and a filing cabinet.  We have no garage. :)

Here's the same view... that quilt on the floor is one that I made and actually kept for myself (finally!).  I made it from fabric scraps of other quilts I have made.

The girls love to play on it.

Here's the couch.  I'd like to take down the frames we have on the wall behind it and make a gallery wall with 6 or 8 large-ish square frames.  Not sure what pictures I would put in them, though.  As of now we have some pictures that Garrett took in Hawaii, and then in the middle is something we bought in Hawaii.  It's a piece of tree bark that has been pounded flat and painted with ink made from berries.  I think that the lady we bought it from said that the pinwheel pattern in the middle meant "family" or something or other.  Anyway, we like it.  When we went to Hawaii we wanted to bring something back that wouldn't be a knickknack and this fit the bill.

Here's a view from sitting on the couch.

Oh, there's our laundry room.  I thought about getting a curtain to separate it from the kitchen (and to hide the mess!) but as you can see that hasn't happened yet.

There's our piano, front door, entryway.  Some toys on the floor. :)

Here are the girls at mealtime.  Abby insists on sitting next to Ellie for every meal, but it's not good enough for her to sit where the chair usually is.  She scoots over as close as possible.  Sometimes it causes problems (Ellie grabs Abby's food, plate, or hair), but it's usually fine.

Here's the view from our back patio.  Gotta love that huge electrical box blocking the view. :)

I'll post some pictures of the girls' room another time - it's pretty cute.

The Toy Closet

before

When I was little and we lived in NH (the first time), we had a big basement with a toy room. Dad built some shelves that went along the entire wall, and it was just great for keeping all our toys organized. Unfortunately, we don't have a basement, or a designated toy room, but we make do.

We have a countertop that separates our kitchen from our living area, and underneath it there's a cabinet, where we keep Abby's toys. It's the perfect de-cluttering solution, because for a while we just had her toys in a "neat" pile against a wall in the living room, but I really didn't like how messy it made the room look! So I cleaned out this cabinet and it's just great. I have a goal that Abby's toys will ALWAYS fit in here. Sure, many of them are "baby" toys that she'll grow out of soon, so we'll store those away when we need to, but I want to keep her "current" toys always in here. I think it's a good way to keep myself from buying her too many things. She plays with the same ones over and over again anyway, so it's just fine. And sure, she does have a few large toys that don't fit in the cabinet, and that's ok too.

Anyway, I decided that since I'm going to keep this as the "toy cabinet", I might as well organize it so that it can hold as many toys as needed! I bought these cute little bins at Target and they are just perfect! I may get one more and put it where all the stuffed animals are - those are usually kepts on a shelf in her bedroom anyway.

after!