tag:,2008:/22 2008-04-11T02:08:57Z The chronicles of the Quicker Fixer Upper Project Movable Type 3.33 tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4508 2008-04-11T02:01:38Z 2008-04-11T02:08:57Z

This evening I painted the hallway. Normally I find painting a very satisfying task: once the job is done, it makes everything look so good! But this is the second time I've painted this hallway in 4 months. The first...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ so good! But this is the second time I've painted this hallway in 4 months. The first time I turned 10 years of horror grey-once-was-white into pristine sunny yellow. This time I turned 4 months of horror brown-once-was-sunny-yellow into...pristine sunny yellow. Actually it was still pristine sunny yellow except for a strip from 2 to 4 feet high the length of the hallway on both sides, which was filled with hand and finger prints the color of mud, grape jelly and Cheetos. This painting task was decidedly less satisfying than the last time. I had been hoping that this task on the to-do list would never rise to top priority but today my realtor, reporting on the open house, said "Comments were about 95% positive, which is great. Several people did comment on the hallway paint, though." So much for escaping that one, eh?]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4507 2008-04-10T22:43:42Z 2008-04-10T22:45:32Z

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ .  . . .  . We've come a long, long way, baby.]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4505 2008-04-10T14:30:34Z 2008-04-10T14:31:02Z

Get set... GO!...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ GO! ]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4501 2008-04-09T15:08:54Z 2008-04-09T15:13:54Z

The front stoop, before and after: . Now to be honest, this pretty stoop was not our original plan. In the interest of both time and money, we had asked our neighbor/contractor to put in a simple cement block, perhaps...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ . Now to be honest, this pretty stoop was not our original plan. In the interest of both time and money, we had asked our neighbor/contractor to put in a simple cement block, perhaps topped with flagstone or pavers or tiles or something, for a cost of $600-800 or so. We wanted a second opinion though, so we found this guy who had a great rep and said he did concrete. So he came to take a look -- turns out he's more a mason than a concrete guy. His proposal -- complete with cut bluestone -- was definitely the more expensive option, by a factor of two. But it sounded great, and the end result looks great...and in the end I think when selling a house that the front yard and stoop make a lasting first impression, so I think it's worth it. ]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4500 2008-04-09T14:16:10Z 2008-04-09T14:17:07Z

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ Some of you wanted to see how the staging consultant turned our kids' room into a family-room-and-oh-by-the-way-the-kids-sleep-here-too room. Kids' room: Family-room-and-oh-by-the-way-the-kids-sleep-here-too room:  . ]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4498 2008-04-08T02:25:52Z 2008-04-08T02:28:18Z

9 months ago: 2 days ago: This afternoon: I fall down go boom now....

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ 9 months ago: 2 days ago: This afternoon: I fall down go boom now.]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4496 2008-04-06T02:06:57Z 2008-04-06T02:29:26Z

5 days till market, and counting. On Friday, our friendly local staging consultant came by, courtesy of our realtor. she spent nearly 2 hours walking through our house with us, telling us "all shelves and storage should be 30% empty"...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ like to have. So stage the house to pander cater to people's fantasies. The living room, for instance, should cluster around the fireplace, not the TV, because even though in real life people will focus on the TV, they like to imagine themselves clustered around a fireplace. Hide the meds -- people aren't sick in their fantasies -- and show the sporting goods -- "when we move into this house, we'll be healthy, active people!" Two bits of advice caught us particularly off-guard. One, the big room in the back with the gorgeous windows -- which we use as a kids' bedroom/playroom -- we should stage as a recreation room/great room/family room. I objected on the grounds that 1) our kids need a place to sleep, even while we are selling the house, and 2) making the house a 2 bedroom drops its market value precipitously. The compromise was that while the room will still serve as a bedroom, both practically for us and for the purpose of listed as a 3BR home, we will decorate so as to suggest a great room. We tuck all the bedroomy looking items way in the back...and front and center we add some chairs and couches (clustered around, yes, the fireplace) and adult-oriented artwork (not "adult", just not primary colors of zoo animals :-). Two rooms in one! Two...the room we carefully cleared out to make our brand new gorgeous dining room she doesn't actually buy as a dining room; it's really more like an eat-in-kitchen. So on her suggestion we moved the dining room back to where it's been for the last 10 years: in the living room. But we artfully arrange the furniture to suggest two rooms -- living room and dining room (again with the living furniture clustering around the fireplace). So now we have this odd but endearing layout: Surprisingly...it actually works! ]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4489 2008-04-03T01:13:54Z 2008-04-03T01:17:40Z

Signed with our realtor today. MLS listing goes live next Wednesday. Realtor open house on Thursday. General public open house the following Sunday. EEEEEK! Last week, we saw a For Sale sign go up on the house two doors down...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ the pond but our property doesn't actually front the pond and there's a rise blocking to view.) ACK! Then today we saw that there's a SALE PENDING notice on the For Sale sign. Sale pending?!? In less than 7 days?!? If that sale goes through, that's good news for us in many way! Our 4 page To Do list is down to less than a page! And tomorrow is the grand unveiling of our new STOOP! I can't wait to see what it looks like. Our realtor said we could take our own listing photos. This is cool because it means I can stage one room at a time and take the pics, rather than have to get the house in show condition 4 days early just for photos. It's also fun. So here are some possible listing photos: . . . ]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4486 2008-04-01T02:43:07Z 2008-04-01T02:57:56Z

As if the sod we laid last year wasn't bad enough. What price my conscience? Mulch is good. Mulch keeps the soil moist and your plants' delicate roots warm in the winter. It prevents weeds and reduces erosion. And if...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ As if the sod we laid last year wasn't bad enough. What price my conscience? Mulch is good. Mulch keeps the soil moist and your plants' delicate roots warm in the winter. It prevents weeds and reduces erosion. And if it's organic mulch (rather than, say, gravel) it composts itself right there in your flower bed, adding its life force back into the system. Here in New England we have an abundance of nature's own mulch: leaves. In our case, pounds and bushels and heaps of oak leaves. year after year, I raked leaves into the flower beds, spreading them around and patting them down to ensure an even coat. On top, a crisp, crunchy brown layer, reminiscent of bread crumb topping on a casserole. On the bottom, the moist fecund layer of decomposition. Except that piles of leaves don't look like mulch / compost to your neighbors and potential buyers...they look like trash. They say "someone lives here who doesn't take care of her flower beds." So this weekend I hauled out a metric buttload of oak leaves, both crispy brown and soft fertile black, and replaced them with shredded bark from some pine trees from who knows where, which had to be delivered by truck and then distributed by shovel and elbow grease. They too are breadcrumbs atop an eventual layer of composting ambrosia, but with a much higher carbon footprint and wear and tear on my back. What's the point? tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4478 2008-03-28T03:22:19Z 2008-03-28T03:26:01Z

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ 6 months ago, it looked like this (note the green sludge): Thanks to a loaner power washer, it now looks like this: Sorry, that's all you get tonight.  Pretty much every waking moment is currently being spent on either paying work or house prep.  No time for blogging, alas.]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4469 2008-03-24T13:47:30Z 2008-03-24T13:50:48Z

Wow. This is really happening. We have set a "go live" date: April 10. (The Mr. and I had a long only slightly heated discussion about whether to go for April 3 or April 10, and eventually settled on April...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ Wow. This is really happening. We have set a "go live" date: April 10. (The Mr. and I had a long only slightly heated discussion about whether to go for April 3 or April 10, and eventually settled on April 3...only to find that our realtor couldn't do it then, and the whole thing was moot. Ah well.) That date is the "realtor open house". Three days later will be the public open house. So now we have 17 days left to finish whatever we will finish, and spit shine the whole dang thing. Eeek!!! tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4467 2008-03-22T20:09:03Z 2008-03-22T20:10:49Z

Once upon a time, this house had a dining room. It also had just two bedrooms and one bathroom. This much we've deduced through close examination of our very odd floor plan. Some prior owner decided to make it a...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ third bedroom onto the end of house, requiring a strange and twisty hallway be built through/between the existing bedrooms to get to it. Another prior owner, or perhaps the same one, decided the house needed a second bathroom as well. The only spot they could find to put it was smack dab in the middle of the large dining room. Leaving behind a much smaller dining room. Sort of. "Dining room" was generous even before they added the Looming Cabinet. . The end result was a room too small and cramped to be a usable dining room, and too far from the front door to be a foyer. For lack of a better term, we not so affectionately referred to it as "the entry hall": apprximately 50 square feet of space whose only purpose was the acquire cruft. Now at last, having finally erased all traces of The Looming Cabinet (and The Secret Door behind it), I present to you: The inaugural meal in the New-to-us Dining Room:  . (That's Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, if you are curious)]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4466 2008-03-22T17:44:59Z 2008-03-22T17:47:05Z

Do you know the best part of hiring a professional for a job? Someone else does the work for you! How cool is that?!?! We are definitely going to have to try that again someday. Before: | Afer: | (Props...

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ Someone else does the work for you! How cool is that?!?! We are definitely going to have to try that again someday. Before: | Afer: | (Props to LS Hardwood Specialists for a job well done)]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4462 2008-03-19T14:17:23Z 2008-03-19T14:21:41Z

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ As long as the revolution involves a lot of sawdust.  | (In the meantime, we might as well have our hardwood floors refinished.) [ETA: And while the area was clear, I quick-as-a-wink painted the ceilings, walls and trim in the small bedroom ]]]> tag:thisdamnhouse.mosaic-commons.org,2008://22.4460 2008-03-18T22:15:03Z 2008-03-18T22:17:06Z

Mrs. TDH http://www.homeport.org/~dianac/ You know those tasks that terrify you?  The ones you've known were coming for months or years, and fill your days with dread and your nights with terror because you just know they are going to be hellishly hard? Yeah.  My personal bugaboo was the beams holding the windows in the kids' bedroom.  They were stained and streaked and looked terrible.  but they are 15 feet high.    And over a newish carpet.  And before re-staining, they would need to have the existing stain somehow removed.  So much was my dread of this project that 1) I procrastinated on it for years, and 2) I was so deeply in denial I failed to take any good "before" pictures. But at last, the time arrived, and the time was this last weekend.  Saturday morning at the crack of dawn, we relocated the children and their furniture, laid down embarassing amounts of plastic on the floor, and began the long, tedious process of removing the stain. The 72 hours following were too horrible to detail here until I process it in therapy and the Xanax kicks in to stop the panic attacks.  It was every bit as awful as I thought it would be and moreso. So let me just present an "after" picture. And here's a handy "how not to" tip for you: No matter how much you object to using nasty stripper chemicals that release toxic VOCs into the environment, do not buy the eco-friendly non-toxic biodegradable citrus based stripping gel / floor wax / dessert topping.  Otherwise you will find, after spending 2 hours applying the gel, 4 hours letting it eat your wood, 4 hours trying to remove it with sponges, scrapers and steel wool, and 2 hours trying unsuccessfully to apply the stain over the remaining dessert topping residue, you will eventually declare defeat and buying different nasty VOC-releasing chemicals just to get the damn stuff off.   So, your choice: nasty toxic chemicals and a quick, easy job; or nasty toxic chemicals and a long, horrible, stinky job. ]]>