What I've been up to lately.

While in the old house, I am enjoying the view out the kitchen window.

First let me say , "No, we have not moved." And, "No, we don't have our old house on the market." That's pretty much how every conversation I have these days starts. Sometimes I feel like I'm eight months pregnant and fielding comments like, "You haven't had that baby yet?!" Believe me, no one wanted to have that baby more or no one wants all of this house stuff to be over with more than I do. It's been three months of total focus night and day on practically nothing but houses and it's getting a little old.

However, I realize that this is a good reason to be tired. A short time ago, we were worrying about cancer surgery and before that we were worrying about a fall my mother had and placing her in a nursing home. So making a late night trip to Lowes to get a new shower diverter because the other one didn't work is not too bad.

We are tying the new floors into the existing floors. The new stain will
have more of a brown tinge and a bit lighter than the old.

Where are we in this moving process? Al, the floor guy, is actually working on the floors now in the new house and hopefully they'll be done by the beginning of next week. He is matching and tying into the hardwoods that are already there and doing a great job. He is truly a craftsman. Anyway, the floors are the key to much of this whole process. Obviously, we can't move much until we have a floor to set it on. And we can't pack up a lot of stuff if we're still using it. And we don't want to move it into all of the construction dust. And some of the things can't be fixed on the old house until we move some of things. So the floors are what much of this process is hinging on.

On other fronts, the bathroom remodel is almost done and should be finished by next week also. It is shaping up very nicely and I think we're going to really like it. After the work is done in there, the contractor will move to the basement to install some new duct work and a bathroom fan. We have finished painting the master bedroom, but the rest of the painting that needs to be done will wait for a later date after we've moved in.

Back at the current house, we are continuing to purge things. Today, I have a pickup scheduled for a large load of things we're giving away including furniture. Among other things, we are prepping rooms for painting with removing wallpaper being the most time consuming.

The most interesting part with the current house work has been talking with stagers about how to set up things for showing. Selling a house these days is all about pictures. People do their first shopping online (that's how we did it) and if you don't have a set of appealing pictures, you won't get them in the door. We hired a stager for a small fee who carefully went through the house and made suggestions on what to take, what to leave, what colors to paint, etc. This is all part of getting good pictures. Not surprisingly, our house is old fashioned especially for the demographic that is moving into the neighborhood right now, young families. In case you are wondering, gray and more gray are the colors of the day. However, since we have an older house, taupe is the color for us. Gone are the days of painting everything white or off-white to sell a house. Gray and taupe are the new whites.

After we had the visit from the first stager, our real estate agent brought another agent, who also stages, and she took a look. Her suggestions were similar to the first with a few exceptions. The conclusion is, while our house is in good shape overall, it need a lot of cosmetic fix ups. None of it is hard work, but all of it time consuming especially when we're trying to do the same thing in another house. So now, we're reworking the budget to see how much of this we can afford to hire out. We want the house on the market. The sooner we can get it on, the sooner we can sell it, and the sooner we can recoup money.

Otherwise, we are enjoying the fall weather and I have decided not to take a trip to deliver some door knobs to the new house this morning before work and am having breakfast with a friend I haven't seen for a while. That's my small attempt at balance.

So I'll see you guys out there in cyberland when I see you. I'll try to keep up with your blogs and comment when I can. And I'll post then and again. Especially when I have something else to talk about other than houses. Hope that's soon.