Appraisal Becomes a House Tour

June 2012

An appraisal in pictures, and some words- because it is a blog.

The living room from the front door

After we finished the stairwell we went ahead and decided to refinance the house.  To do this we needed the house to appraise for roughly 30k more then we had bought it for exactly two years before.  The good news is that we had easily spent that fixing the house up.  So, we felt pretty confident that we could reach that number.  Still, I am a planner and a worrier and I wanted to make sure the appraisal was seamless.

 The Living Room and Dining Room Looking North

  Our Dining Room from the kitchen doorway

 With the help of a hired maid I cleaned the house top to bottom.  I even mopped the entire basement floor, reorganized the junk in the basement and put down rugs so that it looked more inviting.  It was a lot of work, but in many ways it was a good chance to spring clean the house.  This marks the longest time span I have lived in one space since high school.  It's amazing how much I relied on moving every year to act as a catalyst for donating junk and cleaning spaces.

 The view of the Kitchen from the dining room and mudroom beyond

The hallway from the kitchen doorway looking into the guest room

We also had a round of smaller projects that we needed to complete.  Josh installed the remaining base shoe in the bedroom. I touched up paint in the living room, kitchen and dining room as well as pressure washed the front steps. We mowed the lawn, edged the sidewalk, and pulled the hundreds of weeds growing the sidewalk cracks. We were attacking our to do list.

The guest room from the hallway

Once again, overkill- but it was a good excuse.  After the house was fully clean I walked around the house and de-cluttered.  Nightstands were removed of books, tissues and clocks, the family room tables lost their magazines, pens and various mis-matched coasters. I ended up filling two boxes with each room's 'extras.' It felt nice.  I added back some fresh flowers and then turned on every stinking light in the house.  I was once told that you should do this whenever you 'show your house' because it makes it feel cleaner and more welcoming.  Seriously, the only thing I didn't do was bake cookies.

 The stairwell from the landing looking towards our bedroom

I am so glad that the morning before I walked around the house and shoot some quick pictures of most of the rooms.  The fact is- our house would probably never look this good again until we sold it. The good news, we appraised close to 40k over what we bought the house for!  The appraiser had great things to say about our house and neighborhood and even offered some ways we could raise the number even higher.

My little corner of the world in our bedroom

It was great!  We could finally relax about the mad house rush and maybe even enjoy it??? But wait, I still had a HUGE pile of dirt and concrete in my backyard. Darn. 

 

There are a few rooms you did not see, these are because they are part of our current and/or soon to be remodels.  The bathroom, the upstairs office, the basement, and our back yard. Don't worry- this will continue.

Our happy abode

Living Rooms Are For Living

June 2010

 

At this point, we are about two weeks into our house owning adventure.  Josh came home every night and dutifully worked on the living room.  I helped taping, caulking, and scrapping paint off the windows.  Finally, late on a Saturday night we realized... we might be done?? 

 

We pulled up the paper on the floor and looked at our new walls, new floors and new paint and there was a wonderful moment of exhaustion fueled satisfaction.  However, it was also 11:00pm and there was no way I was moving furniture.  I cleaned the floors and woodwork and then went to bed.  If I wasn't so dang tired I would have thought about this all night... The best part of moving and projects is unpacking your stuff and making the room yours!

 

The next morning we went into our 'hoarders room', or as Aunt Cindy termed our 'room of requirement' and unearthed our two area rugs, coffee table, side table, chair, blankets, tv stands, hall table, lamps and pretty much proved that the back bedroom was Narnia because there was no way this all was in there.  As each item went in... it fit!  Yay, no new furniture! And I got to unpack about 16 boxes of movies and cds.  Hello, living!

Honestly... You Can't Do It Alone

May 2010

 

Josh and I had made a very extensive list of things to get done before we moved in. I think we got about 50% of the list done before the fateful moving day.  I ended up taking a few days off work just so we could get some smaller projects off the list.  While we were packing, painting, and stressing, we had hired Nolan to come in and replaster our front two rooms.  The original plaster had some big cracks, hundreds of nails and screws and a few areas of water damage.  It made sense to get a fresh lease on life.  Nolan was amazing!  We showed him some pictures of the plaster work from our old apartment that had a light texture to it.  He got really close and worked long hours for us to make sure it was done before we moved in.  He also dutifully abided our 'careful on the floors' cautions and wore his slippers the whole time!

 

Nolan worked while I bleached and cleaned three closets and set about painting them. If you have ever had the pleasure of painting a closet, especially ones that are not walk-in's, you can feel my pain.  I spent two days in 2 sqft areas, usually on a chair, painting the closets and more often myself in the process.  In the meantime, Josh was experiencing the joys of painting ceilings as quickly as possible before our furniture was moved.

 

 

The weekend we moved in our friends came over for a small work party. Together they helped us with some tasks that were daunting!  Jen and Zack mowed our lawn (neighbors rejoiced) and leveled out a large dirt patch in our parking strip that was left from the new sewer.  Dean carefully cut cork liners for all our kitchen cabinets (yay!) and Dana helped me clean what might have been the scariest broom closet in history.

 

All in all, I can sum up this entry by saying... you can't ever do a project alone!  There are moments that you have to pay someone because their talent is definitely required, and other times when friends are willing to step up and help you when you need it most.  Josh and I have a lot of pride and don't like to ask for help, but we never could have gotten here without help and encouragement from everyone.