Since we’re moving to Virginia, we speedily prepared the house to sell for optimum benefits, especially during this deep recession.
After all, it’s the recession that’s sending us to Virginia.
We have purged, pruned, painted, and polished!
Last time to Garden
While pruning back my entire garden, I found one last rose to enjoy before we leave.
I’m going to miss my garden so much!
Sponged walls already neutralized
Meanwhile work was going on inside the house too.
Most of the walls looked great, with wonderful paint colors.
Although I had dabbled in sponge painting the main floor years ago, I didn’t like it.
Then when it looked like we’d be moving to Georgia, I quickly neutralized them, transforming them into a creamy yellow matching the foyer and stairwell, and loft.
That really enlarged the space.
(Then we didn’t move to Georgia.)
Priming mural walls
We primed over all the wall murals I had painted in each of my kids’ rooms and their bathroom in preparation for a more neutral color.
Enjoying them immensely over the years, my kids implored me to recreate them in our new home.
It was heartbreaking to paint over them, yet I knew we needed to redo the house to appeal to the most buyers.
The bathroom walls required several layers of primer to cover over the happy sea creatures.
After only one coat of primer we saw eyes looking at us everywhere.
Sad eyes, sorry to say goodbye to us…
Walking into the kids’ rooms with only one coat of primer felt surreal.
In my son’s train room, one coat made me feel as if I was in the middle of a blizzard in the Rockies.
In my daughter’s garden room, it felt like a foggy morning in the middle of a garden…
Purging Excess Required
I’ve also been doing a lot of purging. I’ve had piles for trash, donation to charity, regifting, and books to sell to Half Price Books.
It was hard to let some things go.
But I knew the house would sell better without the clutter.
Also, we had a weight limit to consider for the move.
I’m certain that once completed, packing and unpacking will be easier.
As we purged the bookcases, I limited my daughter to her bookshelves.
Nothing could be on the floor anymore.
She has Sensory Integration Disorder and change and letting go is extremely difficult for her.
Her valued Adventures in Odyssey CDs easily went into cute baskets and placed shelves of their own.
Now they look cute for all to see…though she did not believe it until she saw it!
Overflowing from her shelves were tons of little girl books, many from very popular series.
I told her I’d sell her little girl books at Half Price Books and she could keep the money.
If she ever wanted to read one of the books again, she could find them in a library.
Well, okay.
She took a look at her books and estimated they were worth $30.
In the end, she made nearly $80 from selling little girl books.
Her room is now uncluttered and full of great classics, junior and senior levels, that now neatly sit on her shelves.
My son made about $10 at Half Price Books.
I have even purged the shelves and I have more to take in.
I’ve made over $150 on books that weren’t hits with the kids or me, and that I’d never use again.
Putting the house on the market
Then we hired an agent.
A friend from Sunday School recommended David Bowman for our real estate agent. He was incredible.
When he first came, he suggested that we pray to commit everything to the Lord.
After the prayer, David laid out the path ahead, explaining that the recent deep recession caused a huge downturn in the real estate market.
Thus, he predicted our house would be on the market for a couple of months before a sale is secured.
Looking around the living area, he suggested moving our huge furniture into storage, to make the place look larger.
Ugh.
No, that totally imploded my brain.
We need the movers to pack and haul our stuff to Virginia, which they won’t do from a storage unit.
Besides, our furniture fits…and is very nice.
Deep in my heart I felt that would sell the house along with all our upgrades.
After explaining all that to David, he toured the house.
Expecting to tell us we needed to neutralize and purge, he was totally wowed by the home’s upgrades, slimplicity, and neutralized Texas-French Country styling.
Taking the official listing photos, he kept wowing about all our work!
That was Friday, the 6th.
Officially listed
Monday, the 9th, the house officially posted on the web listing service.
When I saw the photos listed on line, I shed a few tears. Do I have to move? I want to keep the house. But jobs are hard to come by in this deep recession…and a job was found in Washington DC so…
David said that we had done all we could. Now we needed to look heavenward for the rest.
Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway. -John Wayne
In the meantime, I discovered we have something in common with San Antonio Spurs point guard, Tony Parker.
He came here from France and joined the Spurs a few years ago at 19 years of age. The local media has always played up his French heritage in an interesting and fun way.
Well, he put his home on the market the same time we did!
Although valued at over one million dollars, the economy is causing him to sell his house at under $900,000.
That made me laugh and feel better, even though I’m sure there will be a price war on his house, not mine!
Showing the house
The benefit of all that purging allowed for super easy ability to keep the house clean while managing quick escapes when prospective buyers arrived…because all the phone calls the first day alerting us to leave.
Funny…we actually weren’t done with the clean up of the house.
We were still cleaning our louvered shutters from the loft, that were laying in the garage because the dust wouldn’t come off easily.
So power washing, drying, repainting to refreshen, with an otherwise sparkling home…then the phone rang.
People were coming to look at the house…and the house had only been listed for a few hours.
So we left the shutters in the garage, went out to eat lunch, then returned home…when we got another phone call because another group was coming to see the house!
Repeat cycle of leaving shutters project in the garage, meander around somewhere, then return home.
We got an offer for asking price for the first day if…
While getting dinner ready that evening, the agent called and started to relay the events on his end…but wait a minute…he had another call and had to go. He’d call back. What???? Just leave us hanging???
I felt like “House Hunters” on HGTV: Did they get an offer for their asking price? Stay tuned…
Finally, the real estate agent called back with the news.
Our house sold in 24 hours for asking price BUT the buyer wants to keep all the window treatments (that I sewed) in the house.
Absolutely! I’d miss them completely, but what are the odds they would fit in our future Virginia house?
Our real estate agent was flabbergasted! In all his years of selling houses during economic downturns, he had never seen a house sell this fast.
And never had he seen a house sell for listing price in San Antonio.
The other agent always wheels and deels a lower price…always…except this time.
Not bad despite the recession!
Prepped to quickly leave for inspections, etc.
Although now we could be a bit more relaxed, we kept the place spit spot for the random appointments for the buyer to have the house inspected, etc.
If they see a hot mess, that could change their mind of issues arrive.
Meanwhile I noted a change with my kids, they were more focused with all the clutter gone.
Although I never had much clutter in the house, my son had some in his room and at his school desk in the loft, while my daughter had more.
Although it wasn’t as insane as some I’ve seen, reducing even that small amount of clutter helped them focus more on their schoolwork and life in general.
Texas-French Hill Country Sells
Despite stating on our listing that our window treatments convey with the house, the buyers emphasized they wanted the window treatments on their offer.
If buyer wants the Texas-French Hill Country styled window treatments that much, then they likely loved all the touch of Texas and French styling we put into the entire home.
We certainly love that style, and got to enjoy it for years, and that sold the house.
My keeping my big Texas-French Hill Country furniture, that the agent tried to talk me into storing, helped us sell the house!
I’m so glad I stuck to my guns.
Blogging catch up: Texas-French Hill Country redesigns for our house
Thinking I’d have plenty of time to take lots of great pictures and write lots of great blog posts about our house remodeling process over the years, I kept putting it off.
So I put this journal together, with all our projects.
Actually written after I moved out, it’s sequenced before the move to help me keep track of the information.
Unfortunately so much was happening so fast, I never thought to take better pictures while I was there.
Since I hadn’t yet figured out an effective way to organize my pictures on my laptop, busy homeschool mom with brain fog simply didn’t assimilate those details.
Thus my journal, linked above, of what I had and my best descriptions. Hope you enjoy! =)
We loved our house because of all the sweat equity we put into it. We totally miss it!
