Tag Archives: house

Work, Work, Work

Ever since we decided to get our house ready to sell we have been working, working, working.  I had no idea how much manual labor was involved in selling a house.  Of course, we haven’t done much around here since we started having kids seven year ago, so there is a lot to do – inside and out.  The inside of the house has been complete disaster since Christmas due to the construction in the master bath and the scraping of ceilings downstairs. I am so used to going down the hall to put on makeup, shower, or go to the bathroom that I forget that I can actually use mine now.  Yes, the master bath is FINALLY done.  It looks awesome.  A realtor came in last week and actually said, “Wow! This is really nice!”.  That comment made it worth the effort and waiting. Here is a picture of the shower and all of it awesomeness (Thanks Jerry!)…

  

 Because there is so much to do around here, we realized that it was going to take us until Christmas to get everything done, not to mention a lot of work, mess, and stress.  We decided to hire a handy man named Bruce.  Bruce is giving me my life back.  Hiring him is the best thing that we have done in a while.  He was able to finish the entire downstairs ceilings and install the vanity in one week.  He is worth every penny! 

 As for the outside of the house, we have been trimming trees and emptying the back gully which was full of branches and shrubs that we didn’t want to deal with over the past seven years…it turns out that we couldn’t avoid them forever. Yesterday we had Erik, our neighbor, over here with his chainsaw cutting up the makeshift bridge that we had made with the railroad ties that were left from the people that lived here before us.  We drug a lot of it out to the street but there was no way that we would be able to get the rest of it out there.  Erik and Tom had a brilliant idea – have a big campfire in the backyard and burn all of the remaining wood and debris.   Brilliant!  They built a rim around the fire pit with all of the random pieces of concrete laying around.  It turned into a neighborhood project that everyone could enjoy. 

Here is the neighborhood gang that hung out at our house all weekend… 

 

This one will show you how large it was…

Over the next three days we burned up all of the dead branches and railroad ties. It was a lot of fun. We roasted marshmallows and played outside until after dark.  We worked very hard to clear out the backyard, but it looks amazing.  We may even keep the fire pit there so that we can use it again.  Our house is going to look so good that we won’t want to leave.  

Spring!

I don’t know about everywhere else, but the weather here in Charlotte has been amazing this month.  It seems to me that March 1 came, and with it came the spring weather.  A switch flipped and all of a sudden the daffodils bloomed, buds came out on the trees, and the weather warmed up to 70 degrees.  I love it! 

 Over the last two weekends the kids have not been inside at all.  They have been running around the neighborhood and through the woods.  Tom has been pressure washing the house and working on our curb appeal (which has suffered greatly since we had the three children).  The kids even put their rain gear on and went out to play in the power washer spray. 



And what have I been doing during all of this lovely spring weather?  Painting!!  I have sanded and painted the ceiling in two rooms upstairs, painted the new bathroom, painted the huge downstairs hallway, and painted the dining room.  All of this in preparation for putting the house on the market.  I have painted so much that I have given myself carpal tunnel.  My hand literally begins to go numb when I hold a paintbrush for more than five minutes.  I told Tom this morning that my painting days are over.  Either he can do the rest or we can pay someone to do it since there really isn’t much left to paint.  I am now going to focus on packing up toys and cleaning up the aftermath from scraping the ceilings.  I am also going to relax on the back porch and enjoy the weather.  

I may get a bit bored with Charlotte sometimes, but you really can’t beat the weather.  Spring is a beautiful season in NC.  God did a great job planning it so that spring would last over two months – a different plant blooms every other week between now and the middle of June.  Right now the pear trees are covered in white blossoms and the forsythias are a brilliant yellow.  The azaleas will be in bloom before you know it and then the crape myrtle trees will finish it all off in the summer.  Growing up in Florida, I had no idea what spring was or that flowers bloomed during it.  I was young, oblivious, and it was always summer.  Then I moved to Colorado where it was winter for seven months out of the year.  Spring was considered “mud season” and so no one stuck around during May to see it – they all went on vacation.  It probably took me seven years to fully appreciate all that spring has to offer here in NC.  I don’t think that I really paid much attention to it for the first give years.  It just wasn’t my thing. Now, I love it.  I am excited to see what will be blooming next week.