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.