Hallelujah, we have sold our house. And not only did we sell it, but we sold it ourselves. We actually had two offers on the plate, so we had to do a little wheeling and dealing, as untitleddad used to say. I will spare you the mind-numbing marathon phone conversations, which at one point had untitledhusband at home, holding his mobile phone to our landline speaker phone, so I could discuss details with the dude on the other end. I really didn’t even hear what was being said, I just kept repeating our terms like Rainman.
Since this is a journey that we all eventually go on, I thought I’d share some things we learned along the way.
Your home will sell faster if you drop $200 on new Egyptian cotton bathroom rugs at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Not sure I can scientifically prove this one. But I am quite confident that the white rubber backing that was flaking off our old rugs in mammoth chunks might have been construed for eight-balls, or worse yet, dandruff. And since we didn’t list the meth lab on our home specifications, that would be false advertising.
De-clutter. In other words, get rid of all the shit you keep in that box in your closet, the stuff you only bring out when family visits. We consigned hundred of dollars of what I loosely call merchandise, including an oak quilt rack with heart-shaped designs on it and an oak rocking chair that was so tiny, not even skinny untitledhusband could fit his ass on it without threat of deep vein thrombosis. Turns out untitledmother commissioned said quilt rack and chair from a convicted child molester (she didn’t know he was a molester at the time). Who knew Michael Jackson was hiding out in the Midwest, whittling wood products and such. Shimon!
Remove all signs of pets. If people know a pet is in the house, they will be on the hunt for pet stains and pet stank – and may even find them when they don’t exist. What, like that steaming pile of duke in the spare bedroom isn’t a dead giveaway? I originally had this fear that untitleddog would take it upon himself to sabotage our home selling efforts by planting landmines in clandestine locations. He’s spent years brewing a custom blend of Agent Orange in his urinary tract, a potion that has proven most effective at killing all vegetation in his wake. Now that his deforestation project is almost complete, the last thing he wants is a new patch of sod sneering at him.
This whole ordeal is far from complete, so I’m sure I’ll have more gems to share in a few months’ time. But until then… we got our HOUSE sold, we got our HOUSE sold…
“I just kept repeating our terms like Rainman.” Classic.
Glad the house is sold. You’re on your way to the Big House!
The stank landmines made me laugh….
True story:
We were attending an “open house” a few weeks ago. Home looked wonderful on the outside. We thought that we had a steal here. Upon entering the livingroom and seeing the DARK forest green paint we were a little disturbed. It wasnt something so bad that paint (LOTS!) couldnt fix. The on to the kitchen….Pumpkin Orange counters and back splash ICK! There was so much cheap clutter I felt like I was visiting a Salvation Army store in Compton. Things were going down hill fast but not quite as fast as when we entered the basement that had been finished and used as an office. There were 3…count them…THREE steaming piles of poop. Needless to say were streamlined it outta the basement and out the door.
Congrats on selling your house, untitled!
It is amazing what people will think is OK when it comes to selling their house. Dark green paint? Orange backsplash? Their realtor must have been color-blind along with having a defective sense of smell…
Congrats, untitled! Now, pick up those bathroom rugs and start packin’.
ibeejd, you had me at pumpkin orange counters.
My ex-husband and I once lived in a house whose kitchen had to have been painted by color-blind hippies on the wildest drug trip imaginable. We had just spent a lot of time and effort on the previous rental house, only to be summarily evicted so that the owner could move in when she and her husband split up, and having done all of that, we had committed to spending little or no money or time on the new place, but we soon changed our minds. The buttercup yellow cabinets, neon orange window frame and garden hose green backsplash (with that same color combination spread in bizarre ways around the rest of the kitchen) were enough to convince us that what we spent in paint, we’d save on Pepto Bismol. Orange is even my favorite color, and I couldn’t wait to get it all covered — with uber-cosmic beige. (What can I say — I’m a conservative closet hippie.)
Congrats on selling untitled house!
Anne
ibeejd, I didn’t even know my mother was selling her house!!! She must’ve been cleaning tho with only three steaming piles.
AnnArky, but were there ‘daisy’ stickers?
Untitled, congrats on selling the house! Here’s hoping that closing goes smoothly.
notaclue,
No daisy stickers, or even peace symbols, but there was a whole wall of feather painting, a phenomenon I have never seen before or since. The idea is, you stick a feather into paint, place it on the surface and twirl it. They had the black and brown version of that in the bathroom, too. The kitchen wall on which this was done had been painted after a grease fire, and I found out the hard way they didn’t clean it up before they painted over it — I leaned against the wall to reach up into a high shelf of the cabinetry, and I slid down the wall! ICK!
OMG, that is so disgusting. Either previous occupants were lazy or stupid but probably both.