A Moving Experience...(an ongoing series) — Part 2

Not-ready-for-Primetime
I'll admit I'm a little disappointed, although not shocked to say that we didn't meet our goal of having the house ready to sell by this past Tuesday. According to our real-estate gals, the month of June through the middle of July is 'Primetime' in the housing market's summer sales season. It's the fairly brief period between the end of the school year and family vacation time, when people are most likely to pursue buying a home. It had had been stressed that it would be in our best interests to get the house ready to go as early in this period as possible.

Had we only been a day off our targeted 'go' date, we still could have done it this week. But as of yesterday, our agents suggested we postpone yet a few more days. We'll now be listing the house next Tuesday instead of this past one.

Our real estate gals suggested the full-week delay because they're really set on Tuesday as the best day of the week to hold an 'Agent Showcase' to preview our property to their local peers, thereby expanding the potential for finding a buyer via a third party. Once that's done, the house will then be opened to viewing by the general public.

So the bottom line is, I now have the weekend to finish up my painting, and as it's turning out, I'm really gonna need it.

Door-Jammin'
When all is said and done, the front door will have taken me nearly a week to paint, due to the limited number of weeknight evening-only hours to get things done.

I didn't even get started on it until Tuesday night, while finishing up one of the two other doors from the bonus room that I also have to paint.

Since it was so blistered by the sun (and really should have been repainted over a year ago), the front door was a nightmare to prep. I spent well over an hour scraping and sanding it. Add to that my work on the other door earlier in the evening, and that was about all the time and energy I had for that particular night.

Then last night (Wednesday) was spent masking and priming the sucker, and tonight I'll apply the first coat of new paint, with the final coat coming Friday evening.

In the meantime, I should be able to finish the remaining bonus room door and trim, and have everything ready for pictures by Sunday or Monday.

To be fair, the extra time needed to complete our tasks could not have been avoided; we simply had too much to do. Michelle, trooper that she is, has spent the past several evenings painting all the baseboard trim throughout the house; a backbreaking job. And she's still got a lot more to do: re-arranging and resetting-up the furniture and room decorations still disorganized from last week when we moved everything around to have the carpets cleaned.

Needless to say, we tried, but just didn't realize how much more we were biting off than we could actually chew.

Nevertheless, our initial disappointment over missing out on the start of 'Primetime' in the homeselling season has subsided quite a bit over the past 24 hours. Turns out, the delay may actually pay some dividends.

Our lead realty gal told me last night that another home in our neighborhood with square footage numbers similar to ours just went on the market at a price point nearly $10,000 higher than what we'd initially planned to seek. This obviously elevates our asking value by at least another five grand if we choose to compete with this other property right off the bat. We conceivably could price the house thousands less and still come out way ahead in profit.

So sometimes good things DO come to those who wait...

Or miss deadlines...

Or are just plain lucky...

Take your pick.

:)


Next: And so it begins…