House-selling saga: Moving and shaking

So much for dialing my posting back a few notches. Almost immediately after announcing that I wouldn't be posting daily anymore, things on my little patch of Blogworld came to a grinding halt...but for a legitimate reason: We decided to sell our house.

We found a 1950 split-level that suits our needs perfectly. It has 5 bedrooms and 3 baths covering almost 3000 square feet. The lower level includes a huge master suite and a 2-bedroom/1 bath mother-in-law's suite with its own living room. The upper level has the original hardwood floors and tons of closets. And did I mention clerestory windows and tongue and groove ceilings? The owners liked our offer, but they wanted to see our house under contract before accepting.

Trouble was, our house wasn't ready to put on the market. We thought our house was in good shape until we started to look at it through a potential buyer's eyes. We realized that we hadn't really paid attention to the tiny imperfections that needed touch-up paint. We had procrastinated about calling someone to replace a cracked window pane. We needed a new front porch light.

The insanity began. We started running around like a bunch of crazy people trying to meet even crazier deadlines so we could start showing...appointments with the glass repairman, the real estate photographer, and a "curb appeal" guy. And, of course, we made countless trips to Lowe's and Home Depot.

We had accumulated a bunch of really useful kitchen gadgets that were out on the counters in both houses. The real estate agent told us they'd look like clutter during a walk-through, so they had to go. We had to pack 6 bins full of kids' toys for storage to eliminate that clutter and hide all the riding toys in the back yard. And then there was the bathroom closet in the main house. We took the door off months ago and put it at the curb, planning to rip off the trim and sheet rock the opening, creating open shelves, but it never got done till now. (And by now I mean still having a fan blowing on the wet paint 5 minutes before the first person came to view the house.)

In the end, though, we got it all done, and it looked good. So good, in fact, that the first real estate agent who saw it couldn't believe we wanted to sell. More space, we told her. Clearly she hasn't seen our rambunctious 4- and 5-year-olds who need more room to play.

Here are a few photos from the listing. (There are some issues with color on the real estate site, but my toned-down versions here accurately reflect what wall color looks like in the living room and kitchen. We're hoping our agent will have the problem corrected soon.) The shots of the main house will be new to most of you, although many of you will recognize my Modernist Nest, aka secondary suite/guest house/mother-in-law suite.

Keep your fingers crossed for us that the house will sell quickly...before the seller of the other house gets a better offer.

Main house

Guest house