Friday, March 26, 2010

busy bees






Well, obviously we are very busy getting ready for our move to japan - so please forgive the lack of posts. Our first challenge was getting our house in good shape to sell it (well the best shape). We decided just to sell (instead of rent) because we will be an entire DAY away, so we had our realtor and a staging professional come in to help give us ideas of what to do to help the house sell quicker. They were pretty simple (new light fixtures ($10 at Lowes), flowers in the plant boxes, more lighting, etc) ...except for painting. We sort of refuse to paint the kitchen (we love the red color and it pulls together our entire couch, rug, placemats, etc) and also refused to paint Evie's room and ours (they were just done). BUT - we did agree the rest of the paint could use a little sprucing up.

My friend Dana had a huge 5 gallon bucket of tan contractors paint and a bunch of supplies, so I begged a few friends (Dana, Ashli, Tara, Melissa, and Kristen) to come over and help paint on Sunday (Autumm watched the kids). I must say we did an amazing job! Thank goodness there were 3 ladies who had painted before and were great with instructions and doing some of the hard parts (trim, etc). We had 6 of us, and we got the whole thing done in 5 hours! I even ended up groveling some more and did the basement as well on Tuesday. Then, I only had one other person (in shifts - Ashli, Tara and Mary) and it took MUCH longer! But it was worth it! The house looks great and we have our realtor coming tomorrow to take pictures and then it will go up on the MLS this weekend! Keep your fingers crossed.