New Year New Fixing House to Sell

2013 Fresh Start

Since my mantra has always been, “Dedicated to all that’s Creative” my world can get a bit cluttered with possibility, in my house AND in my mind!

2013 is here.  While I constantly work on clutter control, these next few months will be tackled with extra zeal.  All of the younger bloggers out there are showing all of their before and afters, and I love seeing each one.  They are at the beginning of the road to home improvement, and life skills.  Hopefully, I am not at the END, but just somewhere further along that road, like at mile marker 300 or so!

Since I am an empty nester, my before and afters may be a bit different.  The reason for this sudden zeal and decluttering?  We hope to get to the lake house as full-timers sometime in this coming year.  It is only 50 minutes up the road, afterall.  I don’t want to be too far away from “the city” of Atlanta, but the lake calls to newly retired hubby and me.

So, we are creating a punch list of all of the little (and not so little) home improvements and fixin’ up of this house we have called home for the last 27 years.  These days, the houses have to be “staged” to sell!  I know there are professional stagers out there, but I would like to try my hand at it before calling in the big guns. 

Yep.  I know that once you put your house on the market we are not to think of it as “ours” anymore.  It is a product to sell, and has to be devoid of any “personal” touches.  The potential buyer has to be able to “see” themselves in the house, and they can’t do that if a huge needlepointed image of Aunt Mabel is over the fireplace!  (No, I do not have one of those, but you get what I mean.)  BUT, as a creative person, I DO have a Home Depot-Orange wall going up the back stairway!  I DO have Turquoise and lime green walls in the bonus room (my studio) with a blue ceiling!  I DO have vinyl words like Create, and Rejuvenate and Imagine on my walls.  What’s a creative gal to do?  I do not WANNA change those things.

I guess my fear is that if we make this a vanilla house, then vanilla people will move in.  This creative house WANTS creative people to move in!  This house has a soul.  So should the people coming in.  Is that crazy for me to think like that?  I know.  I’ll try really hard.  I will.

So, maybe as I post the progress, you all can gently prod me, and direct me.  You will tell me what needs to go, right?  BUT, be very, very gentle.

These posts will help keep me moving (pun intended) forward toward a decluttered and “fixed” house, ready to pass along the keys to the new, hopefully soul-filled people, as I travel just up the road to my new life.

I’ll show what we have already accomplished, and what we still have to do.  The young families that would be interested in this great “growing up” house are very discerning, and expect it all to be move-in ready, it seems.

Where do we begin without imposing our own style and taste onto them?  Where do we “improve” and where do we say, “It’s good enough?”  We know we should put in new granite counters in the kitchen, because we now have lowly laminate, but the rest of the entire kitchen is updated with newer appliances, but they are not STAINLESS.  We have granite on the island, so that is a start.  I say we have to draw that line and hope the people coming in to see the place will have some imagination and look at the many positives… So, clean and decluttered will be my main goal.

Okay.  I will replace the laminate with granite, since hubby agrees it does need it to sell…

We have already added a new roof a few months ago, and new carpet throughout.  (Yes.  I know hardwoods are more in, but the carpet is clean and new, at least.)  New furnace and air, etc.  The Big, expensive stuff is done.  New homeowners can spend the $$ on other, more fun stuff!

Now to let go and, um, well, GO!

Will you help me?  Oh!  And do you know anyone looking in Dunwoody, GA?



New Fence in Natural Backyard