Prepping Our House to Sell

--Blogpost written by Bob

Most of our time over the last few weeks has been consumed with preparations to sell our house.  We finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with our open house less than two weeks away.

Paring Down for Staging

Carloads of things have gone to Goodwill and to the recycling dumpster.  Selected furniture has remained in the house for staging--all other furniture has gone into temporary storage until final disposition is made.  We have over a dozen framed photographs that have been removed from our walls and are awaiting disposition--we have to decide where they go.  The paring down was our biggest task and it is still ongoing.

Our move is a lot more difficult than simply moving into another house.  We're
moving into a living area that will be about one tenth the living area
in our house and all the furniture is built in.

Our 42-inch flat screen TV has been removed from the wall mount in our living room to a spot above our gas fireplace in our downstairs family room.  Our leather love seat in the master bedroom will be moved to the downstairs family room for staging purposes.  All traces of our personalities have been removed from our house except for six or eight pieces of artwork.  It is like our house has undergone a somewhat sinister artistic cleansing where even our travel books neatly arranged on a bookshelf were considered "clutter" by our realtor.

Painting

We've had an interior painter working in the house for about a week and all the walls and ceilings are looking great.  The place where the TV was mounted on the wall in our living room has been patched and painted--you would never know it was ever there.  Our house is certainly being left in better shape than when we bought it five years ago. 

Just of few of the dozen or so paint cans used in the interior of our house.

  

Carpet & Furniture Cleaning

We have a mixture of hardwood flooring and carpeting throughout our house.  All carpeting was thoroughly steam cleaned this week.  It made a huge difference in appearance but maybe not enough since we are considering replacing the carpet in our family room because of a few stains that didn't come out completely.

Two large pieces of furniture in our living room that will
remain for staging and were cleaned this week.

Dismantling My Home Workshop

I packed most of my portable tools in rigid plastic boxes for safe keeping.  Some tools are being sold.  Hundreds of pieces of wood have been discarded in this process.  This process doesn't have to be completed until after the house is sold but it must be decluttered now.

Summary

The move to our new onboard lifestyle is becoming a reality.  We may have spent our last night in our house a couple months ago.  By Thanksgiving, we will be moving our boat to a slip in Baltimore and spending the winter aboard there. Someday in the future we may again become land dwellers but we don't know where or when. 

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