My husband and I have been spending every free second of every day, for the last month, fixing odds and ends around our house to put it on the market. Ahh, just typing that makes me nervous. I’ve always been one to get attached to things. This home was our first home, the one we were married in, had our children in and spent the last eight years together in, learning how to be husband and wife. It’s hard for me to think about letting it go. But, I have to remind myself that the memories will always be there and the new house we’re building is going to be the perfect place for the boys to grow up!
Enough with my sentiments. This post is really about the quite comical lessons I learned the hard way in my quest to get our home, selling ready.
1. There’s a brush for that. Leave it to me to be totally ignorant about the fact that certain paint brushes are used for certain types of paint and painting situations. I was trying to go pro and paint our trim without painters tape. I saw a painter doing it once and thought to myself, that can’t be but so hard. So I grabbed a brush and went to work…and smeared white paint all over my trim and wall. My husband just came in and shook his head. Then he handed me an angled brush. This angled brush made it so I could paint trim and ceilings like a pro. I had to remind myself to be slow and steady of course, but I was really pretty impressed how easy it was when I used the right brush! Plus I saved a ton of time not having to tape off the wall.
2. Don’t go caulk crazy. I thought I could just swipe some caulk in a line and go on with my day. Turns out, caulk is extremely sticky and messy and again ended up all over the wall, bathroom sink, in my hair and on our bathroom towels. I got another head shake from the hubby as he scraped the caulk off. I turned to my BFF, Pinterest and found the most genius/duh idea for my caulking woes. Use Painters Tape! Duh, why didn’t I think of that. So I taped off the areas around my caulk line, filled it in and smoothed it out with my finger. Now my caulk job is semi pro status.
3. Spot painting isn’t going to happen. For years I would run around our house with a can of paint I kept in our garage to paint over bumps in the wall. For years, it worked just fine for me. But, all of a sudden when I just wanted to touch up the wall instead of embark on a full blown painting job, just painting over the bumps wasn’t going to work. I even bought new paint thinking oh the paint is just old. I was left with shiny spots on the walls and the obvious mark of a half done paint job. So I had to paint the entire house again…fun times.
4. Check the bushes. On to my next project, landscaping. I’ve never been much of the outdoors type. I loathe spiders and bugs, so I pretty much slapped on some gloves, closed my eyes and ripped up weeds, dug holes for flowers and threw mulch on top. I was pretty proud of myself and went inside for the day. Later, my husband went outside and watered my new creation and said all the plants floated out of their holes. Good job! Apparently, my haste made for a crap plant job. But, the scariest part is right after going inside a neighbor of mine killed a Copperhead Snake beside the flower beds I had been mucking in all day. I told my husband I was going to swear off of yard work from then on out. He said, you just have to check the bushes. No thanks.
5. Bar Keepers Friend…is your friend. This one was actually a win for me and some of you may already know this. Well, some of you may have known all of the things I learned in my quest to make my home immaculate. But, I’m getting off point. Back to BKF. It’s the bomb. Your grout will look brand spanking new with only a little water to make a paste, a toothbrush and some elbow grease. It also took small rusty spots off of light fixtures, paint off of a toilet bowl (that I had dripped there years prior) and made my kitchen sink shine like new. Why didn’t I try this before?!
And because oh, hey girl, it wouldn’t be Wednesday without an outfit post, here’s something I’ve been wearing on repeat lately.
The Look: Shorts (Scarlett picked these up for me at the LP sale) | Top (similar) | Shoes
Now, the update on all of our hard work — our house was officially listed on Saturday and we received two offers yesterday! On to our next adventure. 🙂
– Brooke
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