Category Archives: House Stuff

real estate purgatory

Posted on by

Our house is kinda-sorta on the market, but not totally there just yet. Renee, our realtor, came over today to take pictures of the house and to fill out paperwork with us. So that part is done, which technically means we’re on the market, but we’re holding off a couple of days to “officially” list because she wants to do an all-out marketing campaign: flyers, ads, the whole nine yards.

So to sum up: we have a lockbox on the door, but no sign in the yard. I guess we’re in some sort of real estate limbo for the next couple of days.

lockbox! On the door! That means we're almost officially on the market, right?

See? Lockbox. So we’re almost there, right?

I followed Renee around while she was taking pictures today and took a few myself. Then I went and dug up all of the pictures that I took way back when we first started all of these home improvements, so I could do a little before and after comparison. Check it out:

before: front of the house

after: front of the house

You can see the whole set here if you want. The pictures of the kitchen at the end are my favorite.

I’m actually kind of happy that we aren’t listing until Tuesday because it gives me time to do a couple more things that I’ve been wanting to do but haven’t had time to do yet. Nothing that would really be required for the house, just some minor extra stuff to jazz the place up a little bit.

So, there you have it. Not all the way there, but hooray for progress!!

I no longer enjoy being a pet owner

Posted on by

Funny that I mentioned cat pee at the end of that last entry. And I mean funny-ironic, because believe me, this ain’t funny-haha.

So, I’m trying to get the last few things taken care of before the housekeepers come tomorrow. Yesterday I thought it’d be a good idea to wash the sheets on the guest bed, since I hadn’t bothered since my in-laws visited in December. (Why would I? No one ever sleeps in there.)

While I was stripping the sheets, I caught a whiff of cat pee. I wondered if maybe they had peed on the floor under the bed? Maybe that’s where it was coming from? Then I realized, no, they had, in fact, peed ALL OVER the bed. The comforter, sheets, pillows, mattress pad, and the mattress itself were all soaked. How I never smelled it before, I have no idea. For those of you familiar with cats, you know that cat pee has that awful ammonia smell that is almost impossible to remove.

All of the bed linens were promptly washed (with bleach), and pillows are cheap, so whatever, I can throw those away and get new ones, no big deal. But the mattress? I didn’t know what to do about that.

I did some Google-ing and found a couple of home remedies, and also got advice from Kris, who has more experience with pet-related disasters than anyone I know. So I’m using a combination of this stuff, and some water mixed with white vinegar to neutralize the ammonia smell. I’m hoping that’ll be enough.

So after my cleaning efforts have dried, we’re going to flip the mattress over (pee-side down), make the bed, and leave it alone until the house sells. But Dave and I unanimously agreed that when it’s time to move, we are not taking the cat pee-soaked bed with us. Even if we can’t smell the pee, chances are good that the cats can, so they’ll just keep going there. So forget it, we’ll just buy a new bed for the guest room after we move. It’s one less thing to have to load onto the truck, right?

I also realize that I really need to take Teenie to the vet. My suspicion is that it was her, since she’s the one who has more litter box issues than any of the other cats, and it seems to be getting worse now that she’s older (she’s almost 12). I don’t know what the vet can do about it if it turns out that she’s incontinent, but I figure it’s worth getting an expert opinion.

Mother's Day weekend recap

Posted on by

Mother’s Day at our house was kind of a non-event. Dave forgot that it was Mother’s Day, I guess because he doesn’t notice any sort of advertising on TV, radio, or the Internet. He felt bad about it, but it really isn’t that big a deal to me. I got to spend a good portion of the day playing with Cate, and that made me happy.

Mother's Day happy girl

(I also shot a bunch of videos, which you can see here if you feel so inclined. I don’t want to be the annoying blogger who embeds a YouTube video of her kid in every single entry.)

We also spent a good portion of the weekend cleaning, which was not so fun. The carpet cleaners came today, so we had to make sure that the floors were cleared off so they could do their thing. You might think that I would gripe and grumble about cleaning the house on Mother’s Day, but the truth of the matter is that since it got me feeling a tiny bit closer to having our house ready to sell, I didn’t mind it one bit. It felt really good, and since Dave was feeling guilty about forgetting Mother’s Day, he helped a lot, which was really nice.

Um, that’s not to imply that Dave is ordinarily unwilling to help with housework. He does the dishes for me almost every night, he’s really great with a lot of the day-to-day stuff. But things like cleaning out our closet and sorting through which of our books we should keep and which ones to trade in at the second-hand bookstore? Yeah, that’s not really his scene. But he did it, and I’m very grateful.

Besides, cleaning out the closet led us to dig up this gem from one of Dave’s old Halloween costumes.

Cate wearing a Bill Clinton wig

It’s a baby in a Bill Clinton wig! You don’t see that every day, now do you?

So yeah, we had fun. And I suppose I should write something really profound about motherhood and how great it is, but… meh. I’ve written about that a few times already, so there’s probably no need for it. And right now, I have to go try to put our furniture back into its proper place and make sure the cats don’t pee on the carpet again until this house has a “sold” sign out front.

mid-week update

Posted on by

Sorry to leave the barf story at the top for so long, I hope nobody was too grossed out. I’ve been trying to think of something to blog about, so here’s the latest on What We’re Doing:

House Stuff:
1. I think I mentioned that my realtor’s husband might be a teensy bit unreliable when it comes to helping us with our home improvements? Well, he gave me at least five different dates for when he expected he would be done with everything, and not only did he miss every single deadline (self-imposed deadlines, I might add! It wasn’t me asking him to have it done by X date, he was the one making empty promises!), but 90% of the time, he never even showed up. So whatever, we’re done with him. I still like Renee (our realtor) and I know that she’s been mortified by all of this because she’s been in the hospital having her spleen removed (stupid horse with its giant powerful stupid hooves) and she hasn’t been able to keep up with what’s going on with us. So I called our contractor guy to come give us an estimate to finish up the job that Scott didn’t do, and we’ll consider this a lesson learned about mixing friends and business. This is also why you shouldn’t pay people for work in advance. (Don’t ask. Just don’t.)

[Oh, have I ever told y’all that our contractor guy’s name is Paul Newman? He spells his last name slightly differently, but it cracks me up. The first time he called me and said “hi, this is Paul Newman,” I thought it was a prank call. (I knew his name was Paul, I didn’t know his last name.) I always have the urge to ask him what it was like to work with Robert Redford, or how the salad dressing is coming along, or something completely stupid like that. But my guess is that he’s been hearing those jokes for the last 30+ years, so I try to leave it alone.]

2. I also talked with a guy who owns a power-washing company about getting the deck and siding power-washed, so the house will look all shiny and spiffy. He’s working on an estimate for us too. We actually rented a power-washer from Home Depot, got it here, then figured out that it was waaaay too big a job for Dave and me to tackle on our own. So we’re calling in the pro’s.

Work Stuff:
My current project is turning into a huge pain in the butt, but it’s fine. I’m going to end up with a whole lot of billable hours, and I really can’t complain about that.

Baby Stuff:
Nothing really to report, just that she’s awesome and hilarious and we’re having so much fun right now. Oh, and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKeGWpUOqw

(The camera adds ten pounds, shut up.)

Other Stuff:
Dave and I will be celebrating our three-year anniversary a week from tomorrow (the 15th). I’ve made that our target date for listing the house on the market, so we’ll see how that works out.

And a week after our anniversary, the new Indiana Jones movie comes out. I’ve already talked to Patsy about baby-sitting (she sometimes does after-hours stuff for extra money) so Dave and I can have our anniversary date night then. I can’t wait.

oh allergens, how I loathe thee

Posted on by

For a few days there, I was really kicking butt with the house stuff, and making so much progress. I spent more time in the garage than I have since I moved into this house. And now, it’s caught up with me. All the dust in the garage that I stirred up (and inadvertently inhaled) brought on a killer allergy attack, which has now transformed into a full-blown cold. Ugh.

And you know, it’s really hard to get much work done when you’re all loopy on over-the-counter cold medications.

To be fair, though, I have done a lot. All of the boxes that I’ve packed have been moved to the garage and stacked neatly in one corner. It’s just that the house is still so cluttered, and there’s still so much that needs to be packed up and moved out.

You might notice that I keep saying “I” and not “we”? Well, Dave was a huge help with cleaning out the garage over the weekend, but his work schedule is insane right now, so he doesn’t really have time to do any house stuff during the week. The poor guy is working on his laptop all the time. He stops for meals and to sleep, but that’s about it. I, on the other hand, have all the time in the world, since Cate is at daycare and I’m still waiting for my next work project to start. I thought it was supposed to start Monday, but apparently there was some miscommunication about that. No big deal, and I’m fine with having the free time, I just wish I was feeling better so I could really take advantage of it. I’m still trying, it just feels like I’m moving in slow-motion.

In other news: Sally had a baby yesterday! Or maybe she’s having it today, but god, I hope for her sake that she’s not still in labor. Can’t wait to meet Baby Spike!

who knew gravel was so much fun?

Posted on by

This past weekend was crazy. First of all, it snowed off & on all weekend long. Snow! In late April! WTF?? I am so over winter, will someone please bring on the spring?

In spite of the crummy weather, Dave and I (taking shifts with Cate) worked like dogs and managed to finish cleaning out the garage. Yay! The dumpster is chock full of garbage, it’s kind of horrifying to see how much junk we’ve accumulated over time. And in spite of a few soul-wrenching, “but wait, what if I need [item] someday?” moments, it felt really good to purge ourselves of all the junk. I won’t lie, though; I threw away some shoes, and boy, that stung. Nevermind that I hadn’t worn them since the mid-90’s, I was still sad to let them go.

Oh, and people: how do you keep a garage clean? Because the spider webs in ours are out of control, and the only way I could think of to remove them was to use the hose attachment on the Dyson. This accomplished two things: 1) It got those spider webs out of there, FAST (zip-zam-zoom, bye-bye, dead bugs!); and 2) it kept me at a nice safe distance from said spider webs so I didn’t have to touch anything remotely cobwebby. But I spent a good couple of hours vacuuming the walls of the garage, and it still doesn’t look clean to me in there. Any other ideas?

The one really fun part of the weekend was yesterday afternoon. It finally stopped snowing and the sun came out for a couple of hours, so we brought Catie outside and let her play in the driveway for a while. She had a BLAST. She had a little plastic tub and she picked up individual gravel rocks to put in her little container and then she’d shake them around. If Dave or I picked up a rock and handed it to her, she’d put it in the tub, then peer in and study it, then remove the rock and hand it back to us. Like, “no thanks, this one doesn’t meet my selection criteria.”

Between playing with the rocks, walking around everywhere, and shrieking with glee at the horse next door, she had a fantastic time. Which, of course, meant that she was in total meltdown mode by the time we went back inside and promptly sacked out for a nap. I usually try to keep her on the one-nap-per-day schedule, but sometimes you gotta bend the routine a little.

Unrelated: today I chased off a coyote for the third time this year. I. Want. To. Move.

channeling my inner Yosemite Sam

Posted on by

Moving status:
1. There is a dumpster in the driveway, waiting for us to clean out the garage. As soon as that task has been accomplished (no easy feat, believe me), we can start moving all of the boxes I’ve packed into the garage and make the rest of the house look de-cluttered.

2. Our contractor guy is coming to install our new kitchen cabinet doors tonight and tomorrow night (he has a day job, so evenings and weekends are kind of his thing). It’s looking like most of the interior work that needs to be done on the house will be finished by Sunday. I almost can’t believe that. I have a feeling we’re going to find at least a half-dozen other projects as soon as he’s finished.

More motivation to move:
1. Yesterday, it was raining on & off, and the cats were driving me insane wanting to either go outside or come back in, depending on the weather. I finally gave up and left the door open for them. Mistake! Beaumont came running in with a still-alive, mostly-disemboweled mouse, and dropped it in the front hall. No one else was home but me. Lucky, lucky me. I won’t get into the details of how I dealt with it, just in case any of y’all are eating while you read this. But my stomach still knots up every time I think about it. And seriously, the whole incident put me in such a foul mood that for a couple of minutes there I would’ve been happy to load up all four cats and drop them off at the nearest shelter.

2. This morning, as soon as I got home from dropping Cate off at Patsy’s house, I had to run into the backyard to chase off a coyote. Again.

When I first moved out here, I wondered if I would know a coyote on sight, or if I would just think it was an exotic-looking dog. You know how a lot of people cross-breed their Siberian Huskies with wolves or whatever? I wondered if it would be something like that, and I’d be all “oooh, hello puppy,” and then get my face bitten off. Well, let me reassure you, if you ever see this in your backyard:

Coyote

You’ll know without a doubt in your mind that that is a f’ing coyote. And if you’re anything like me, you will wig the hell out. I don’t know how bright it is of me to go running toward the coyote screaming at it to go away, but I guess the whole cat-owner instinct takes precedence over common sense sometimes.

It’s funny how my southern redneck heritage comes out during moments like this, though, because I swear that I actually screamed, “GO ON! GIT!!” Which, dude. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time that’s ever come out of my mouth. At least I didn’t call him a varmint or say dagnabbit or anything like that. I’ll save that for the next coyote.