bluefacedpixie

Take a deep breath. Have the evening off.

Since 7 o’clock I’ve had pizza, bathed and bedded the girl, chatted to D, read my book and now type away at this little missive. Oh, wine open, being drunk. No house work.

I wasn’t expecting this – due to the immediacy of WA State real estate our “contingent offer” (followed by counter and counter-counter offer) would have required our little house to be listed for sale next Friday. For better or worse, that offer failed and now we have a little breathing space. Although we’ve been going 100% to “get ready for the impossible” for the last couple of days. Our commiseration (we want that house, but not silly want, that’s one of the reasons there was a housing crash after all)/celebration (thank goodness, breathe…) involves TAKING THE NIGHT OFF!

Since Monday, I’ve:

• sealed the grouting thing started on Monday
• worked some surprising magic involving mud, yellow paint and the water leak in the kitchen
• done some fixup involving sanding, bleaching, oiling on the backsplash area of the kitchen sink
• scared myself by attempting to start to clean the basement
• fixed the ceiling marks in the bathroom
• de-rusted the banister
• cleaned some paintwork
• almost died of a cold/migraine/sleep deprivation
• caulked in several places
• painted the living room such that cranberry zing is no more and bland grey-green-ness rules
• started painting the pocket door that people don’t know exists
• added more to the to-do list than I’ve taken off
• done all that “go to work and make money” stuff that normally generally consumes most of the week anyways…

We’ve had a staging consultation (UK: house doctor), which has left me with mixed emotions. In general their goal is to “let the house speak for itself” and “be ready to move in to” which basically means “remove yourself from the house” and “be bland”. So we’ve been taking down pictures if they have the fam in them, packing crap in boxes to send to storage, and the consultant chose this awful shade of green to replace our red, red living room walls (*). I’ll do it for the sale, but if it doesn’t sell then you’re in deep ****. One of the reasons I’m so conflicted is that when I look at houses, I like to know it’s been lived in, see how people manage things (ahh, muddy boots there, kids crap there, if you didn’t have a 2000” TV then you could put a comfy chair there, etc…) and I know I can always erase their life if I don’t like it (**). So the whole staging thing is counter to how I like to view houses (a little cleaning up never hurt) but then I guess we’re pretty atypical.

Oh yes, and the staging thing is why we’re in negative equity with the to-do list, which can naturally make anyone feel a little disgruntled, but having more than 2 weekend days and 4 nights to do it all in will make a world of difference.

And I tried to sum up my feeling on the staging here on twitter (I think tweets should be gems approaching profound), repeated here:

Staging a house is removing your soul from your home.

Enough for tonight. Tomorrow starts with Besalu, and then we return to the housework. Thanks to everyone what has helped/volunteered/Lucy-watched so far.

(*) we had insipid blue and green walls (cross-painted) in the living/dining room when we moved in. We blew it away with Cranberry Zing, a random red from the paint store. Colour=character? Too much for folks apparently. Ironically today’s green adventure is remarkedly similar to the green we blew away.

(**) despite the fact we dislike decorating/painting/renovating and just want to move in, it’s easy to make your mark (see (*)) and easy to unpack into different parts of an empty house.