A Bloy and his Blog

When I put my condo up for sale, I never considered all the waiting I’d have to do. You wait for people to be interested, you wait for offers to be made, you wait for answers to counter-offers, etc. The deeper into the process you go, the more intense the waiting becomes.

Saturday a potential buyer came to see my condo for a second time in a week. That evening they did submit an offer, so I scheduled a meeting with my Realtor for the next day, and waited. Sunday we prepared a counter-offer and I waited some more. Monday morning we received a counter-offer from the potential buyer, discussed it, and decided to submit another counter-offer. This last period of waiting was the worst. I spent the waking portion of the next 27 hours second guessing my last counter-offer. I couldn’t tell you half of what I saw of President Obama’s inauguration, because my mind was on the counter-offer hanging out there.

Thankfully, there is a happy ending to this story. Late yesterday afternoon my Realtor told me the last counter-offer was accepted! In the end, I’m not sure if I was more grateful that we came to an agreement, or that the waiting was over.

My condo is currently on the market. Today I got a call from my Realtor, that someone wanted to take a look at it this evening. So, here I am hanging out at my local public library for a while.

It’s all a bit odd when a showing is scheduled for my condo. I pick up the clutter, clean a bit, and otherwise make my home look nice and attractive, and then I leave. After that there are these strangers that come. They have their own key and they let themselves in. As they look over my home, they have full access to all of my worldly possessions. Want some CDs? Stereo or computer equipment? How about my bank records? My computer backups have some pretty juicy vital records too. It’s all there if they look in the right places.

It’s not that I don’t trust the real estate agents. I’m sure they do an excellent job of keeping their clients from snooping and stealing. I just find the whole process kind of strange.

Yesterday I finished painting the upstairs bedrooms in my place. I had plans to do that over the winter, and here it is May already. But, late last week I got some serious motivation when I drove past a house for sale about a mile from work. The price was very reasonable, and that got me daydreaming of living within walking or biking distance of work. How great would that be?

Of course you can’t buy a new house until your current home is sold, so I headed off to the home center for some paint. Next on the to-do list, get two of the windows fixed, do some serious cleaning, and contact my real estate agent.

I spent most of last weekend removing the last traces of wallpaper from my condo, when I stripped it from the downstairs bathroom. Yes, my home is now wallpaper free!

If I were ruler of the kingdom, I would require anyone installing wallpaper to be responsible for its removal. The installers would be required to do that when any future owner of said wallpaper wishes it to be removed. As much as I dislike removing wallpaper, after removing it from my kitchen, and now the bathroom, I’ve become quite good at it. Although I probably shouldn’t admit to that (no, I am not available for outside jobs).

Yesterday I spent a few hours spackling the bathroom walls, and today I painted the primer on. Hopefully I’ll get the final coat of paint on in the next few days.

As I was cleaning the paint brush today, it hit me that I’ve have spent more of my free time fixing up or improving this condo than any other home I’ve lived in. One thing I have come to realize: I would most certainly rather be doing something else. If money were no object…

My kitchen remodeling project is moving along. Yesterday, my brother and I installed the tile. I had never done tile before, so I was very lucky to have Steve around to help me out with that. It really wasn’t that hard of a job to do, although cutting it to fit around the electrical outlets was a tedious and exhausting process (especially considering the only tool we had to cut those L-shaped corners was a small hand saw). For every half-inch of cutting we needed to do on those porcelain tiles, it took about five minutes. Yes, my right arm was a bit sore this morning.

We installed the tile in the space above the sink, ran it the full length of the counter (about six and a half feet), and up to the bottom edge of the upper cabinets. It looks great, even without having the grout in there yet (hopefully, we’ll do that sometime this weekend).

I spent most of today spackling and putting primer on the walls where that oh-so-beautiful wallpaper used to be. Paint goes on tomorrow. Hey, I might actually finish this project!

Several months ago I talked about the possibility of moving into a cohousing development next year. Unit costs are beginning to be finalized for the project and despite the goal for the development to be affordable, unit costs are WAY too high for my meager librarian’s salary. Consequently, I will not be moving into that cohousing project.

While the costs made it an impossibility for me, I was also having second thoughts about the whole cohousing concept. I’m not sure how much I would enjoy things like having meals in the common house on a regular basis. Perhaps it’s just a little too communal for me.

At least I’ll be able to continue to enjoy the antics of the neighborhood adolescents, like the group that decided to hang out for a couple hours in front of my condo this evening. Oh, what fun!

I’ve got running water in my kitchen! This is not a bad thing (it only runs when I want it to). Four days ago I wasn’t so sure that would be the case.

A while back I decided to get rid of my 23-year-old kitchen counter. Of course you can’t have a new counter and keep the 23-year-old sink and faucet. The disposer was also in serious need of replacing. So, I purchased the new stuff, and signed up with a contractor to install the counter. In order to save some money (I hate to think what a plumber charges per hour), my brother and I ripped out the old stuff, and had planned on installing the faucet and garbage disposer ourselves. After all, Steve and I have both watched a lot of This Old House episodes, and the two of us replaced his garbage disposer last winter.

read the rest of: Adventures in kitchen remodeling