I can’t believe the last time I posted was Apr 28th! Oh my! I have a good excuse though! We spent the last week (who am I kidding…THREE weeks) cleaning, scrubbing, painting and decluttering our house. As of last night, our house is now OFFICIALLY on the market. Whew! Now we just have to get it sold!
A few life lessons I’ve learned through this process:
Life Lesson #1: Check references whenever you ask someone to do work on your house! We had a contractor come in and do some various work around the house. Things we could have easily done ourselves (well, most of it anyway), but figured it would be faster and less hassle if we hired someone to do it. One of the things we had them do was paint the three bedrooms in the house. Below is a sample of what they apparently deemed acceptable:
This is just one small example. ALL THREE ROOMS looked like this. I seriously think my 8 year old could have done a better job!
Life lesson #2: Never give final payment until you are 100% satisfied…no matter how bad you want the idiots out of your house (it took them FIVE days to paint three rooms and do some other work…it should not have taken them any more than 3 days to finish everything). I was getting ready to go out of town and just wanted them to go. And silly me trusted the owner when he told me he’d be back if we were unhappy with any of his crew’s work.
Life lesson #3: Sometimes paying somebody to do somethign you can do yourself is WELL worth the money. We paid $250 for a cleaning service to come in and clean our house. It was the best $250 we’ve EVER spent. This house has never looked so clean. They even managed to clean paint off a window that we’ve been trying to remove for 8 years! We’ve also discovered the joys of laundry drop off service. We found a place in town that will wash and fold laundry for $1 a pound. We dropped off 59 pounds worth of clothes. Took them a few hours to do it…would have taken us a couple days (as an aside…I’m AMAZED at the amount of laundry we generate in our house. It’s the neverending chore!). I’m sure we’ll use the drop off service one or two more times before we leave!
Sandie Simply Says 