Getting the House sold….

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Hello all,

I am working again today on getting the house ready for sale.  It really is an ongoing process, never ending.  We had a phone message on Monday morning when we had no phone service at our campground.  Someone had a question about the property for sale.  I called back and left a message and then called again later but the mailbox was full.  The same person called back today but my phone was out in the truck on silent mode from church last evening.  I left a message and then I just called back again a short time ago and left a message and asked them if they would leave a time that would work for them to come see the house if they were interested.

Since I know someone is calling, I have started going around doing the detail cleaning today.  Washing all the door frames from little grimy hands, washing windows, doing extra dusting, getting the upper window frames vacuumed off.  At least if I get all the nitty gritty stuff, then if they do call, I can do the big things like scrub the floors quickly and vacuum the house and be done.

We are to have a landscaper come in the next couple of weeks here and bring in a huge truck load of mulch.  We are having a French drain installed along the front of our house to divert water from wicking into our basement area.  We are going to paint the bottom of the house foundation to get rid of the red clay stains from our soil and to “elevate” our house above the landscaping.  We are going to paint the shutters on the front of the house.  We are also going to mulch a huge planting bed in the front yard around three trees, the whole side yard, approximately 100 feet in length, the whole back side of the house and install a few foundation plants around the front and rear of the house, and lastly mulch around the mailbox out by the street.  I think it will look wonderful when it is all said and done.

I am still dealing with the itchiness from the poison ivy I contracted when I cut the woods back two Saturdays ago. Today was my last day of medication and yesterday I felt like I was erupting all over again.

Inside the house, I just need to get my motivation back and finish up the dining room, it has one small section of wall left to wash and then fill in some holes and paint and it would look 100% better than just walls with the wallpaper removed.  I have all the paint colors picked out and will give you some links to see what direction we are going.

http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/wickhamgray      dining room

http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/palesmoke          boys room

http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/oc-130                Kitchen…it really is white, but it is a blue white which I think will help with the  counters…we are hoping to paint our cabinets white they are currently an oak very low end cabinet right now.

http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/ashleygray           Our room, possibly

http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/elephantgray        Haley’s room

http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/oc-61                  Guest bathroom

 

I picked our colors with the help of Maria Killam a designer I found online and bought her ebook and she does a fabulous job of explaining undertones and explaining where the current color trend is going, etc.  The brown/beige is out as the previous neutral and now the gray tones are in for about the next 10 years so I should be safe with what we have chosen.  Even if we don’t sell in the next year we will still be in the right colors for a few more years!!

 

I just need to go get the paint and get going again.  The Kitchen needs the wallpaper border taken down, my bedroom just needs paint, and both of the other two bedrooms have wallpaper borders as well to come down…it is lots of elbow work but if we get it done and soon, we might get this place sold and it would definitely look more “turn key” to prospective buyers!!  I just need a work crew for two days!!!

So what is on the Agenda….

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Well it’s Monday, the first one of the new year.  We had a great message in our Ladies Sunday School class yesterday.  Our instructor was talking about resolutions and how many of us have made resolutions but have inevitably not completed them.  With the track record being failure for all of us, many of us would then take on the thought process to not make a New Year’s resolution the next year because you knew you were just not going to make it again.

Our instructor gave us the example of a lady who had the goal of reading her bible everyday that year….and come the end of the year she was able to say…well there may have only been about 5 times that I did not read the bible.  While she was not perfect, she did not give up.  She kept on and was able to show how well she did do.  It is so easy for us in this society to just give up and move onto the next thing and not have that sense of accomplishment…or to just find some excuse to not start over again.  If we fall off the wagon so to speak we need to get up and get back on…

It is better to have a goal that was close to being achieved or half way achieved than no goal at all….If we, as a society, do not have any goals we are not going to be productive…. So why not just say it is a resolution instead of saying well I am going to purpose to do such and such….be brave be willing to put it in writing, on paper, tack it up so you see it as a reminder, even if you have missed a day, etc.  Challenge yourself!

My Resolutions…

To read everyday my bible…now currently, you will see a button on my side bar the bottom one for Fixing Your Heart on Titus 2….this week we have a challenge to read our bible 30 minutes everyday.  I have joined in and am going to do my best to get my reading done.  Whether it be in one solid time frame or in increments throughout the day…

I am going to try and do one scripture a month minimum for the next year….I was going to try and do one a week, but I know that was not realistic and that is what resolutions need to be, realistic…I can certainly do one a month and most likely more!!

I am going to parent with an awareness of my tone of voice….there is a need at times to raise your voice and to be firm and there are times to show love with our words as well.  Homeschooling can be very trying on the patience at times and I need to glorify God more in my efforts in this area to show more patience in my tone of voice and to be a better example.

I am realizing as well, that I am a very, very opinionated wife….hmmmph… so I am going to be tenacious about making sure that I am submissive when I should be and not balk at the simple things….I couldn’t believe myself over the weekend when I was just typing out a list of to do things from my husband and uggh, the attitude I had about the order…of all things… the order in which something was listed or the way it was worded…sheesh….it was just atrocious… so I need to work on that and do a much better job…just be submissive and do things without thinking I am always right or that my way is the best way, etc.

I am sure there are more things I can add to the list and even now I should put down exercising, but specifically those exercises that I need to do for the health of this pregnancy… squats, Taylor sitting, Kegals,  walking, etc.

As for the start of the New Year, my husband and I took a huge load of stuff to Good will.  We had set aside items over a year ago to have a garage sale and we never did it…..Well we have a long range goal to get he house fixed up to sell.  If we are going to sell we have to declutter, simplify and get rid of junk!  So we took out the back to seats of my Tahoe and filled that up and then we took my husbands work van and loaded that up as well…..Oh it felt so wonderful!!! Now we have a cleared spot on our garage again for a staging area to go through more items and sort what to keep and what to donate.

We have not decided how we are going to proceed.  There is a chance we could sell and rent a house for a short time while building a house or we could live in our travel trailer while we build…we have no idea at this point, but if we don’t get started, doing something….we’ll never move and this house is getting a little small.

There is always the chance of putting all the boys in the Master bedroom and us in the smaller room, which is fine, we’ll see what the Lord helps us out with!!!

We had talked a while back about turning the garage into a Homeschool Room…well we had a contractor out and realized it would be double the cost to transform that and build a new garage that was attached to the house….  Option two was to then push out the family room wall into the back yard and add another 15 feet onto the current family room…Essentially making two rooms split with glass french doors that could close off the school room….At that time we would replace the family carpet…10 years old, and the vinyl flooring in the kitchen…we would also move our gas fireplace…. Well that little re-do was a minimum of 30,000 and at a deal from the contractor…so I was figuring at least 40,000 because it always seems like there is something that arises when there are renovations that was not accounted  for…

Well I guess my husband has decided to not put the  money into this house but to have more land to have a shop for his tools etc. and to build a house….possibly….we’ll see what the Lord has in store for us this year.

Happy New Year’s everyone!!!

Homeschool future room….

Pin It Well I am just posting some pictures of the garage… these were of when we first bought the house…9 years ago and then maybe a year later when we built a small workbench….
So yea, ummm… it is not that neat…uncluttered anymore….
I’ll have to get some measurements and some pictures of real time looks to see/show what the transformation would be….once/when it happens….

I would like to put a long counter the whole length of this wall and have several stations along for each child…. and then keep the center of the room for possibly a small couch and chair…. My husband would like to put French doors in with windows as well… This is an Eastern exposure…Sun rises through these windows and goes over the garage door side ….so lots of light all day long.

This little alcove currently holds our second freezer, yard can, a co-sleeper…boxes for recycling…etc.

This section is barely reachable because of a montage of outdoor toys, bikes and scooters… not to mention a blind that was chewed up by a possum or raccoon or some such night animal and about a gazillion bugs on the blinds….
I’ll get you some good photo’s soon