The listing.

When we decided to list our house, it was March 27. The plan was to spend the next six weeks working to get the house ready. This included cleaning out closets, emptying the basement, having the parging in the basement repaired, replacing windows where the thermal seal had broken and generally putting a shine on everything.

The to do list that Patrick put together was two pages – count ’em TWO. We started chipping away at it very quickly and before we knew it, we were well done half of the list. This was the middle of April. About that time our realtor, Cynthia, called to say that the market was really heating up, inventory was low and if we wanted to capitalize on this, we should list immediately. So we pushed up our listing date by two weeks and shot for Wednesday, April 24 for the house to land on the MLS. Our showings would start on Saturday, the open house would be Sunday and we’d be on our way!

On Wednesday night we started getting requests for showings. We pushed up the showing start date to Friday at noon. There were three showings that day, two on Saturday (one a repeat from Friday) and about 70 people (many nosey neighbors) who showed up on Sunday for the open house.

Tuesday night, April 30, Cynthia texted at 11 PM the following message “ding, ding, ding – we have a winner!” She had three offers, one that was a standout and would be meeting us the following evening to review and hopefully accept the offer.

If you’ve been keeping track, Tuesday was SIX DAYS from our house going into the MLS.

We met with Cynthia Wednesday night and immediately knew she was right – we had a winner! The only problem was….we had no where to go! The short story is that we found something – the detail of that will be forthcoming – and luckily our buyers were willing to let us rent back for a few months if we needed to. So not quite homeless, but certainly feeling the pressure to find a place and quickly.

Here’s a taste of what we’ve left behind….

And so it begins…

To be honest, it wasn’t long after we moved into our big stone colonial in 2006 that we started to think about what would be next. Why, you ask? Well, either we’re just real estate obsessed or we just knew it was time. But I think it’s also a bit that we chose a home that didn’t challenge us enough.

We fell in love with the house because all of the big stuff had been done (hallelujah, right?). All that we needed to do was some painting and a lot of landscaping – could we BE any more lucky? (read that with the Chandler Bing voice, of course!). Getting those little things done dramatically changed the house for the better, but it didn’t keep our attention long enough that we felt like we still had the opportunity to put our stamp on the place.

As 2013 began, it became more and more obvious that the time had come. In December we completed our last improvement – the addition of cabinetry around the refrigerator. For some reason the previous owners didn’t finish this off and it always felt a bit like the refrigerator just sat on that wall – a stark, hulking presence. Now it feels finished. See the before and after photos and you get what I mean!

But putting your house on the market is no small decision. Everything has to be considered! And in light of the real estate market’s plummet in 2008-2010, we weren’t so sure it was going to even be feasible to list the house. So we met with our realtor and the conversation went a bit like this:

Grays: We need to get at least “x” for the house? Do you think it’s possible?

Realtor: I do think it’s possible – it’s a great house, great location, it will show wonderfully. I think we should go for it!

Grays: Ok, if you think we can do it, we’ll go for it.

This was March 27.

On May 7 we accepted our offer. Oh yeah, you read that right.