Are you confused yet?

If you are one of probably 3 readers of this here blog you may be saying whaaa?

She went from all those staging posts and little tweaks to "we are in a rent house" with absolutely no mention of the house being sold.

Well guess what?  I can finally say it (or show it)..
We Sold our House!

I have been more than apprehensive about posting about it.  Why?....Oh my is it a long story! It ended up dragging on and on and I could tell you the saga but I don't want to be a negative Nancy nor do I want to re-live it because I was on the verge of a panic attack and we don't wan't to spur that on now do we?

It got to the point where friends would ask if we sold the house and I would just shrug my shoulders and say I don't know because there was so much up in the air from the buyers side of the transaction.

I just knew as soon as I posted that we sold our house it would fall through and bite me.  So I couldn't do post about it due to sheer fear of bad luck.

That being said I wanted to mention the "positive side" of the house selling story.  We did have to spend some dough and lose some dough to sell it but the getting it out there and getting people interested was smooth as butter!

So here goes...

  

Once we felt we had de-cluttered as much as possible(this included renting a storage unit...so embarrassed that we have that much stuff) then we got down to business.  I hired someone to wash our windows(two story house = not easy task) and clean all the carpet upstairs.

While getting all of that arranged and scheduled I started researching real estate photographers in the area.  As I'm sure you know..."pictures are worth a thousand dollars"oh that's not the real saying but you get where I'm going right?

You've seen those horrible pictures of homes on the MLS where all you notice is the overflowing trashcan or the half made bed with dirty clothes under it.

Wanna see a whole slew of funny pics that people put on the MLS?

Go visit Julia @ Hooked on Houses!  Crazy stuff I tell ya! Those pics kill me.

  Today pictures are the "first impression" when attempting to sale.  Most people find their own homes online and then contact their realtor to let them view the ones they are interested in.  It is an easier way to eliminate the hassle of driving all over town to be disappointed. So we were A O.K. with spending some dough for some awesome pics and we weren't disappointed!

I would not only look around your area for a good real estate photog but I would make sure they do HDR photos as well.  What is HDR photography?  I didn't know either but I did know that they looked richer, fancier, had more depth and shadows than a normal picture.  HDR is

 High Dynamic Range and to me an amateur it is just a better pic.  I attempted to learn more about it and try to do it myself but it was beyond my skills, patience and equipment to do so and more than worth it to just hire it out.

Non HDR from a girl that knows little to nothing about photography

 HDR image with better angle from a guy that knows a lot;)

Not only did they take the pics but they put them in this slideshow too!  From the slideshow we could even make our own fliers.

"Why would you wanna do that yourself" you might ask?   Well because we wanted to sell our home ourselves of course!  Of course we want to DIY it all and try to save every penny.   Or in this case not lose as many by having to paying a listing agent.  

So we put it out there.  We had the For Sale by Owner sign, the flyers, the add on craigslist and didn't get much traffic.  There is something to be said for the MLS of course.  It gets it out there but we just had to give the FSBO route a shot.  

We set a goal of 2 weeks and if we hadn't had much interest we would list it. That's where good ol' word of mouth comes in.  An acquaintance of mine had mentioned selling their home in a for sale by owner manor but being able to get it on the MLS and provide the lockbox, sign and all. That's how we found Marshall @

This was the "smooth as butter" part of our house selling story.  I contacted him about what we were looking to do.  We paid him a flat fee, I entered some info about our house into the site, downloaded our professional pics and viola by the next day we had a listing on the MLS, a sign in the yard, and a lockbox so buyers realtors would have access.  

You can decide what you are willing to pay a buyers agent as you work up your listing.  We added a flyer holder to the sign and printed up some flyers on our own.  I would highly suggest this!  Especially if you have good pics!  Choose your pics wisely and make the buyer want to see what else is inside your lovely home! 

We had three people look at it within the first 7 days and on day 7 had a contract and another interested party.  Some had a buyers realtor and some did not so you never know who will find your house but they definitely put it out there.

And.....(insert several paragraphs of things not working as they should through a real estate transaction) 3 months later we close on the property!  Hallelujah!

Did I mention we moved out of the pending property in late august?

The stress of paying rent and a mortgage all while trying to maintain the lawn on the pending house, raise three kiddos, and work was cardiac infarction producing or could have been anyway;)

I kept mentioning to Marshall that the whole process was almost too easy and that I expected some bumps to crop up...Call it woman's intuition;)

So!  All that being said..we did it, we sold the house and can move on with building our house!  I am sure that too will be a journey.  We are prepared and excited to learn a ton and can't wait to see how it all turns out!

A little side note....you do not have to be in central texas to to use Homes by Owner

Just click above to look for someone in your area that will list your home this way.  

We were not paid to recommend this site.  Just really happy with how professional Marshall was!

Baby "Stage"

Oh baby!  Ya see this picture that totally doesn't do this room or bedding justice?  When we had E 3 1/2 years ago I wanted to forgo the pink route and use some bold colors and lots of pattern.  Well I don't know that we ended up with "lots" of patterns but we did end up with some gorgeous fabric in some bold colors.  I was lucky enough to have my mom offer to sew some bedding so we spent a couple of hours at JoAnns one day playing with fabric.  That sounds like fun doesn't it?  I miss doing that..maybe soon I will have a project that forces me to go rummage around a fabric store.

 Now this pic is even worse..I can't believe I didn't get better pics of this room when it was tidy and cute.    You see that tree there...Well before there were(or before I knew there were) vinyl wall decor options all over the place I decided we needed a tree on the wall like the one in a pottery barn catalog.  So the hubs graciously spent a few hours spread out over  a few weeknights to whip this baby up.  It turned out great!  Don't laugh when I say the poor hubs learned the hard way that you should not attempt to draw on a wall with a sharpie if you EVER plan on painting over it with white paint.  Lesson learned and many coats of kilz later it still looks good.  The sharpie is still showing its ugly face in a few areas but we  decided not to care a long time ago;)

Now enter good photography!  The lovely Miss Tanya of Cozy Impressions Photography has done a series of photographs to capture our last two babies 1st years of life and she does it well!

Look at my sweet E!  Our first girl!  She really was an angel baby..We had such a hard time with our first born that she probably would have seemed "easy" no matter what she did.  Sorry bud..you will probably always get a bad baby wrap but you know you are loved;)!

Here is a better pic of the tree too.  Didn't hubby do a nice job.  I am pretty lucky to have a guy that doesn't mind helping me achieve a girly goal when I need him too.  I am just to much of a spaz to draw a tree.

O.k. so the point of this post is really to document a few things we did to "stage" the house to put it on the market. 

Obviously that second picture probably wouldn't have wooed buyers to come take a peek.  The truth is I felt like I was staging the house most of the time we lived there.  I say that because we were constantly de-cluttering, putting things on craigslist, donating and just organizing so it didn't feel like we were being taken over.  Yet we still always felt like it was so easy to start drowning in stuff every time a birthday or Christmas would roll around. For that matter also any time family would come to visit..wink wink momo and ya ya.  

One thing we did was try to make the shallow closet in the girls room work better for us.

Enter: A quick trip to target for a closet shelving system.  It was fairly inexpensive(don't remember how much) but I wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't!  This gave us a place for some cubby "baskets" and shelving for all of those little shoes that you accumulate when you have two little girls.  

We also added a lower rod and raised the original one so we could have one for each of the girls.  Bitty baby's stuff on top and E's down low where she can reach and help momma by picking our her own outfits. Which she is actually pretty good at! Score!

One thing I have a attempted to do in the kid's closets is always have a labeled box in the floor so if in the "heat of the moment" which is the battle of getting dressed each day we could toss anything that didn't fit just right anymore into the box.  It isn't a fool proof system but it helped it not to just get tossed here and there(like in the laundry to be washed 162 times even though it was never worn).

I still use a bankers box in little mans closet but purchased these pink doosies for the girls closet because I think it looks cleaner and of course keeps the bugs out!

O.k. now as usual I am going to back track because you might think I have totally forgotten what room I am posting about if I don't.  In May of 2009 we found out we were getting a new little surprise in our family!  We were not expecting or planning this so after the shock rocked us for a bit and we found out we would have another chica in the house I started thinking pink! After all I didn't want to regret never playing with a pink room because I am typically not drawn to it so I  took the opportunity to soak it up anyway. (that is where you either do identify with my illness or not;)

I was perusing around baby's r us one day and came across this bedding set for I think $70 !  That is pretty good for a crib set as far as I 'm concerned.  It was pink and simple and I could totally see it working with the green tree wall that bitty baby would be inheriting from her big sis.

Then I came across these party poofs at michaels and got to use my 40% off coupon so I literally spent a few dollars for a nice contrast to our outrageously pink wall!  I wanted to tie the walls in with the bedding a bit and this is what we did.  I probably wouldn't do it again but we definitely were not going to repaint it.

Bitty baby needed a window treatment so again to Target we went and ended up mixing a couple of different styles of curtains in order to cover up the whole length of the window.  If I did it again and wasn't in a hurry I would have done something a little different and definitely hung them higher.

Ok back to staging...We previously had this little changing table # for E's room.  Turns out this was way less handy than using a dresser as we had for little man's room.  I just found it hard to organize and then there was all that wasted space around it that could be filled up with storage!

So knowing that we needed more room for the girls clothes(all we had were those 3 little drawers in that red dresser in the second picture in this post) I started a very long craigslist search for a decent and cheap white dresser.  Does anyone else think craigo has gotten competitive?  You really have to be on the ball around here to get anything good.  This wasn't as cheap as I wanted(150.00) but it was the best thing I could find at the time.  So hubby went to a sketchy area with a defense plan and got our baby girls clothes some new digs.

To balance it out a bit I brought some green from the tree wall to this side of the room with this little guy.  Again from Target..I swear I don't buy everything there. As a matter of fact I try to avoid the place because it is too easy to spend $$ on un-needed yummy stuff.

Now enter more good photography(not mine but a local real estate photographer we hired in preparation to hit the MLS).

It is clean, uncluttered, simple and staged.  I sure wish we had gotten around to replacing that boob light but oh well it won't be our random boob for much longer.  I know most realtors would probably suggest we repaint to so we don't turn off potential buyers but we just don't have time so here's hoping someone will love it or be willing to do their own thing!

Linking to the parties at:

Thrifty Decor Chic

Be Different Act Normal

Tater Tots and Jello

Whipperberry

Just a Girl

House Of Hepworths

Shabby Creek Cottage

Fireflies and Jellybeans

Somewhat Simple

Savvy Southern Style

The Thrifty Home

The Trendy Treehouse

Blue Cricket Design

Type A Decorating

DIY by Design

Hope Studios

Todays Creative Blog

Between Naps on the Porch

The Girl Creative

Skip to my Lou

Sumos Sweet Stuff

Crafts Keep Me Sane

Diy Home Sweet Home Project

Life Made Lovely

Dittle Dattle

Polly Want a Crafter

Home Stories A to Z

Playful Decor

Our casa journey...to be continued.

Wow have we been talking about this for a loooooong time!  Four 1/2 years ago we decided we had outgrown our first home(1st misconception) and decided to build one that was bigger and way too pricey.  

This (below)

was our first home! 

Our baby!  She welcomed us not so warmly to Austin but we grew to love her after many tears, lots of sweat, and in the end she was a true gem that we were sad to leave.  We will never forget all of the long late nights of sanding, hammering, ripping down and building back up.  

Here is my father in law helping clean up after I sanded some of the walls in the Master.

 Our friend Brent drove 5 hours to come stay with us and help us out.  He even bought us a reciprocating saw!  What a sweet friend!  We definitely needed it and I am sure he was thinking "I will never get out of here if I don't go buy them one"  Just kidding he just has a big huge generous heart!

Oh and the kitchen...We lived without one for almost a whole year.  Yep we washed dishes in the backyard and guest bathroom.  I have yet to post about that transformation...I 'll get to it one of these days!

Here are hubby and his brother putting up the new sheetrock

 Here is hubby applying the slate back slpash tile..Side note...it is not wise to do the backsplash before the countertops are in!  We learned that one the hard way.  We were younger, dumber, and anxious to get her done!

 Oh and of course we had to work in some play time before all of that.  Yes this is all out of order but you get it..I know you do!  Seriously demo can be fun!

We have mostly fond memories of sleeping on an air mattress in our first master bedroom cringing at the thought of HUGE roaches crawling over us at night.  We actually even had one get up on it's hind legs and run after hubby one night.  FREAKED us OUT!  

Ok. Enough about our first love....

The hubby had a new job that we thought would help us afford to move up a bit (2nd big, big, huge misconception). and we knew we would make some decent  $ when we sold our first house. This was 4 years ago and decent homes were flying off the market quick.   From the get go I think we were both nervous about taking on such a big mortgage but we continued to move forward because the truth is we are just thrifty and big purchases make us ill every time they come up.  Heck I once lost a whole nights sleep when we ordered a dining room table that was $400 and the next morning I confessed my upset stomach to the hubby and called and cancelled it.  He built us one instead and the truth is we may have only saved a $100 but it made us feel better;)!  

Why spend your hard earned dough when you can build it was our motto!

 During the whole process we took lots of pics of the model home that would be like ours.  You can see how the builders win you over with all of their finishes and decorating tricks!  As I look back at these today I realize how much my taste has changed.  Don't get me wrong it is a nice house my decor preferences have just changed.

 The floor to ceiling 2 story stone fireplace you can see on the right had me at hello...

 Upon entering the front door you saw this...

 This was a little catwalk to the master

 Formal dining

 Cozy office

 Love me some 8 foot doors

 It was very open..almost too open.  I had an inkling it would be a very loud house.  Of course now as a mom of 3 I know that even the smallest most closed in places are very loud.

 Open hallway to the bedrooms

 Looking down from the gameroom

 Kids rooms all model homeish

 Looking towards the gameroom

 Master

 Master Bath

 Here is my man hangin in what we thought would be our game room.  We are not sad about this..It is really o.k. We know there was and is a plan for us!

 the view of the fireplace(I mean the living room) from the kitchen

 This is exactly how my pantry looks

So that was the model home..

Here was our house in progress...It was fun and overwhelming all at the same time

 We would stop by after work(scrubs and all) and check on the progress with our little buddy!

 Checking out the back

We probably would have been fine but the thought of potentially ending up house broke was heartbreaking and it was taking the fun out of it!  At the time our son was probably about 7 months old.  A couple of months before the house was to be done we found out he would be welcoming a sibling into his world much sooner than anticipated!  Learning this helped us seal the deal  (or unseal it I guess).  We decided to pull out of the process of building. Thankfully the builder gave us our earnest money back and we decide to continue on with moving yet to a home much more in our comfort zone.  So after spending way too much time making decisions about floor plans, picking out finishes, and making trips out to see the building in progress we were done.

We put our first love on the market, she sold in 3 days, we paid off our very disappointing business loan(whole other story but thankful we could pay it off) and moved on!   To be continued........