Home Sweet Home

It's strange and somewhat disconcerting to look at your house through the eyes of potential buyers...

Everyone thinks they have good taste, but thanks to pretty much any show on the TLC network, we all know otherwise. Of course, you start with the best of intentions when you buy a house. (We certainly did.) You start off with a "big" empty house, then you purchase furniture and art work. You inherit some patio furniture and buy a grill. You talk about renovating and replacing...then life gets in the way.

Next thing you know, you have a toddler who leaves crumbs on the sofas, scuffs the hardwood floors, and spills milk on the carpet. So, what's the point of replacing any of it anytime before he leaves for college?

It was L- O- V-E the first time we set foot in our house. The beautiful hardwood and slate floors, the spacious yard, the enormous closet in the master bath, and the charming French doors leading into the study... there was a lot to love, but it still was no where near our "dream house".

For starters, the water heater had to be replaced two weeks after we signed the mortgage. Then, there was the matter of the hideous wall paper and borders throughout the house, and the broken ladder up to the attic. Ugh!

We took down the border and repainted in the study right away, but it's four years later and we still haven't quite gotten around to doing the same thing to the bathrooms or the kitchen. (We never replaced the ladder up to the attic either...)

These days, we hardly notice it anymore-- the wallpaper, not the ladder. Perhaps we've even grown to admire it as one of the house's little quirks. That is, until it was time to put in on the market again...

We can't help it. We look around and all we think of are the good times we've had here. It's the first house we ever owned together and the place where we brought our son home. It's where he learned how to crawl and eventually how to walk, then run. We think about how proud we are to call it ours.

We were initially attracted to this house because the open floor plan is great for parties, and we've certainly thrown our fair share of them... There have been so many happy occasions that we've celebrated within these walls with friends who never know when it's time to say "good-night". It was okay, though. We certainly didn't mind opening "just one more bottle of wine" and keeping them entertained late into the night.

It's difficult to separate all of that from what a potential buyer only sees...

The hardwood floors that ought be refinished, and the hideous (and now, painfully outdated) wallpaper that goes floor to ceiling in the kitchen.

Some months ago, when we were looking to move to a bigger house (but not necessarily "across the pond"), I asked a real estate agent to evaluate our home and provide some pointers on things to update, renovate, or just get rid of in order to fetch a better selling price.

I feverishly cleaned, polished, and picked up before she came over, and her only words of advice...

De-clutter. Hmphf!

home, sweet home