Home Improvement Fever

Well we got our counter offer submitted yesterday.  The buyer has apparently made offers on a few other houses and been turned down.  Not sure if she was deliberately lowballing them or trying to shop out of her means or what.  But that’s a contributing factor to her making a decent offer on our house.  There simply aren’t that many houses in that price range out there, so she’s willing to play ball with us, we think.  Hopefully she’ll either accept our counter or counter with another, higher offer that will be in the neighborhood of what we really want.  And hopefully we’ll have a contract we’re all happy with by the end of next week.

We’ve picked out the house we’d like to buy, unless something awesome just happens to come on the market between now and when we have a contract on this house.  I’ve been thinking about paint colors.  :headdesk:  Hard not to.   I mean, it could still not work out and we’ll be disappointed AGAIN.  But it is what it is.

I’m nervous about getting everybody’s ducks in a row.   Our buyer wants to close and take possession on August 1st.  We need a week following closing to move.  The people whose house we want to buy also need time to move.  We can’t close on a new house until we close on this house.  So there are AAAAAAALL these ducks that need to be in a row for it all to work out properly and it’s not a great deal of time, so I’m a little nervous on that front.  You’d think that they would have come up with a more streamlined means of arranging these things.  But no.

Ideally the house we want to buy will be vacant before August 1st (or our buyer will be willing to wait a week to take possession) so that we’ll have a chance to go in and paint (and so I can call in every single favor everyone owes me for anything to have a painting PARTY–I pay in beer and homemade pizza).  SO MUCH EASIER to do that in an EMPTY house.  If we absolutely had to move without painting, we certainly could.  The entire house is a neutral gray (I hate gray, so COLD) except for the nursery which is this kind of awful pink and green stripe.  It’s not like we’re going with anything other than neutrals but WARM.  Some shade of khaki.

I’d like to redo the cabinets as well, but that’ll be a project for down the line unless we manage to GET that week of time to move, and BOTH take the week off.  They’re fine as is, but not what I’d choose.  Just a kind of generic oak with light counters.  I want to use Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations in glazed Espresso.  I’m so fascinated with this product.  All the blog reviews I’ve read by people who’ve used it have been AWESOME.  Less work than sanding and painting.  Better, more durable finish.  And only $150.  That is a cheap kitchen makeover.  For everybody out there who bought a house that needed a little help and can’t afford new cabinetry or traditional refacing?  This is the product for you.  I know, I sound like an infomercial.  Deal with it  We’d do the bathroom cabinets too, as they are the same oak.  And probably my bar stools.  Ah, the bar stools.  These were my grandmother’s.  There were originally a set of four and when my dad went to college he took two.  They’ve stayed in the family and they have AT LEAST six coats of paint on there.  The AWESOMENESS of this Rustoleum Transmformations stuff is that YOU DON’T have to sand, strip, prime, etc.  I mean we’d have to sand any paint runs smooth or whatever, but you can go over pretty much ANY FINISH.  How awesome is that?

Anyway, it’s all jumping the gun and I may regret letting myself get excited again, but that’s where my brain is this morning.

Okay, I’m getting that hopeful look that says, “Waffles?”  Time for breakfast.