Getting Ready to Sell

Oy vey, this update is a long time coming.  We've had an eventful but wonderful summer.  An update on our summer happenings is going to have to wait because I need to provide proof to you that we were indeed up to our eyeballs getting our house ready to sell earlier this summer.

We put our house on the market the third week of June.  Spring always comes late in Duluth- people don't normally plant things in their garden until Memorial Day weekend.  So, with cooler temps and snow still melting in May, we pretty much had from mid-May to mid-June to get the exterior of our house and yard in selling shape. 
  
We started improving our curb appeal by planting a ton of flowers on the front porch and steps.  I love planting annuals- it's my favorite spring time activity. 

Next I tackled the overgrown bushes that provide some privacy from the street.  Here they are looking all pretty and safe (you could actually walk on the sidewalk again) on the street side:

And the yard side- safety first!  We were able to mow without poking our eyes out:

Here's the pile of brush that I then had to load up and pay to get rid of:

Sometimes I long for living in the woods and being able to just throw it in the forest and let mother nature do her thing.  For now, we have to be happy that it'll be turned in to mulch and then used throughout our city's parks. 

On to the front yard...
Grass Edging Before:

During (we also attempted to grow grass in that big bald spot on the right... with minimal luck):

The shoddy patch work on the concrete stairs was done by the previous owners.  It sure would be nice to repair those.

After:

All cleaned up:

Now on to the back yard...

I decided to make our garden smaller this year.  Our garden used to span both our back yard and part of the neighbor's back yard.  We have new neighbors who are not gardeners and we wanted to un-blur the property lines for potential buyers.  So, I pulled out the fencing & wood border from the neighbor's yard.  See the empty square of dirt in the upper right side of the picture?  We then re-installed the wood border & fence:

We, of course, needed to weed the garden next.  Before:

Ahhh, much better... clean and tidy after:

After the yard work was done, I focused on sprucing up the exterior parts of the house that we've neglected.  Remember, we just painted the exterior of the house two summers ago but we didn't do any of the porches and landings.  So, here we go.
I recruited Hannah for a weekend to help me scrape and paint the front porch floor and all of the railings (worst job EVER!):

Mid way through scraping I thought about how nice it would be to replace the rotting pieces of the porch.  After a phone call with my dad, he assured me that I could indeed install new trim all by myself.  My dad is great for a little push of confidence some times!  Thankfully he's patient with my non-technical explanations of my predicaments over the phone. 

And here it is:

I wish I had taken a close up "after" shot but this is as good I have.  Truth be told, I had a heck of a time with the trim so it was up only temporarily for this photo.  Our official photo for the MLS posting was taken this day and so it worked.  My parents came up later in June and my dad and I re-hung the trim permanently.  I'm learning a lot about how to "square" things up in a century old house where things have settled and nothing is really square or level it seems!!  I love it though:)

On to the back entrance.  I scrape and paint this floor every year due to the paint coming off every winter from shoveling.  This year I also did the railing:
Before #1:

Before #2:

After:

While I had the can of white exterior paint out, I also touched up the foundation:

More foundation touch ups:

Lastly, the side entrance got scraped and painted. 
Looking good:

I was ready to hang up my paint brush for a while but the interior walls were calling my name.
Our entryway is this beautiful shade of yellow.  Fortunately, the previous owner had good taste in color and I never had the itch to change it over the past 5 years but unfortunately it was painted with a flat finish.  Every scuff mark showed and was impossible to get clean.  So, I thought the sensible thing to do was to paint it the same color but in eggshell finish.  What seemed so minor turned in to a BIG deal.   Every inch of our entryway, stairwell & upstairs hallway had to be meticulously painted.   After the first 2 gallons went on, I thought we were done but it became quite apparent where we had cut corners.  First of all, we didn't own an extender arm for the paint roller and so the really tall areas over the stairs weren't painted with the eggshell finish.  I really didn't think it would be a big deal, but it looked so bad!  Additionally, we could see multiple areas where the paint didn't cover thick enough and you could see waves of flat & eggshell finishes.  So, after another trip to Home Depot, we came home with an extension arm for the roller, 2 more gallons of paint and Diet Cokes to fuel us.  I must say, it was totally worth it.  I'm real happy with how it turned out:

I also painted the dining room.  Twice.  2 different colors.

It sounds like we should be close to being ready to sell, right? 
Wrong.  We still had to clean out all of our closets to make them look more spacious.  We completely emptied our walk up attic and boxed things up for permanent storage in our basement to entice someone to use the attic as a bonus room.  We took down all of our personal items and pared down our books and decor.  The house also got a thorough cleaning, like more thorough than your typical spring cleaning.

With a day to spare before our first open house, I went to Pier 1 to get a few things for staging the place.  I got some new pillows for the couch & chair in the living room and a new runner and napkins for the dining room.  With absolutely nothing on the walls in this room, the table setting made a big impact:

So, here we are now and it's the middle of September.  We haven't sold the house yet but we're both feeling pretty grateful to not be in a situation where selling our house is dire.  We can be patient and wait for the right buyer.  I really want someone to love our house as much as we have loved it!

June Dinner Club

I promise there is a "getting our house ready to sell" post coming up soon!  Prior to taking the sell-the-house plunge, we hosted Dinner Club on June 5th.  Our theme was Mexican Fiesta.  We love to watch Rick Bayless on tv and his cookbooks/websites are phenomenal resources.  The Mexican Fiesta menu featured:
-Tacos al Pastor (grilled pork tacos)
-Frijoles Refritos (refried beans)
-Arroz a la Mexicana (Mexican rice)

Per usual, we pulled the grill to the front of the house so that Mikey could mingle with the rest of us while we relaxed on the front porch.

While Mikey grilled, we snacked on homemade guacamole, chips and rustic breads that Katie & Lyndon brought:

Soon enough it was time for dinner.  In addition to the pork, Mikey grilled up red onions and pineapple for the taco filling.  This mixture was roughly chopped so that it was easy to scoop up the filling in to the corn tortillas:

As you can imagine, Mikey spent much of the day (prior to guests arriving) prepping for dinner.  He made homemade habenero hot sauce and a raw tomatillo salsa to top the tacos.  Additionally, he served homemade refried beans (the hit of the party) and mexican rice as side dishes.
Trust me, the beans below tasted way better than they look:

When I was uploading the photos for this post, I had a hard time remembering what these were! 
I tried convincing Mikey to do the writing for this post so that he could fill you in with all the details (ingredients & cooking technique) since I know a lot of you are interested.  Leave Mikey some love in the comment section if you are interested in having him write more detailed food posts in the future! 

I wish I hadn't been so distracted and forgotten to take an assembled taco photo. The salsas (bright orange & bright green), pineapple, red onion and marinated pork created a very colorful taco!

Dessert was provided by Nellie & Bruce.  Nellie made a cake that is only used for special occasions in her family.  My memory is a bit foggy of the cake specifics (blogging a month after the fact will do that!) but here is what my taste buds remember.
Layered yellow/sponge cake with a lemon custard filling topped with meringue & toasted pecans:

Notice my ONE tulip that came up this year (the squirrels always dig them up)!

The cake was wonderful and a great way to transition in to summer!!