At the Dallas house we had replaced the complete heating and cooling system, the water heater, a valve in the shower, all of the windows that had lost the seal, all of the sills on those windows, I had already replaced most of the light fixtures, a new kitchen faucet and garbage disposal, the toilets had been replaced with low water usage "right height" will flush a bucket of golf ball toilets, we had put fresh paint throughout the house, painted the gazebo over the back porch, and cleaned up the spa and put new pads on it...plus all of the landscaping I had done. We had replaced the carpet in the living room with Brazilian Cherry hardwood and the Master bedroom door was replaced with a steel door for security and was insulated so the room was quieter when someone was watching TV. We had plantation blinds on the windows and room darkening insulated curtains on the tallest of windows (102 inch curtains we didn't need in the country). We had built an 8'x10' shed in the back yard that met the homeowners association specs. I left my composter and my raised beds full of herbs, and the garden was ready to plant on the side of the house.
The house we were leaving was better than new, everything we had done was upgraded from the builders versions. Oh, and we had replaced the ice maker and the thermostat on the oven which we were leaving for the new owner. I had also laid a bunch of decking in the attic to get to the fireplace, when Crew was in Afghanistan we had record high temperatures and there had been a lot of very loud popping noises going on up there. I had gotten the home warranty people out there on that too and made them work on it, we actually had a board poke up through the roof...sort of. They got tired of me calling and complaining and the guy actually told me to stop calling him, the boards twisting and warping was an act of god and he would not fix anything else. I went in the attic and made repairs and secured things I thought needed securing with screws...oh and I fixed a bunch of nail pops in the master bedroom ceiling when I painted...they did not even use the right kind of nails to put the Sheetrock up! I read the home warranty paperwork nail pops were not covered. I fixed it with sheet rock screws after pulling out all the nails that kept popping through the plaster.
Needless to say, we sunk a lot of money into upgrades and repairs and we knew that we would not get what we put into the house out of it. I watch a lot of HGTV so I knew what we needed to do to get it sold and we were tired of making payments on both places.
Crew went out by himself and did the floors at the Dallas house, cleaned up the floors in the garage and mopped the tile floors. We had settled on a listing price with the realtor and given her the key. We got a call soon after that from our Realty company that our neighbor reported a sprinkler head was shooting water up in the air in the backyard. One more thing we had to fix...that and the spa! We still had to replace the parts on the spa. We got the realtor to go by and turn off the sprinkler system until we could get someone out to repair it. Crew had to go out and replace the part on the spa and he took his bag of sprinkler parts to see if he could make the repair. Neither worked.
We had the spa on the listing for the house, so we had to fix it or remove the spa...and I called our lawn company to make the sprinkler repair. The first day we put the house on the market, we received two offers on it and accepted one of those. But, we still had to make payments and repairs until the house papers were signed. The listing remained active until then and there were a number of showings until paperwork was done. We explained to the buyer that the spa was not working and we would have it removed...thank goodness she just said it was fine to leave it, we really didn't want to pay to have it hauled off. In the end, we didn't even get what we actually paid for the house...sad, but we could not keep paying two of everything. If the sale fell through, we had additional buyers interested...but, we were almost done and all we had to do is wait for the closing.
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