Where to start? It’s surprising that we signed with Susanna on 4/12…it’s only been a month, and on Wednesday, 5/15, we have officially listed our house on the market. We’re listing it for $1,569,000 and already got a preemptive offer for $1,680,000…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning…
After meetings with the HVAC, painter, and gardener on Wed 4/17, HVAC came back to finish adding freon and installed a new thermostat. The handyman, Quy, was here over the weekend on the 20th and 21st and got rid of our ceiling fans, installed LED lights, 4 recessed lights, installed a new toilet in the masterbath, took away the shower door, removed the patio cover, etc. The gardener came on Sunday and cleared out all the weeds…we can now see the dirt!
Our anniversary weekend was the toughest in that we had to move all our furniture to the middle of the room (note that we’re still both working) so that painters would be there on the weekend to paint the baseboards. They also “fixed” the cracks in our walls, all our problem areas, painted all our doors white, and did almost all the exterior. There was also a guy who refinished the tub, though our tiles in that bathroom don’t look as nice after the shower door came off. Quy came back and installed all the hinges. Anson didn’t want to pay $70 for each installation of door knobs/pocket doors and did it himself over the next couple weeks (I installed 2!)
Honestly, the last two weeks have been more of a blur, but most of it was to just declutter our house. I fixed up Anson’s mats in the gym, started packing everything into boxes, and we started moving them into the garage on Wed 5/8. We moved my desk and end table from our master into the spa room. We didn’t want to list during the week of the Santa Clara city cleanup since trash would be everywhere. It was very helpful to get rid of 2 large patio chairs, some big boxes, various miscellaneous items, and our old sofa (too big of a butt imprint for staging lol). I bought a smaller sofa on Wayfair which arrived on Mon 5/6. Setup wasn’t too hard and I like that there is storage underneath and can pull out to be a sleeper sofa. The landscaper, Benjamin, and his team came and pulled out all the weeds in the planter box, put in wood chips all over our backyard and planted flowers in the front and back and installed drip irrigation. Benjamin planted some tomato plants in the planter box. We’ve had to hand water some plants that aren’t on drip in the very front and some in pots in the back.
The cleaner came on Thurs 5/9 and Fri 5/10. Susanna used some of her staging material (pictures, fake plants, cushions, pillows, etc) and got her husband to hang up pictures on Sun 5/12 & Mon 5/13. Termite inspection and home inspection happened that Monday too. The photographer took pictures on Tues, 5/14, and the listing went up on Wed 5/15. Meanwhile, Anson fixed a “leak” in the secondary bathroom by tightening the handles (yay! Glad it wasn’t serious). The wiring for the sprinklers up front were corroded (that’s why our lawn wasn’t looking as green), so Anson got guy who came at 6:30 am to fix it. I used almost a whole bottle of liquid fertilizer on it. Since weed blocker wasn’t installed, have been weeding a little everyday o.O We had an open house on Thurs, 5/16, and there seems to be good interest in our property. We’re staying at Granada Inn from Friday 5/17 thru Thursday 5/23 so that we don’t have to keep packing/unpacking. On Friday, there were 3 appointments (at 2pm, 4pm, and 5pm). The couple who gave us the preemptive offer work at Google and have been renting in our neighborhood for many years. They knew our house was going up for sale cuz of all the work that has been going on. Truthfully, I think $1.68m isn’t a bad offer since we first though $1.7m was on the high end, but this is how the Bay Area market is. I’ll update once our place is sold!