Apr
10
Day One of “Vacation” in the Books
April 10, 2007 |
Not much to report from my first day of a weeklong “vacation” from the day job, as I pretty much spent a solid ten hours at the Austin house painting and knocking out assorted jobs. Signed a contract for the new countertops and paid them a deposit but they haven’t scheduled the installation yet, just promising it’s “usually” 7-10 days. Mmkay. Sort of like all of the roofing quotes I’d have for the Lockhart house by last Friday, none of which I’ve received yet. Whee, fun with contractor types! Whee!
I had a hard time getting started yesterday morning, but once I got rolling it wasn’t too bad. Once I manage to turn off my brain and stop thinking of the 12,825 things that still need to be done (plus, you know, an entire other house that has its own list of 192,172 things on the to-do list) and just get to work, it goes pretty easily. Stupid brain.
Money has been absolutely flying out the door of late, but there’s not much for it. Still need to buy a new stove and vanity tops/fixtures for the Austin house, but that’s the last of the major expenses. If the existing stove/vanities weren’t twenty years old, I’d say the hell with it and just leave them as-is, but there’s no point in cutting final corners at this stage.
It’d help if I had a better sense of what we’ll likely get for the house, as far as justifying all the work and expense. I keep a pretty close eye on MLS listings but the Austin market is kind of wonky right now in our general area, which is starting to become a trendier location and, in some neighborhoods, is resulting in pretty eye-popping sale prices, with properties getting multiple offers on the first day of listing. Our house, though, is in a much more working class area, so I’m not expecting eye-popping, based on what’s currently listed that’s nearby. The kicker, though, is that nothing has even been listed in our immediate vicinity for over a year, so who knows, as it’s hard to get a benchmark.
Long story short, I’m sort of in do-everything-possible-to-fix-up-the-house mode, hoping that our realtor wants to list it at closer to eye-popping than my own naturally pessimistic expectations, althoughI admittedly don’t have the best gauge of the value the extra work is producing, if any. To be fair, I’m talking about stuff like painting rooms that are a little scuffed and dinged but otherwise presentable, updating cabinetry hardware, re-staining the back deck, and other stuff that is more time consuming than wallet-busting, so I’m not going nutso with the fix-ups. We shall see.
