Author: spotswoodhouse

I am really excited to share the final photos of our “master” bathroom with you but we are stuck right now with a shower glass door on back-order. I can’t share an unfinished product with you so the wait continues. When I do our big reveal I will give you a breakdown of the costs as well. I love looking at and reading about full remodels but what I don’t like is the budget and final expenditures are rarely ever shared. And there is a good reason why….when you see a gut bathroom remodel and the after photo features marble and luxurious upgrades please note that remodel cost somewhere between $15-$20K. Doesn’t sound so great anymore, huh? I honestly get more satisfaction out of trying to find the most cost effective way to do something with the biggest bang for the buck.

We did just buy these cute towels for the bathroom from World Market:

After the master bath remodel we were going to move onto the kitchen but now I think I want to detour and do the secondary bathroom. I have decided to live with the current tile around the bathtub and just focus on replacing the vanity, painting, adding removable wallpaper, and redoing the floors. This should be a fairly quick project (famous last words). Here is my inspiration board:

In my last post, I promised to share photos of our condo in the DC area. So, here you go. This is our living room and dining room.

I would say our condo is decorated in a transitional style in designer speak. Our house in Florida has a more mid-century modern vibe. I love experimenting with different styles but I always come back to transitional. You’ll notice my female portraits make a few appearances in the living and dining room. I have even more at our house in Florida. I just can’t quit the portraits. In fact, I bought another one. This is my first watercolor.

Hopefully, I’ll have a bathroom remodel to show you next time.

We decided to tackle our bathroom remodel to get a quick “win”. I mean, nothing could take as long as tiling the whole house, right?! Oh silly rabbit. Here we are in another massively long remodel. Part of the problem is we lost a couple weekends here and there and right now I’m in Virginia so when the contractor is away my labor will play.

We have everything tiled and grouted and we just have the vanity and accessories to complete. But, Adam is building the vanity from scratch. So, that’s probably going to take a minute. I do have a tip if you are remodeling a bathroom and need a standard size vanity top. Both Floor & Decor and Home Depot sell quartz and marble tops for pretty reasonable prices. The undermount square sink is included and it is pre-drilled with 3 holes for your faucet. I think we are going to give that a try.

Here are some progression photos.

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After we finished tiling, we grouted. You will not find any photos of the grouting process because it SUCKS!! Finished product below, minus the caulking we need to do. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. We went with black grout so the tile would just seamlessly blend. It’s kinda hard to tell from the photo but it looks really cool.

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When we start a remodeling project we always find ourselves adding more to the list and this bathroom was no different. Since we went down to the studs we decided to put in a new window too. Good choice but not a good experience. The first window we bought had a crooked sash. Weird! So, we had to go with the more expensive option, figures….

The original window was frosted, ewww. It let in barely any light so we went with a traditional window with grids. It lets in sooooo much more light.

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We also got the floor tiled and grouted. It kinda looks like penny tile but it’s actually a small hexagon pattern. I am so in love with hexagons. We have put them in 3 of our bathrooms we have remodeled. We put the black grout on the floor too. We either needed to do white or black grout. Anything else would have looked dirty. So, we went all in with black.

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I’ve been back in Virginia the past couple weeks to take care of a few things at the condo. Man, I missed the cool weather, the shopping, and having literally everything at my fingertips. Also, the food! I couldn’t resist buying a few things on Marketplace either. So far I have bought a Hoover vacuum cleaner (my Shark sucked) and another female portrait (from France). I am on the prowl for anything and everything that will fit in a Honda Civic, lol. That severely limits me.

I’ll be back soon with a tour of my condo. There are a few rooms I haven’t shared with you before.

I thought putting the kitchen remodel on hold and focusing on the bathroom would be a quick project. What in the world was I thinking? You would think I would’ve learned my lesson by now. So, in case you haven’t guessed, our bathroom remodel is taking the scenic route right now.

Here is our current situation:

We had to put leveler down since the floors were wonky. Then, we had to address this:

For some reason, unbeknownst to me, it was at one time a good idea to put texture on the wall that looks like acne, teenage acne. We talked about pulling out all of the drywall and starting over but that would add to the budget and put us behind our schedule we’re not even following right now. Another idea was to try and sand the walls down to the flat drywall.

Sanding the walls worked relatively well. We need to go back over the walls with a skim coat but I think that will solve the problem for very little $$. When you get into these remodels there are always things you add after the fact. This remodel is no different. Since we took the bathroom basically down to the studs I decided we needed a new window for the bathroom too. As you can see above, it is just outdated and won’t look good with our new bathroom. We purchased a new window with grids that will hopefully help modernize the space.

This is my favorite part of the remodel, we expanded the doorway into the bathroom to a standard 30 inch opening. A huge improvement over the 24 inches before.

I don’t know if you can truly see the difference expanding the doorway made. Here is the before picture (below). Can you imagine Adam trying to squeeze through that doorway?

Sometimes it is the little changes that make the biggest difference. The enlarged doorway is a game-changer!! If you follow my blog posts (thank you) I shared my inspiration/mood board for the bathroom remodel on my last post. Well, I threw that out the window. Once we had to replace and move some plumbing (that’s expensive ya’ll) that wasn’t in the budget so I had to reset my tile expectations. For whatever reason the green tile I want to use just isn’t meant to be so I have switched to a dark blue (below). Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. We will not be doing herringbone in this bathroom. We are going to use a dark grout and lay the tile in a vertical stack for a little bit of a modern look.

I also changed my mind on the floor tile. I decided to go a more classic, serene route. I just can’t get away from a hexagon pattern, I love it! I don’t want to do a super dark grout. I want something more on the light gray spectrum so we’ll have to play with a couple options to get it just right. The grout color below is too dark.

I would love to say we’ll have tile going up this weekend but I still don’t think we are there yet 😦 That’s our bathroom update.

I’m still furnishing our Tallahassee house and just purchased a rug (below) during a President’s Day sale. I swear, I can look at rugs for hours on end and still be no closer to making a decision. I’m shocked I took the bait on this one. I really hope it looks like the photos in person. I just love the retro pattern.

One final thing…I’m so excited I just booked a trip to Palm Springs, California. This has been on my bucket list forever! I cannot wait to get my mid century modern madness on. Separately, I also booked a trip to Jackson, Wyoming so we could do the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone but I highly advise you not to drink wine while you are booking your trip and recovering from COVID. I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the dates I booked and ended up with a 10 day tour. That’s great and all but that wasn’t in the plan. So, missed that deal and will wait to see if it pops again in the near future.

Adam and I both got the coronavirus. He got it first and it put him fully out of commission for about a week. He still had symptoms the second week but was at least able to maintain some semblance of a normal life. He said he feels completely recovered now. From first sign of symptoms to full recovery took 11 days. I am on my second week of COVID now. For the most part, my symptoms have been mild. It kind of feels like bad allergies or a mild cold. The worst part for me has been losing my sense of taste and smell and not being able to leave the house. I am hoping to be fully recovered by this coming weekend.

While we have been confined to the house, we decided to demo our master bathroom. We are putting the kitchen remodel on hold while we figure out exactly how to proceed. We have a better idea of what to do in the master bathroom.

This is my inspiration:

Our master (you really can’t even call it that) bathroom is pretty small. There was no way to expand the bathroom without bumping the wall out into the backyard and considering we are trying to do this remodel on a shoestring budget we’re just going to have to live with the small footprint. We only have space to add a 30 inch vanity so no double sinks for us. Here are some before pictures.

Our plan is to make it feel as luxurious as possible in the small space. We will remove the tub/shower combo and replace with a walk-in shower. We’ll take the tile all the way to the ceiling to add height to the room and add a glass door. Adam is going to build a midcentury modern inspired vanity and we’ll top it with a quartz countertop. The floor tile will be replaced with something more modern. And, we’ll replace the hobbit toilet with a comfort height, elongated basin Kohler model. The only structural thing we plan to do is expand the doorway. The doorway into the bathroom is so tight, only 24 inches. We’re going to expand the doorway to 30 inches which should make a huge difference. Isn’t this doorway so skinny??

We started the demo on the bathroom. You never know what you are going to get when you start opening up walls. Taking the tiles off of the shower walls made such a mess. It looked like a bomb went off in war torn Syria. There was debris absolutely everywhere. I had to mop the entire house and wipe every surface down and we’re still not done. We ran out of space in the trash so we’ll finish later this week.

Here’s my mood board for the bathroom.

I’ll be back soon with more updates.

Very exciting news…our floors are done! Now on to the kitchen, ooft!

Here are the floors without baseboards and doors nowhere to be found.

Wow, who knew baseboards were so transformative?! We hung the doors back up but not a big fan because they are hollow core but not worth the return to replace them. Sometimes you gotta let things ride when doing a remodel.

We were so over doing the herringbone pattern throughout the house that we laid an off-set patterned floor (kinda like subway tile) in the guest bedrooms.

In between all of the floor work we took a couple shopping trips to Atlanta, Birmingham, and Dothan, Alabama. Dothan, Alabama, you say????? Yes!!! What a hidden gem!

In Atlanta we bought a dining room table from a West Elm outlet and another portrait painting (one of my favorites). The dining room table (below) is pretty basic and more on the industrial side in terms of style but I like the simplicity of it. The room is still a work in progress and I’m currently looking for a rug to break-up all of the wood tones. I had my eye on the dining room chairs for quite some time and pulled the plug when they went on sale for 40% off. I combined that with a 15% curbside pickup discount, and a $10 off monthly reward. That is the holy grail for a bargain shopper. I could not contain my excitement!

While in Atlanta, I think I found my favorite store EVER, Kudzu. It’s a combination of antiques/vintage finds/and new items that have a vintage flair. I bought another portrait there, Denise. Denise was in rough shape when we bought her but after watching a few episodes of Repair Shop on Netflix Adam decided he could fix her up. Apparently saliva is the best way to remove dirt and dust from a painting. Also, Denise was sliding down the canvas because of how it was attached to the frame. Adam took everything apart and rebuilt the frame and now Denise is as good as new.

After Atlanta, we went to Dothan, Alabama and picked up a credenza and bar cart. We made a subsequent trip back to Dothan and I picked up the postal scale you see sitting on the credenza. I gotta represent the United States Postal Service!

Here is the bar cart (below) prior to any accessorizing. This also gives you a good look at our dining room pre-remodel and a little cameo of me taking the photo (so serious), and Adam holding up a mirror as I try to decide how to decorate the room.

Here is the final product of our bar cart (below). Ok, I have to brag about this…see the brass birds in the circle section of the bar cart below? That is not part of the bar cart, I had that decorative object and thought it would give the bar cart a mid-century look. I absolutely love how it turned out. I bought the white parrot at a Goodwill for $2. Also, you’ll notice a tiny part of my drink stirrer collection. On the bottom shelf of the bar cart is a set of mid century glasses we bought in Birmingham and an ice bucket, ceramic deer, and swan serving tray I bought at an antique store in Dothan, Alabama…crazy! Oh, and I paid $90 for the bar cart I found on Facebook Marketplace.

And, I bought another portrait in Dothan, Alabama!!!!!! I think I will name her Miss Hannigan because she looks so serious and strict.

So, I absolutely love lighting/light fixtures. It is my favorite decorating accessory. In fact, every time we move I insist on taking some of my lights with me and now I have too much. But can you really ever have too much??

A dear friend of mine, Linda, sent me a photo of this light fixture someone brought into her church thrift store. She wanted to know what I would price it at. It was a real one-of-a-kind. I told her if she couldn’t sell it, I would buy it. Long story short, it made it’s way from South Florida to Orlando to Tallahassee, Florida where it proudly hangs in my dining room now. I mean, what a show stopper, right?

I need to take a moment and brag on Adam. When we first got married, let’s just say he was kinda handy but more like a bull in a china shop. As the years have gone by, he has turned into a jack-of-all-trades extraordinaire. During our move from Virginia to Florida we had to store our stuff in a Pod for about a month. Our tv stand got damaged because our stuff wasn’t being stored in a controlled climate and quite frankly, the tv stand wasn’t high quality. I think it was particle board covered in laminate (but it looked pretty). I think I paid $40 for it from someone on Facebook Marketplace. I was going to sell the stand for parts but Adam decided he could fix it.

Here is a before picture (below) of the tv stand prior to it getting damaged. After the move the entire back of the stand was warped and the alignment on the drawers got off track and looked crooked:

Adam turned my tv stand into a nightstand! Pretty impressive.

We still have a kitchen to remodel and two bathrooms, and we still have to decorate the space. We decided to turn one of the guest bedrooms into a second living room so Adam and I can watch our shows separate of each other and in peace but you know what that means, more furniture to buy. Darn! 😉

Hello again…I feel like I have been stuck in a holiday vortex the past 2 months and my regular life has gone by the wayside. That floor remodel I was talking about in my last post is still dragging on (awesome). We have made some progress but I would definitely expect more if I was you. We finished the gargantuan living and dining area, knocked out the hallway and have almost finished the master bedroom. Then, that leaves 2 bedrooms and we are done (with that project).

Before I get into our floor update I can finally share our finished master bathroom from our condo in Alexandria. I am so happy with how it turned out. The hold up was really minor. I was waiting on new drawer pulls because I didn’t like the first set I bought (a regular occurrence Adam is used to by now). Here are the before and after shots but let me level-set first. The before pictures don’t look that bad but trust me the camera is hiding a multitude of sins. Tiles were falling off the shower stall walls and the walk-in shower could hardly be classified as that. I don’t think Adam could’ve even fit. Personally, I am not a bath person so the garden tub had to go. This is an interesting topic – I didn’t realize how many people dislike baths like I do. I am a shower girl all the way! Finally, the vanity – ugh! It was cheap and not functional. We were going to sell it once we pulled it out but it fell completely apart (if that gives you an idea of the condition it was in). Oh, and finally, finally, all of the material was builder basic which is not okay for someone like me. I need style, pizzazz, and good design.

This was another hold up on the remodel – the mirrors. I couldn’t figure out what shape I wanted at the price point I needed. Side note, I love nice things but if I can’t get them for a discount or a deal then I’m not buying it. I must’ve looked for weeks before finally deciding on a scalloped edge. I think they fit the space nicely.

At the beginning of my post I mentioned that I decided to change out the drawer pulls on the vanity. The original pulls had an oil rubbed bronze look which I wasn’t going for. It just felt a little too traditional and I wanted something more modern. I decided to change them out for a lighter, brighter lucite and I could not be happier I made the change.

Here’s an update on our guest bath remodel at the condo (because who doesn’t want to have 5 remodeling projects going on at a time). We have had nothing but issues trying to get our bathroom vanity. First, it started with the purchase. We bought the vanity only to find out they didn’t have it in stock and I didn’t like any of the other options. They told us it would be 4 weeks before they received another shipment. Four weeks turned into 8 weeks. Then, when we went to pick it up the holes weren’t drilled properly for the sink and then we had an issue with the backsplash. What a colossal nightmare! And now our sink drain is lost somewhere in the mail/shipping stream. All of that to say, our bathroom is still not finished but we are getting ever so closer.

Lucky for you, you get a long blog post today. Now we’ll move to our Tallahassee house for an update. As I mentioned, we are entrenched on our floor remodel but we have made progress since the last report. The floors are turning out beautifully but I’ll let you in on a little, dirty secret. The tile flooring is so painful on my feet. I cannot walk barefoot in the house for fear of massive foot pain (how old am I again?). We have never had an all tile house before so I was not aware we would run into this problem. I now have extra thick house slippers (thanks mom) to cushion the blow. Now that that is out of the way on to the photos.

Now I want to switch gears and go into some financials on the Tallahassee house. When you are doing a remodel you have to keep a close eye on costs (duh!) and you need to pay attention to making purchases that will give you the biggest return. For example, stainless steel appliances will increase the value more than white appliances (in most instances). New appliances can get very expensive and eat into your renovation budget. So I always try to buy appliances used which we have done for the Tallahassee house. Nobody will ever know the difference. Here are the before and afters on the appliances and costs associated with each.

If you were doing the math, we paid $900 for our appliances and sold our existing refrigerator for $175 (and we will probably make money on the oven and dishwasher when we sell them) totaling a $725 investment for 3 stainless steel appliances. That is how you make your remodeling money work for you!

I am always on the lookout for deals and steals to decorate our house and I have found a few things in Tallahassee even though the pickings are slim. I should’ve mentioned above the refrigerator came from Jacksonville, Florida, the stove from Alexandria, Virginia, and the dishwasher we got in Monticello, a town outside Tallahassee. This is my latest find. It’s such a cute side table!

I hope you enjoyed all of our remodeling updates. We have a new bed arriving tomorrow for the master bedroom so hopefully I can share an update on that finished room soon. I will be making a buying trip at the end of this year to Atlanta and Birmingham to see if I can find more items for our house. Surprisingly, there are many items we still need to furnish the house. Home ownership, the gift that keeps on giving.

I have been on quite a hiatus. Sorry, I blame it on al-al-al-al-cohol. Just kidding, I blame it on buying a fixer-upper that required an immediate fix as soon as we moved in. The house we just purchased in Florida (The Oriole – all of my houses have to have names, after all they are my babies) had wall-to-wall carpet. In addition to that they had a dog who used the carpet as his personal toilet. That required immediate action – operation remove carpet. Look at that living room (below), it is swimming in carpet, yuck. I won’t even describe the smell of removing the carpet. I’ll keep that little nugget to myself.

There was carpet at the front door so as soon as you entered the house, you were on carpet. That’s crazy! On top of that we had a ton of rain the past couple weeks which exposed water seeping into the house through the back door threshold. So every time it rained that carpet would get soaked with water; that is so gross.

Once the carpet was gone it felt like we lived in a warehouse.

I’m not sure what this looks like to you but it is extremely stressful. How can anyone comfortably live in this scenario?! The only way to remedy was to get to work ASAP. We created a plan – wood look tile floors ASAP, in a herringbone pattern. LOLOLOLOLOL…the remodeling gods were laughing at us. Why didn’t someone stop us from making this insane decision??!! 2 weeks into this project and we have gone through 5 1/2 bags of mortar, 1 1/2 bags of grout, god knows how many cases of tile, and only half of the room is complete. We are officially stuck in remodeling HELL!!!!! People, this is a public service announcement…DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME UNLESS YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL. I am hating life right now!!!!! Did I mention we are only halfway done with one room???? Here are our time lapse photos.

Notice I started the time lapse photos and then said, “screw it. This sucks. Here is our halfway point.” Ok, half of the room is tiled. By Thanksgiving, maybe the whole room will be tiled (tears are streaming down my face). Ok, snap out of it; get it together gurl, positive thoughts….we’ll be back at it trying to get the rest of the room tiled. Wish me luck!

This house is the largest house we have ever owned at 1659 sq ft. I get it; this house is certainly not big by many peoples standards but we have always loved old, historic homes (which are traditionally small). I say all of this to say I am woefully understocked on furniture. I need to purchase a new dining room set, 2 living room chairs, and a king size headboard/bed. In the meantime I purchased this cute little gem of a chair.

OMG, this little puppy is so comfortable! I am totally loving the 70s vibe it’s giving me. Another purchase I recently made is this wall art (yeah, that isn’t paint, its yarn). Ok, honestly, are you throwing up in your mouth?? I am totally loving the vintage feel of this!

In a couple weeks we are going to take the truck to Atlanta for a shopping spree. I am so deprived here in Tallahassee, FL. I am so spoiled by my options in the DC area for furniture/accessories etc.!

On a final side note, I have only taken 32 hours of leave this year. People, it is October and I have only taken off 4 days this entire year, WTF! I need a vacation sooooo bad. I literally have 590 hours of annual leave on the books and I can roll all of it over to next year. We’re talking about going back to New Orleans but touring some of the mansions outside the city or going to Birmingham, Alabama. This is certainly a departure from France, Belize, and Argentina, LOL. Times have certainly changed….

We finally closed on Spotswood House!! Here’s the empty house to prove it.

It felt like it took forever to get this off the books, or maybe it was the 45-day close we agreed to. I would not advise going that route if at all possible. On top of that, the closing was delayed by 3 days. But, we got our proceeds check and we are rolling it into a new house. We are under contract on a house in Tallahassee, FL! I thought the DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) housing market was super hot but Tallahassee was crazy too. This is the first time ever we are paying over list for a house. We were 1 of 5 offers the first day the house went on the market. Our hefty down payment and the fact we weren’t a first-time home buyer secured the deal. Which I want to talk about for a second. You keep hearing about interest rates being super low, lowest ever, blah, blah, blah. Well, we couldn’t qualify for the lowest rates because mortgage lenders punish you if you finance under $100K. Even though you have great credit and a massive down payment, you aren’t worth it to a mortgage company because they won’t make “any money” off of your loan. How infuriating is that to hear?! So, I told the lender, “all the more reason to pay cash next time!!” That’s the goal, cash for a house. Might take a couple more remodels but we’ll get there.

I’m guessing you want to see the new house? Believe me, I want to see it too! I was still in Virginia when the house came on the market. I saw the listing on realtor.com, sent it to Adam, and told him to go tour it that night. It had our two non-negotiables – an in-ground pool and two-car garage. Bonus, there was a detached workshop for Adam (he was very happy). In addition, the major ticket items were taken care of – fairly new roof and HVAC. The inside will take an entire remodel but, hey, that’s what we do. Another bonus for me is it is brick on three sides with hardi-board on the back. I love the look of brick ranchers. I guess they remind me of my neighborhood growing up. The house was built in 1979, another plus for us. I love older houses! There is one major downside to the house, SEPTIC!!!! I promised I would never own a home with septic EVER again but here we are. We did the septic inspection and everything came back A-OK so hopefully we won’t have any problems. Fixing septic is a big ticket item! Oh, another thing I forgot to mention, the house is on 1/2 an acre. What the hell is it with us finding houses on huge lots? I am not looking forward to cutting that grass in Florida heat!

Here’s a photo of the front exterior.

It even has an “L” for Lindsey 🙂 We’re talking about changing the paint on the front door, shutters, and trim. Also, we want to chunk out the columns and give them a more craftsman look.

Here’s the pool!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And another one…

I cannot wait to jump in the pool. I will be in that thing everyday. I’m so excited!

I won’t share any interior photos because it will all get changed anyway. The first thing to go will be the carpet, everywhere. We are thinking about doing a wood-look tile in a herringbone pattern, kinda like this.

We are definitely going to try to keep this remodel manageable cost wise because our end goal is to sell it in a couple years. And we probably don’t have as much wiggle room to make a big profit. I’m excited for this weekend, we’re going floor and cabinet shopping. Yay, so much fun! I’ll be back soon with more updates.

 

Most sane people would not undertake a bathroom remodel in the middle of selling their house but we’re not most people. We like to keep the stress level exceptionally high! We are under contract on our house and going through the various inspections right now…talk about a money drain! In addition, which I have failed to mention before, we (Adam) are moving back to Florida (kinda).

I forgot (no, I didn’t) how horrific moving can be. This time around we made the brilliant decision to pack our belongings by ourselves. We decided to go the Pod route since we don’t have a home in Florida to move to. It took us 8 hours straight to get the Pod loaded and multiple, multiple trips to the dump ( I see a side hustle in removing peoples junk. It is a lucrative business.)

Now that I have hit you with all of that, let’s talk about Florida. Adam got an offer he couldn’t turn down to work for the State of Florida as the Chief Innovation Officer. I cannot make the move because I am committed to the Postal Service for the next couple of years (too long to explain). So, we will make trips back and forth and try to make this new telework environment work to our advantage. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help Florida is being stupid when it comes to managing COVID-19 and enforcing the wearing of a mask. Not sure how the back-and-forth is going to work in the immediate future. While all of that is going on we still decided to remodel our second bathroom at our condo in Alexandria…I literally cannot make this shit up!!!

So, that is enough talk. Time for some pictures. Here are the “before” pictures of our bathroom.

Did you notice where they patched the bathroom tile around the shower knob with a different color tile? Classy!!

This remodel isn’t as intensive as the “owners suite” bathroom but we did remove everything except the tub. We’re going to get the tub reglazed. We have never done that before and we aren’t trying to do it ourselves.

That tile was such a pain to get off of the floor. I’m sure our neighbors below us really enjoyed that part of the demo.

We started with the remodel of the bathroom floor. I chose a modern, geometric pattern. Figuring out the floor tile pattern took a minute.

OMG, I love this floor. I really took liberty on this bathroom to go all-out with design details. Next, we moved onto the herringbone accent wall in green, my favorite color.

Then, we moved to the other walls in penny tile.

We took the tile all the way to the ceiling. It takes a little bit more work but it is so worth it. It makes the space feel more expansive and cohesive.

Right now my vanity is on back order so I’m going to have to wait to finish this thing out. This is the color I’m leaning towards painting the room, Behr Marquee Pumice.

Here is the current state of the bathroom:

NEWSFLASH: I am on Instagram now. You can follow me at https://www.instagram.com/spotswoodhouse

Finally, I have a new lady I added to my collection. Let me introduce you to Valerie.

 

Ok, so it is fair to say that I have a few meltdowns when it comes to the home buying and selling process. It is such a stressful period and huge money drain and sometimes a gain. When we sold our house in Alexandria it was under contract in a day with a good chunk of change over the list price. Things are a little bit different out here in the country. I started freaking out when only 2 people viewed our house within a week of our house going on the market. But, we ended up getting an offer over list (buyer offered over list to get closing cost assistance) and we are pressing forward.

Our buyer is getting a USDA loan which is little bit different that FHA and Conventional (quite frankly I don’t care what type of loan they get as long as it closes). USDA loans are for rural communities and allow buyers to finance 100% of the purchase price for a pretty reasonable interest rate. Our buyer is a first-time home buyer single mom. She is getting a great, little house. I mean, we fixed EVERYTHING in it. I’m a little bit sad to leave this house because we are selling it as soon as we finished remodeling it. So, I never got to live in it remodeled. Oh well, that just gives me more ammunition for our next house.

We ended up listing our house buy-owner and it has been quite the experience so far. I will fill you all in on it in a later post and let you know where we saved money. We still have the inspection and home appraisal so we aren’t out of the woods yet. Once we get through that, oh, and our septic inspection, and water quality check I will feel much better. Adam says I’m worrying for nothing. What does he know! 😉

We listed our house on a Monday on MLS and it took us until Friday to get on Zillow. We had an offer Sunday and went under contract that evening. Once you calculate the over ask price and the closing cost assistance, the offer was $1K under list. I can live with that.

Here are the photos from the listing.

You saw some of these pictures in my previous post but I wanted to share all of the photos we used in our listing in the exact order. One of the top suggestions for selling your home is to get professional photographs done. Well, we didn’t have time for all of that so Adam bought a wide angle lens designed for cellphones and attached that baby and took these photos. We brightened the photos and added “pop” but I think they turned out as good as professional photos would have. The lens only cost about $40 compared to $300 for professional photos. Here is the lens if you’re interested. 

After we painted the front door we found a pink moth cozying up to it. I think it was in love. I don’t blame it. Have you ever seen a pink moth before? Adam said they live in Silver Maples. Hopefully, that is our good luck moth. 

I loved that pink paint so much I painted our bistro table and chairs too. It needed it. That brown finish wasn’t doing it any favors. The table and chairs were left behind by the previous owner and the chair was broken, of course. So, Adam got his welder and put it back together for me. 

Now that our house is under contract we are in the initial stages of another remodel, our guest bathroom at the condo.  No turning back, we already bought the tile. So here is a sneak peek of the project. Yes, that is a herringbone pattern you see there! We’ll see how difficult it ends up being to install. I end up using a lot of blue in my decorating but my favorite color is green so I’m so excited to use green tile on this project. The green herringbone will go on the long shower wall and the white penny tile will go on the two short walls. The black tile will go on the floor. I’m so excited! I can’t wait to start on this project. 

That’s all I got for now. Be back soon with more updates.