Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Getting The House Ready To Sell…



I’m exhausted and we have hardly begun! Last week the painter came to paint my bedroom. It really needed some plastering and a good paint job. It took him two days to do it, but it took me several days to take out all the knick knacks, books, pictures, and so many little odds and ends. I filled five boxes with those items, but I am leaving them packed away. I only put a handful of them back out. Still, it was exhausting for me to get all those things out of the room.

Meanwhile, the painter put a lot of scratches on my nightstands. I was upset over that. I have had this furniture for 29 years and, though I put a few scratches on it myself over the years, I never put as many as he had. It was making me a little sick, so I hurried to get my cleaning supplies and used an almond stick to hide all the scratches and then some furniture polish. The next morning I covered them with towels and told him about the scratches, which he pretended not to know about. This is why I hate to have anyone come in the house to do any work. It’s always something. I was still trying to decide if I wanted to keep this bedroom set or get a new one when I move, maybe for my 30th anniversary next year. I did a little looking online and so far I didn’t see anything I liked better than what I have now. I polished all the furniture last Friday, in preparation of bringing everything back into the room. It still looks great. I am now leaning towards keeping it. I still have a few things to get rid of before I am done with this room.

Yesterday my husband and I went to Home depot to pick up a few things that I could use for some cosmetic repairs. I am not going to redo the whole house, someone else may not like what I do to it. I’d rather keep the price low and let them fix it up themselves. One of the things we got were 48 marigold plants. When I first bought the house, one of the things that caught my eye were the little flowers in the front and along the entire side of the house. It may not seem like much, but it made it feel like a home to me. So I decided to get a bunch of them and recreate that little homey feeling. All the bending wore me out. I only managed to plant 24 of them and them I gave up. I will hopefully get to the others today. While I was doing that, my newly retired husband was trimming the branches on the back tree that were hanging a little low. I also picked up a little wood to fix the back steps a little, before my husband gives them a coat of paint. They are a little run down, but they’ll look a lot better after they are painted. I have a couple of other inexpensive ideas for the backyard too. We’ll see what happens.

Now I am resting a little before doing anything else. The last thing I need to do is hurt my back. I have too much to do and hope to be done in a couple of weeks. In the process I am collecting a few black and blue marks and scratches. That’s the price I’ll have to pay for trying to do a few things myself. My husband isn’t very handy at all and I have little strength, so we make a great pair.

I’ll keep blogging about our “progress” or lack of it. I heard on the news that the housing market has been doing a lot better, so maybe our timing, at least, is good.

Financial Retirement Tip: I am going to pass this along for anyone who is retiring or whose husband is retiring any time soon. We got some advice from a couple of people that my husband should take his full pension, instead of one that would provide money for me after his GOD FORBID early demise. The financial advisers suggest taking the full pension and then taking out a large life insurance policy on him in the event he should die early, so that I would have the insurance money to replace the lost pension. The insurance probably costs a lot less than the reduced pension he would get if he took the pension option providing survivor benefits for me. So think about that and ask someone before you cross that bridge. It may be a good option for you too.

P.S. Sorry I haven't been able to write the past few days, but to tell the truth I have been too tired to think.


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