Getting the House Ready to Sell & Our 'Punch List'!

T-minus 2 weeks until our target date for listing our house for sale! We closed on it 12 years ago and promptly spent the next 10 hours stripping wallpaper until the early morning hours. Since that day, we’ve renovated every single inch of our home– and it’s been a joy to create a space that perfectly fit our family, but now it’s time to pass it along to someone else to love. When it comes to home improvement, my philosophy was to keep it two weeks away from being ready to sell “just in case” we had to list it quickly. I mean, why spend all that money in improvements for making it easier to sell and not enjoy it first, right?

That philosophy has (hopefully) paid off because thankfully the tweaks we need to make are pretty small. That’s not to say they aren’t important, for example these tiles fell off the desk YEARS AGO and are a giant eyesore, yet it took listing our house for us to actually put them on the list to get fixed. #procrastinator

The next few weeks are all about finishing my decluttering and getting through our ‘punch list’ of items before we put the house on the market. My husband and I walked through each room and made one giant to-do list. Here’s what’s left to do:

Fix some errors I made when I originally painted a few of the rooms. Case in point, Abby’s bookcase, yikes!

Some of our ceilings could use a touch-up because I have a habit of hanging things from them (like DIY play canopies and butterfly lanterns, ha!) A coat of paint will make them look sharp again.

When the HGTV crew renovated our sunroom, there were a few areas that wouldn’t been seen on camera that didn’t exactly get the perfect finishing touch. This is one of those areas. I’d like to touch this up with paint and maybe some paintable caulk.

And… more painting, like these closet doors that were primed but I never actually took the next step and added paint.

Our kitchen has several areas that need touch-ups because we replaced the window, added outlets, and also a new NEST thermostat thing. And YES we’ve been living with that sloppy replastering for about a year and a half because LAZY.

Moving on to window treatments, I slapped these temporary IKEA window coverings up in our sunroom for some privacy, and they look… temporary. They need to come down.

We upgraded our speaker system and yet never upgraded this mess.

My home office is currently in our dining room. I love my little workaholic spot, but I need to take down my desk and bulletin board so it looks like a dining room and ONLY a dining room. Then we’ll move the hutch over to balance the space. Potential buyers need to see this as a dining room, and not a work space.

Funny story, one of the the HGTV cameras was mounted in this corner of the ceiling so it never got painted when they were here. And also the moulding fell off. Add it to the list!

This one is just embarrassing. The previous owners of our home had mirrored closet doors and THEY FELL ON ME one day when I opened them! We threw up a curtain until we had a chance to replace them. Ten years later, well, um…

I need to clean the grout in this tiled area again. Thankfully I have a super amazing way to clean grout. 😉

Painful doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about this next task. I don’t think I’ve ever shown the full reveal yet, but my son’s bedroom is train themed and we have track on the wall around it. He LOOOOOOVES it. I need to take it down and repaint the walls before we put it on the market, though. Hold me.

I also need to recaulk the bathtub. It’s a simple fix that makes the bathroom look new again, and something even I can do myself.

Speaking of bathrooms, the cabinet in our master bedroom is rusty… which is weird, because it’s not that old. I need to either repaint it or just hang a new one. I’m leaning towards the latter.

This is more a DIY project than home improvement, but our bar stool chairs are showing their many years of use by toddlers and I want to paint/recover them. They won’t add much value to the house but it’ll be a nice touch. Avert your eyes if you’re easily grossed out:

Last but not least, our basement. I didn’t snap a picture yet but we need to repaint the floor and give it a massive scrubbing. It’s not a bad space, just sorely neglected.

Due to time constraints, I’m hiring a handyman for the tiling and a painter for the basement and Ben’s room. Just can’t do it all myself, you know? Plus, I’m so focused on decluttering. I’m not kidding, my goal is to get rid of 50% of our stuff. We just DO NOT NEED IT. This KonMari method is the real deal, yo! But holy crap (pun intended, I have A LOT of crap) it takes forever if you do it right.

Moving has really provided a framework for decluttering. If it no longer brings me joy, it’s out the door. We’re ready to start fresh and only take the things we need and love with us to NC, so I’ve been selling a lot of home decor in my local online Facebook group. Parting with these items I used to love is easier knowing someone else will enjoy them.

That’s a pretty good list for the next two weeks, right? And don’t get me started on the yard tasks we need to complete. No really, don’t get me started. I hate weeding!