We Bought a House and Sold a House and Nobody Died

First, we spent SO MUCH MONEY and SO MUCH TIME getting the house ready to sell. People do not tell you how expensive it is to SELL a house. I was assuming we would just put it on Zillow and Redfin and people would come and 7 days later the house would belong to somebody else.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHA. No.

We did make one excellent decision though and that was to hire a ROCK STAR agent. He had us do all our inspections ahead of time and it was probably the best thing we did in all of this mess other than making the backyard look the way we’ve wanted it to look for 13 years but never put the money into.

PROTIP: Spend the money to make the house look the way you want. Stop fucking around and just do it.

The universe was looking out for my sanity and the house sold in 7 days almost exactly to the hour from when it first hit the MLS listings. In that 7 days our lives looked like this:

5:00AM – I get up, start some laundry, shower, get dressed, clean up Ready Room.
6:00AM – I start working.
7:00AM – Ben gets up, makes bed, showers, cleans bathroom, picks up bedroom, and heads downstairs to feed the dogs. He dusts, picks up poop, sprays side yard with pee enzyme spray, and blows/cleans up leaves.
9:00AM – I take my first 15 minute break. Move laundry to dryer, pick up dog poop and spray side yard with pee enzyme spray, clean up any kitchen mess, vacuum if I have time.
11:00AM – Ben takes dogs to daycare. I take lunch and vacuum again, mop the floors, dust more, and take down both baby gates we use for the dogs.
1:00PM – I take another break from work. Put any dog beds and the dog stairs in the back of my car. Possibly vacuum again. Finish up any laundry I had started that morning.
2:00PM – Depending on the day I would either work on deep cleaning things or we would have to leave the house if we had showings. House was available for showings between 2:00 – 6:00 daily. If we had showings I had to put Romanoff and the litter box in my car and hide all of her beds, food, and water.
5:50PM – Pick up dogs.
6:00PM – Put all baby gates back up. Let pissed off Romanoff back in the house.
ALL EVENING – Vacuum, work on any house projects, find more things to clean, eat dinner (We haven’t cooked at home since we put the house on the market. We’ve had a brand new stove top for 2 weeks AND I HAVE NEVER GOTTEN TO USE IT.) Stay on top of poop and dog pee outside.
8:00PM – Go to bed. Spend all night tossing and turning and being convinced nobody is going to buy our house.

Rinse/Repeat every day.

On the weekend we had to be out of the house most of the day so we got up and cleaned like crazy people then left with cat in tow while the dogs were at daycare. Thankfully we were able to hang out in Ben’s lab one day (Romanoff was NOT a fan of lab life), and then some friends let us hang out at their place on Sunday and Romanoff found a nice comfy pile of blankets to sleep on in one of their closets. She was much more happy with that arrangement.

BUT! The house is SOLD.

There were several moments when I wanted to strangle Ben. LOVINGLY. And there were several moments where I could see smoke start to drift from his ears when talking to me. But we would come back within minutes and apologize and the other person would also apologize and then we would both agree that this is HARD and it is okay to be frustrated and a bit short.

Communication! Our old therapist would totally high five us in these situations. Then bill us $270 and give us homework.

Again, all of this was ONLY possible because we hired a very seasoned and amazing agent. If I had one piece of advice to give when selling a house it would be to hire a Pat. Pat started out very diplomatically guiding us down this road but we soon let him know to just be brutally honest about the house and what we needed to do and he did that… kind of. He was the perfect amount of tenderly honest but also kind and funny and just SO on top of everything and never once complained about any of the like 23,482,342 emails we sent him at all hours of the day and night. One day when we were coming back to the house after getting some food he was out front weeding our sidewalk! He was every bit as invested in us selling our home as we were and that showed from the very first conversation.

NOW! We are in a 5 day period where a buyer can back out. Ben caught a flight to Austin to attend the F1 race, a plan he made months and months ago but somehow happened at the perfect time. I am going to take the weekend to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Honestly, I plan on GLORIOUS SLEEP and Netflix and finally getting to cook myself a meal on our (for 25 more days) beautiful new cooktop.

Then, the Moving Stress can begin!

I will miss this house, I will really miss our amazing neighbors, I will miss Gilroy, she has treated us well. But I am so excited to live in a whole new area and all of the fun exploring it will lead to.

Dixon bound in around 25 days!