Holly’s Weblog

well, recycling, really… The paver installer came yesterday with his little bobcat and was excavating all the asphalt. He called and asked when the junk in the backyard would be removed…darn it…we were hoping he could get rid of it. So Andrew and I went to the house and Andrew backed the truck down the driveway and we filled bags and boxes with styrofoam and cardboard (the little stuff that could blow away) and lots of other boxes were flattened, bits of metal scraps and plastic bags that all the products come in, took away the old front door and scraps of plywood and stuff like that. Filled the entire bed up to the roof! They take everything except appliances, electronics and liquids. I was amazed that they take everything else! Rick and I had actually argued about it…he was right and I was wrong and here it is in writing for everyone to see – write it down on your calendar cuz it don’t happen too often

Anyway, that was a relief cuz now there are but a few things to get rid of – we didn’t know whether to get rid of the old siding or not and there was a pallet we didn’t see until we’d already packed it all up. And it only cost $66.xx!! Wow…at that rate we will never get back our stupid CDDD (Construction Demolition Debris Deposit). We had to pay the City of San Jose about $3000 and then we give them receipts from our trip to the dump/recycling and we get reimbursed for our receipts. Its supposed to help people recycle vs just dumping the stuff. Since you pay to have it dumped OR you pay to have it recycled and if you recycle some money is returned to you. But there is no way will we have $3000 worth of receipts! And we recycled virtually everything! The asphalt and metal roof might make a difference, I suppose. The metal roof we gave to the roofing workers to recycle (they appreciated it!). I dunno…

Anyway, I’m glad that’s done and more landscape work will happen tomorrow. I scheduled the appliance installation guys for Tuesday and the cleaners come on Thursday and Friday to work on the inside. They can’t clean the outside until after the landscape is done so that will happen the next week. We’ll begin staging the weekend of Feb 6. We might actually be ready for sale by Valentine’s Day. We are thinking of having the open house party the following weekend. I can’t believe it!!!!!!!! wow

We actually have to remember to turn off the lights when we leave! Hard to believe that we did without them for so long.

Rick has been creating blocks of wood that slant with the siding so that the outside lights have a more vertical base rather than an angled one (due to the angle of each plank of siding)…while there is a product that does this, its more for east coast houses with siding of a certain distance between them and ours was done to match the existing siding so its a further distance – naturally! Poor guy…not hard to do but tiresome. And, apparently, the lightbulbs we bought (at $2 per light) are so cheap that they are buzzing in the fixtures – there weren’t a lot of options of bulbs at the store, we just bought one that was a good price and, we thought, a good name…NOT! phooey…

The electrician is working diligently and the plumber guys are working, but not so diligently…when the boss is away, the mice spend a lot of time chatting with each other while they are installing a sink or what-have-you.  Or maybe I just don’t realize how long it takes to install things…shrug…

The landscape is now a week behind schedule…thanks to the rain. They are supposed to begin demo of the old asphalt tomorrow afternoon.

Its easy to get irritated about all this because I want to be DONE and on to the next phase…the last few things feel like they take forever!

And, of course, 2 of the latches for the sliding glass doors are missing…I have to find them or find replacements… aargh…they are only about 2.5″ x 1.5″ so they are easy to overlook.

Still, things are looking more and more finished every day! And when its done, we’ll start looking for our next project! Providing, of course, that this one sells and gives us our investment back

Sunday we went to a consignment store and an antique store and found some very good deals on furniture. After meeting with Ron on Saturday, I put all my staging ideas onto a spreadsheet and figured out what I needed to get. I knew exactly what to look for!

We bought a beautiful marble-topped buffet for staging the dining room that we can use at the office afterwards. I’d looked for a buffet for the office about 5 years ago to use as a coffee bar but ended up using an Art Deco piece from home that didn’t fit the era of the office at all, so now I’ve got a perfect replacement.

We found a marble-topped round table to use in the master bedroom, as sort of a ‘reading nook’ space.

We found a little round table with a top of inlaid wood in the design of a chess board. Rick wants to use that in the living room and actually get chess pieces for it.

Finally, we bought a dining room set – table and 6 chairs. If you’ve been to our house you know that our current oak set is falling apart after about 20 years of use. The new table seats 6 and, with 2 leaves, we could sit 10 if we squished a bit. We will use the old oak set in the office kitchen, although some of the chairs are broken so they are headed for the dump, I guess.

Every item was on sale and most of them were at least 60% off, otherwise we wouldn’t have made the purchases. You should have been there while Rick and I ‘discuss’ whether to buy because I’m so darn cheap and I know that the oak set could have lasted another few years!

But, we have to stage the house and that costs a bundle, believe me. When we did our old house in 2007, it cost $1800 for the first month (and that’s with me negotiating every point) and $1000 per month after that – we sold the house in 3 weeks so we didn’t have to keep house staged, thank God. Us buying all this furniture cost less than that and we get to keep the furniture. Pretty good, eh? The antique store, which has consignment stuff from many dealers, said we’d made their weekend!

I’m looking for rattan furniture to stage the family room. Once the staging is over, we’ll use that in our own family room and get rid of the pathetic-looking couch and love seat that we have in there now.

Today, Rick is at the house, working with the ‘finish’ guys. They poked 2 large holes in the laundry room, looking for the outlet for the ironing board that mounts on the wall – who pays to fix that? He still has tilework to do at the fireplaces and that basement floor will be a horrible task – will look excellent when its done but, still, its a lot of work. I’m going to get all the serial numbers off the appliances so we can process our rebate – I don’t even remember how much that is, $500? Every little bit helps.

The bamboo flooring is finished! Had a bit of an upset the other day when the installer calls and says that we are short about 4 bundles of bamboo and need to get some more. OK, I think…I call the supplier and he has some in stock, yay! So Rick picks it up and takes it to the house, upon which time we discover that its from a different mill and so a different color… aargh… so I call around and find a branch of the supplier in Concord (no thanks to the original store) which has some of the product from the same mill but a different ‘run’ date. This means that the flooring might not match exactly but will be closer in color than the other stuff – which was beautiful but dark compared to the 85% that had already been laid down. Its over an hour to get to the store but the flooring matches close enough so I race back to the house with the bundles in the back of my car and the guys finish the installation, finessing the slightly different boards together so you don’t even notice a thing…they are talented, they are.

The landscape guys have been hired and they begin demo late next week! The electrician and the plumber will be in sometime next week to finish the installation of their products and then the appliance guys will install those and then we’ll have the cleaners come in and make the place sparkling!

Oh, yes, Rick still has to finish some tile work but he’ll work around everyone else.

The fliers are almost all gone from the box on the side fence at the front of the driveway. This means there are a lot of lookiloos out there…this is OK, cuz you never know where a buyer will come from!

We’ll have help with the staging portion of the job, because Rick’s brother, Ron, will work with us…and he has an ‘in’ on where to get some furniture and decorating items that we could use. Ingrid did say that Cort, a furniture rental place, also has a staging department…

Speaking of which, I am now fully LICENSED as a real estate salesperson!!! whoopee! I can hardly believe that I did it. So, now I’ll be contacting Intero and signing up for all the stuff – signs, business cards, picture, web page. I have my own website now – www.hollyhartman.com – it became available so I nabbed it – years ago I’d looked into it but it was taken…by a 12 year old… I figure she’s married now and didn’t need it anymore. And I have to join the realtor board and sign up for this, that and the other. I’m so excited!!!