ReSET to ReSELL - Your style isn't for everyone and other real estate mysteries solved!

Heeeey! Welcome to my six part series on one of the ways you can get the MOST value out of your home sale! Follow me as we spend the next 5 months executing our plan to reset all the rooms in our house, pack everything we own, and move to San Antonio, TX!

My name is Robin and I am the Director of Operations for Verity Group Real Estate. My other titles include "Fixer of Everything", "Chaos Coordinator" and "Chief Reminder Officer", just to name a few. I wear lots of hats, but my favorite hat is planning, organizing and moving the needle forward on any project that comes my way, or ones I create out of thin air. Sometimes unnecessarily, but that's another blog for another day. 

My husband and I live in a three story townhouse in Norfolk. We moved in 5 years ago and when we did, we combined two households. We have a lot of.... stuff. I have eclectic tastes. I love color splashed on top of my neutrals. I also have zero compunction about attaching things to the wall, in the most efficient, if not the most logical, method possible. And every room in our house is a different color. For example... our garage is almost 800sqft and a home gym takes up most of the space. It is also painted lime green and grey. I LOVE IT!! But I also know.... it's not for everyone! In order to get our home into selling shape, we've got some work to do. We're going to take the house back to neutral a couple rooms at a time until we're ready to sell in May. We also need to DECLUTTER. When potential buyers are looking at photos of our home on the internet, I want them to be able to envision THEIR stuff in this space. And, since I'm not into creating stress for myself, we made a plan. This is the rough sketch of what we decided:

January: 

Half bath on the main floor ✅

Primary bath

February:

Both offices (this is going to SUCK)

March:

Order and fill a POD

Living room/upper stairway

April:

Garage (this is also going to suck, LIME GREEN!! What was I thinking?!)

May:

Primary Bedroom

Any other rooms/spaces remaining

January, Round One

The half bath was the first room we tackled. It took about 6 hours from start to finish. And we weren't working the whole 6 hours. Some of that was waiting for paint to dry, catching up on games, food prep, etc. I didn't take "before" photos, but I found some from a couple of years ago. They are mostly accurate. This is what it looked like when we started on Saturday:

And yes, the poster is the inspiration for the color scheme. I saw that poster on Etsy and I laughed so hard at the look on his face I had to have it. Don't judge me! 😂 We had to remove the peel and stick wallpaper, which wasn't as annoying as I was afraid it would be. It came down pretty easily. We sprayed it with half vinegar and half hot water and scrubbed it. It mostly became less sticky? We sanded it a little and prepped it for paint. Once we had everything taken down, we patched holes, sanded and took the door down. We cut in and then put on two coats of Sherwin Williams Duration (Satin) in Gray Screen. It's the same color we used for most of the walls in the house. 

But, what's the point of this? What's the first thing you see in the above photos?? That GLORIOUS turquoise wallpaper? The adorable disgruntled dragon? Giant metal flowers? Yeah, that's what I see too. That's why it's there. BUT! That's not what we want potential buyers to see. We want buyers to see THEIR stuff in our house. We want buyers to see potential. We want buyers to see guests coming in to this half bath with their decorations in it and remarking how cute it is. So, we streamline. We declutter. We bring it back to neutral.

Halfway through (yes, my lightbulb is out. I'm working on it):

With two of us.... apart from it being a smallish space and running into each other every ten seconds..... It took 6 hours over two days. Here is the end result:

Simple, neutral and clean. I admit, I can't get rid of the metal flowers. And my toilet paper dispenser sits vertical now because we acquired a cat. IYKYK! 🐈‍⬛🧻

Come back at the end of January for Part Two where we reset the primary bathroom.... you know, the one that has silver metallic wallpaper and black wall paint? Yeah, that one. 

See you soon!

Robin