House

[StaceyTX]

What do you love about your house?
What do you hate about your house?
What things will you absolutely not give up?
What things are you okay with giving up?

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Also, if you were selling a house, what would you do? Remember, I have a dog and he's getting old so he has accidents.

Replace flooring so the house shows well?
Shampoo carpets and keep linolium clean and offer a flooring allowance?
Right now the boys bedrooms are painted "colors", would you paint them neutral to show the house?


I'm sure I'll have more questions while we embark on this journey!!

[MarieL]

What do you love about your house?

I think the best thing is the neighborhood. Most people buy to stay and live here, so the neighbors all know the neighbors and look out for one another. The kids play up and down the block (it's a dog leg, so not a lot of traffic, just folks who live on the street).

What do you hate about your house?

Probably the old pipes/plumbing. One of these days, we'll have to replace the steel pipes with copper.

What things will you absolutely not give up?

Big kitchen....that was the one thing that sold me on this house. Also, I wanted a working fireplace and no concrete...had to be landscaped.

What things are you okay with giving up?

The house didn't have a family room, it would have been nice to have that in addition to the living room, but not a necessity.

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Also, if you were selling a house, what would you do? Remember, I have a dog and he's getting old so he has accidents.

Keep it as clean as possible...make sure it smells good.

Replace flooring so the house shows well?

Depends on what the flooring looks like...if it's really bad, I'd replace. If it looks pretty good, then clean it up and offer a flooring allowance.

Right now the boys bedrooms are painted "colors", would you paint them neutral to show the house? Yes, I probably would...depends on the colors, though...are they muted or strong? If muted, you could probably leave the paint, if strong, I'd paint the rooms off white.

[Mrs.H]

I LOVE all the woodwork in our house. I love all of the huge windows. I love our porch. (It's old fashioned and acts as another room in the summer. We even have a wooden porch swing.) I love the huge old trees all around.

I hate the lack of closet space. If we put on the addition we're talking about, we'll be adding a pantry, coat closet and mud room.

I would not give up an eat in kitchen and a dining room. I love to entertain and love having a dining room. I also love eating in the kitchen as a family.

I'd be okay with giving up the smaller size rooms that come with the coziness of an older home.

I'm not sure about the flooring. I'm sure a realestate agent would advise you on that.

As far as painting goes, I'd leave it. Even if you repaint, the new owners will probably have another idea for a color scheme.


Have fun with the process.

[StaceyTX]

Here are things we are looking for.

3 car garage
4+ bedrooms (I'd love 5)
2+ bathrooms (I really want a half bath for guests)
Linen closets (we don't have any and the "perfect" house I thought I had found didn't either)
A big eat-in kitchen (I want a dining room too, but we spend so much time in the kitchen, I want a big kitchen)
DH wants a big backyard (the house we looked at didn't have a large backyard and it was a no-go for him)

DH and I are leaning towards not replacing the flooring right now, just keeping it clean and smelling good (which we already do) and offering a flooring allowance.

The boys bedrooms are pretty strong colors. It matches their bedding, so it looks good. But I'm thinking neutral would be better. The rest of the house is pained a pale yellow.

[LandJ]

What do you love about your house? I love the location (why we bought it in the first place) and I love the backporch.
What do you hate about your house? Everything else about it
What things will you absolutely not give up? My fireplace. I gave that up once with the last house and hated not having one.
What things are you okay with giving up? Hmmm...have to think on that one.

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Also, if you were selling a house, what would you do? Remember, I have a dog and he's getting old so he has accidents.

Replace flooring so the house shows well?
Shampoo carpets and keep linolium clean and offer a flooring allowance?
Right now the boys bedrooms are painted "colors", would you paint them neutral to show the house?

I like strong colors if they look good so I'd probably keep them that way, but I know that's not what the "experts" say to do. And about the flooring....if your dh has time and the gumption consider Pergo. We ripped out our carpeting and put it down. Not difficult at all and it made such a huge, huge difference. We considered hardwood, but my bff and the Lowe's man talked us out of it since we had a young child and a dog. You CANNOT, no matter how hard you try, destroy a Pergo floor, lol.

[hopie]

What do you love about your house? We have 6 acres and live 500 feet from my mom

What do you hate about your house? We live in a mobile home. When we purchased the mobile home we had intentions of building a house in 5 years; however 12 years later we still have not built a house nor are we close to building. I think we have become content, but we do have regrets. Maybe one day

What things will you absolutely not give up? Acreage. We love not having neighbors in spitting distance or as my dh says farting distance.

What things are you okay with giving up? Not sure

[Robyne]

Love.....my new kitchen and our finished basement. We have done alot to our house and those are the biggest. I love how we have 2 acres and are surrounded by trees.

Hate...only 2 bedrooms...and a small living room/dining area. Wish our house was bigger. Wish we were in a neighborhood instead of a main road.

I would hate to give up my new kitchen.

[StaceyTX]

We found a really nice house last night but it only has 2 bathrooms. I really want either a 3rd bath or half bath.

[BetsyE]

Love - I love our neighborhood - lots of kids and I have made friends here. Love John's school. Really like the general flow of our main floor. Love that everything but our master on the main floor is hardwood. If i had the money I would rip the rest of the carpeting out and replace with wood. Love my big kitchen. Love the storage space.

Hate - I hate our yard. We are on a hill and we do have woods behind our house that will never be built on which is awesome, but our backyard had a slant to it and it is useless for kicking soccer ball around and such. Didn't think of this when we bought before having John. Also, our backyard is not really landscaped and it is looking very tired these days and needs a makeover badly. I won't say 'hate' but I really dislike my countertops - they are white laminate. I long for granite - dh says maybe this year. I hate the shiny brass hardware in my master bath and all the door knobs in the house. Back when we bought it was still in style.

Absolutely not give up? My big kitchen. Attached garage so I never have to run thru the rain or scrape icy window, lol. Fireplace - i would miss that. Neighborhood with kids - I might consider changing neighborhoods (MAYbe) but would have to choose a place with kids John's age.

Wouldn't mind giving up - Don't want to give up anything, lol! Our house fits us really well. The things I want to change are really upgrades, not major additions or anything.

What to do with your floors?
Hmm - depends on how bad they look I guess. Most people don't want to have to come in and renovate - but giving them a floor allowance is cool too.

Boys rooms -
What does your agent say? I would think if it is dark and specifically matches bedding you might want to paint over it since no one else is going to have that bedding. I would think large majority of people are not going to want to keep it, so you are making work for them they might not be up for.

[Andi3]

[COLOR="Blue"]What do you love about your house?

I'm thinking.....used to love that it was so big but that was before triplets. I do like that it's brick for the most part. Also in a good neighborhood. It has a nice sunporch.

What do you hate about your house?

I don't like that the kitchen is too small. I wanted an eat-in kitchen but didn't get one. You can see our table from the front door and it's oon carpet rather than something that would be easier to clean spills from. Also, the house has LOTS of doors in the bedrooms. We can only put our bed in one place basically because 3 of the 4 walls have doors on them. One of the walls only has about 3 feet of it that doesn't have a door.....makes furniture placement tough. I'm in a bedroom now and it has 3 full size doors (to enter, closet and bathroom) and a smaller one for the furnace. How do you decorate around that???

What things will you absolutely not give up?

I would definitely need at least as much space as we have now. Need to have a fenced in yard. Need to have a good school for the kids. Need at least a 2 car garage, though 3 would be better for all the bikes and toys.

What things are you okay with giving up?

I would give up our fireplace, we've only used it once and it doesn't warm the room at all. Also, the laundry shute is easier than carry everything downstairs but I end up carrying all the kids stuff anyway and find that the clothes stay nicer when they are put in a basket rather than tossed down the shute and missing the hamper I have at the bottom.
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Also, if you were selling a house, what would you do? Remember, I have a dog and he's getting old so he has accidents.

Replace flooring so the house shows well?
Shampoo carpets and keep linolium clean and offer a flooring allowance?
Right now the boys bedrooms are painted "colors", would you paint them neutral to show the house?

Can you limit the dog to a room or two? If not every day, maybe just 3 days each week and specify that house can only be shown on those days. Also if you can have the dog outside or away from the house for showings it might help. When we were looking for houses seeing a dog always made us more critical of details....did he scratch the window panes, doors, etc.

I think I'd shampoo the carpet and think about offering an allowance for floors depending on how they look. The walls, however I would paint. We saw one house and were totally turned off by the colors of the kids room. One was bright red cowboy theme and the other I think was a dark blue. Didn't want to deal with having to try to cover the dark colors.

I'm sure I'll have more questions while we embark on this journey!!

Good luck,

Andi
g/b/g
6 yo triplets