The Vince Files » open house

Keeping our home tidy

Vince — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:00:10 +0000

Since our Open House, several groups have come to check out our place during the day while we were out. Some came for the open house and want to take a second look. Others missed the Open House completely.

There were 4 groups that came by yesterday, and one today, and another tomorrow. We’ve had to keep the place nice and tidy for our home’s visitors; no easy task for this household.

Open House day

Vince — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:01:40 +0000

Today was the big day. We finished our last-minute cleanups before our real estate agent arrived. She had scheduled our open house to be from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. So we took the opportunity to do some Open House hopping ourselves.

Anna plugged in some addresses into our Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS and we were on our way. We stuck strictly to Port Coquitlam with particular emphasis on the Riverwood community. We also stopped at some Open Houses as we stumbled on to them. Time flew quickly and before we knew it, it was time to head back.

When we got back, our real estate agent had a surprised look on her face as if to say, “you should have seen how many people came to look.” She had set up a sign-in sheet for people to sign as they came in and she counted 26 groups of people who came to visit. Wow – 26 groups in a 3-hour span is quite a few people. There’s even a prospective buyer who wants to come back on Tuesday so he/she can bring his/her parents.

Anyways, we’ll see how it goes. Now we just wait for the offers to come in.

Preparing for Open House

Vince — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:04:57 +0000

Now that our home is on the market and people are aware of our upcoming Open House, it’s time to clean up.

We actually rented a unit at the local Maple Leaf Storage. I took a lot of the boxes just sitting in the back of our tandem garage and brought them to the storage. These past couple of weeks, I’ve been parking the car outside as we shuffle stuff inside our garage. Also, my sister’s got some stuff in our garage that needs to be taken away. She also took a lot (and I do mean a lot) of Claire’s baby stuff like 2 high chairs, gate, toys, clothes. And she took an electric fan, and a portable air conditioner!

As for the inside, it’s been mostly general cleaning. I did, however, do some painting of areas that needed to be painted. But for the most part we haven’t done any major overhauls (e.g. replace carpet with laminate or hardwood). There were areas in our kitchen and bathroom that needed new caulking. And of course, I replaced our kitchen faucet. Yesterday, Friday, I took a vacation day from work to do further cleaning and painting.

For landscaping, we kept it simple. Anna de-weeded our backyard patio area as well as the planting areas in our front entrance. Our front entrance faces south and the Hostas there weren’t faring too well in the direct sunlight so she transplanted them to the back patio where it’s shaded. The Hostas are now thriving. We also bought some cheap, small flowering annuals to plant in our entrance and at the back. A bit of topsoil, mulch, and Miracle-Gro and we should be all set.

Now, we’re just into some last minute cleaning and removing any valuables and potentially dangerous items (think safety for your real estate agent) from the premises