dean

I was going to try that, but the real estate agent said absolutely not. It sounded like a perfect plan to me, luckily I have a backup plan to hire a crew to come in and clean this pig sty.

Lainey

I figured as much...just Jerry being Jerry.

Lainey

I know you're kidding but the real estate person is right on target. I watch a lot of the house buying/house hunting type of shows. When they are walking through a house where the interior looks as if it needs power washing, I think I'd run for the hills.

I remember one house I looked at when we were house shopping. The place was a wreck, and the cabinets looked as if they had 40 years of grime on them. My sister has better "house vision" than I. She assured me the house had potential. We went back for a second look with a contractor who would have done some remodeling. There was a pleasant scent of cinnamon in the air...the old cinnamon in the oven trick....yet the house was a pit. The contractor flushed the toilet (didn't want to touch anything) with his foot and the back yard started bubbling up...bad septic among other things.

We offered a low figure to allow for renovations, our offer was refused and these people actually got FULL price a couple months later. The new owners "crawled" in within a week or two of the sale. ICK!

dean

Have you been peeking in my windows? I'm putting about $10K in repairs, replacements, etc., into this house to get it ready for market. Then I'm hiring a professional interior cleaning crew and an exterior cleaning crew. I'm doing the painting, some of the light cleaning, and the simpler repairs that I can do by myself. I'm tempted to have the house appraised again after all this stuff is done to see if there's an appreciable difference in values.