Back when I started to remodel the kitchen, folks kept asking me “Oh, so you’re getting ready to sell?”.
My response was “No, the kitchen just really needed a remodel.” (Not to bury the lede, but 2025 is the year we are going to list the house for sale.)
And I am sad that I did not remodel it sooner, as it came out nice, and I have enjoyed using it, but not as much as if it had been remodeled years and years ago.
The house in Texas, it is in Cedar Park (CP) specifically. A bedroom community northwest of Austin, TX. About 2-2.5 miles as crow flies north of Lakeline Mall. I bought it back in October of 2000, took possession on something like the 30th, sadly I had wanted to be in the house in time for a Halloween party, but I remember not being able to have one due to when I finally got the keys, might have even been possession on 31st.
When I moved out to Cedar Park, apparently it was the “boonies”, the 183 expressway didn’t come all the way up to 620, let alone there be a Tollway (also an expressway) that you could take all the way into CP and beyond. But it wasn’t too far away from where I had been living before, maybe another 10-15 minutes north. I could get pizza delivered and I was around 15 mintues away from anything I might need. Oh yeah, and only something like 20,000 people lived in CP at the time.
Cedar Park’s population has grown to around 77,000. Vast swaths of land that were once vacant fields or pastures for animals have been developed and now house apartments, businesses, and a seemingly odd number of car washes. (Seriously, we have A LOT of carwashes.)
My neighborhood dates back to the early 80s, based upon the data I’ve been looking at lately my house was built in 1983, mentally I had it noted as 1985, but close enough. The house was a bit of a fixer upper, but was totally liveable. While it isn’t quite public record, Texas is a non-disclosure state, but I’ve owned it since 2000 and paid about $127,000. The neighborhood was going for about that rate, but honestly my street, not a lot of sales have happened, and definitely many residents have been there for a while. But all my immediate neighbors have turned over, some more than once.
There was the whole adventure of having the backyard torn up by Atmos for their pipeline project. The sod they put down was initially very lush, and now well it looks a lot like the rest of the grass in the yard “Alive and a little thirsty”. I’ve long been a darwinistic gardner/landscaper, being survival of the fittest. Eg, I don’t water the lawn. I did make an expection while the sod was very new, given that they put it down at a HOT part of the year and I didn’t want it to die.
It has survived for the most part.
When I got the house, it originally had carpet. Now it has almost all tile, and by the time we sell it, it will have ALL tile.
When I got the house it had a screened porch, I think the previous owner put it in. They didn’t do a great job and ultimately it had to be removed. The deck, which I know they put in, it has held up fairly well. I’ve sealed/painted it a number of times over the course of ownership, the last time being in March of 2022.
I replaced the entire privacy fence that one time we almost moved to Wisconsin. Atmos replaced the back half of the fence when they were done, they had to rebuild like 200 fences as part of their project. The front of the fence needs a little TLC currently.
We put a new roof on in 2014 and had the house painted. The roof is still good, the paint is good, but the siding was a cheap wood siding and from 1983, so we are going to be replacing some of the siding.
I spent some time putting together a spreadsheet of all the things we’ve done to the house and the general age of major appliances, as to be able to have that for the listing.
When I bought the house in Tejas (being my first home purchase) the info packet they had for the open house, it mentioned some stuff, I think I still have it. But with that house they left me the dryer. I had to buy a washer and a fridge. The fridge I bought (knock wood) still works, it is our garage fridge. The washer I bought finally got died (after) being repaired a few times during it’s service. The dryer too shuffled off, but that was a while back. I’ve replaced the HVAC once, best I can find that was between 2007-2008, meaning it is OLD. However, I have maintained it very well (annual service contract) and most summers it is only working hard enough to cool the house to 80F.
When we bought the Michigan house (2013), the online listing mentioned the age of the roof, I remember that. But I don’t recall being given/presented with anything that resembled a list of appliances or anything. Which is kind of funny, as we bought the house with all the inside furniture, appliances, and TVs. We paid like $1 for them, I’ll have to look for that paperwork, maybe it had some details, but while I recall there being a list of items, I don’t recall a list with dates.
The third home, being the Ohio house (2020), we did get a better listing of things done to the house. It came with a fridge, but no washer or dryer. Gina managed the sale of that house and as I put it “Gina’s unlicensed real estate” handled the sale to her friend. She found a like FSBO type kit and worked through all the paperwork. We had done some minor fixes (and one major fix) before we sold it. The minor ones were like changing out some electrical outlets, changing out some bathroom fans (and notably getting them to vent outside vs into the attic), the big fix was that like 40% of the sewer plumbing was cast iron and needed to be changed out as the slope was an issue and causing us to have waste water backflow issues.
But with the Ohio house, we never did a showing. We skipped that bit.
This is different.
The Tejas house is fully furnished, so we shouldn’t have to do much in the way of staging, but I can see maybe changing up a few things, maybe having to rent or find cheap some furniture for the master bedroom to help finish painting the picture.
But the big stuff is the Master Suite. I’ve got tile given to me by a friend that I’ve been wanting to install in the Master Bedroom and Bathroom. Sadly my tile guy, his number is disconnected. He did good work and wasn’t too expensive, the contractors I am talking to about the shower. They do floor tile, but there is a slight premium in comparison. Oh yeah, again burying the lede. We need to remodel the bathroom. The tile install will be outsourced, the shower redo will be outsourced, but the cabinets, countertop, and sinks, I am going to handle that.
The plan is to try and reuse the sinks and faucets we have. My dad and I installed them shortly after I bought the house, and overall they have held up well. So to save a buck I want to reuse them. After redoing the whole kitchen, three base cabinets and a couple wall cabinets won’t be a big deal. Gina and I will need to get through the design aspect of the bathroom without me ending up 6ft under, but I am sure it will turn out OK.
There are somethings that I want to do that I might talk to a real estate agent first, like for instance. The bathroom has always lacked a certain amount of storage. I really like our medicine mirror/cabinet we have in Michigan. So I feel like it would be useful to install one of those for each sink, giving a real His/Hers feel. But I could also just seee installing some mirrors and saving $200.
Timetable at the moment is that June and July are too busy for us to do much. I might be able to come down in July and do some meetings, possibly be here for the exterior work to get completed. But at the end of July or beginning of August all of us would come down (dogs too) and work on the stuff we need to in the house, notably be there for the bathroom renovation.
The bathroom I expect to take about three weeks, from what I’ve read and what I discussed during initial estimates so far, 2 weeks is the absolute best case, but realistically need to budget three weeks of time.