Open House

So, this weekend.  I had an idea of what to expect for the weekend, from getting home from work on Friday until bedtime on Sunday.  Often, I'm pretty right on as to what to expect.  Occasionally, I'm so far off the mark, I wonder why I even tried to guess.  This weekend was someplace in the middle, though it was definitely a little closer to the "occasionally" than the "often."  

Here's what I envisioned.  Friday night I'd get home, we'd start cleaning and doing some of the last minute things we needed to do to be ready for Sunday's open house.  Saturday, we'd get up and start work right away.  We'd work all morning, finishing up sometime early afternoon leaving the rest of Saturday to decompress.  Sunday we'd get up, do a walk through to make sure we didn't miss anything, pack up the cats and head off to Trader Joe's in Hadley, Ma while the open house was going on.  We'd come home, find we have a buyer and celebrate.

Here's how the weekend went.  Friday night I did laundry.  That was it for chores.  Saturday I got up and started straight in on the work.  And worked.  And worked.  And worked.  And worked.  We started from the second we got up until well after dark.  I figure we put in a good 11 or 12 hours in total.  Sunday, I got up at 5:45 like normal, went for my walk, did grocery shopping and got home in time to put in another few hours of touch ups and stuff.  At 1, we packed up the cats and headed out.  Our plan to head to Trader Joe's fell through when we realized our open house was three hours long, not four.  The ride out there is about 90 minutes plus shopping time.  There was no way we were going to spend any extra time in the car with Lucy than we had to.  She cries non-stop in the car.  Instead we kept it local.  Which is probably a good thing because about 30 minutes into our travels, Lucy peed in her cat carrier.  Hurrah!  And about two hours in, Ollie vomited in his.  Twice we had to stop to clean out carriers.  We got home at 4 and found the open house actually went pretty well.  We had about 8 parties show up for it.  One of the parties arrived early, left to meet their agent (who was running her own open house) and came back to show her.  They're interested and I'm thrilled by that.  I'm hoping they want to make an offer.  If not, we have two showings lined up for the coming week so far.  There's interest in the house and that makes me happy.  Our open house comments were almost universally positive.  The one consistent negative comment was about our house's location.  As I've said before, our back yard abuts a Taco Bell.  Not the ideal neighbor for most, I think, but someone will find that a positive (I hope.)

Although this was a VERY trying weekend, I'm happy it's winding down and I feel pretty good about everything.  The house looks amazing, probably better than it's ever looked.  There is interest in the house and that makes me feel good.  And even though we still have more work to do, it's possible that I'll be getting at least part of my weekends back again.