Ohh, and we have to clean out that dang garage. It’s still full of stuff. We never get to clearing out the garage until after the house is sold - I don’t know why. We need to clear it out and get it painted.
vanity looks MUCH better!
The “details” – ummm, like an entire deck – really make a big difference. And I agree, the vanity look much, much better.
Yes on the vanity! Deck is awesome, and so are the other details. Love the metal post for handrail.
I should have painted that vanity the day the granite went on top - it looked so horrible and I just couldn’t stand it. But nooooo… twilight photos were in 2 hrs and big photos next day. I just could not take it all apart, there wasn’t enough time. But, I could have torn it apart a week ago and I should have.
vanity looks good. can you briefly explain the steps you took to paint it? thinking of doing similar to my similar situation.
Wow–the house much more polished and finished than when you were rushing to have photos and open house. Love the deck and newly painted vanity. All those touches are so lovely and add a lot!
So the house is open for showing again starting tomorrow?
Are there Open Houses scheduled for this weekend? (Sorry; you probably said all this.)
And the new heat registers are great…much nicer than those old ones.
Place looks really complete.
Steps to paint vanity
This was a brand new vanity so I did not need to worry too much about old dirt/grease/stuff.
Took off doors and drawers amd unscrewed hinges from vanity (taped screws to each hinge - very important!!)
Took off toilet paper holder and cabinet handles/taped screws to each item
Taped everything off carefully against the wall and along the edge of the granite with the big wide Green Frog tape - this first set of tape provides the clean edge to paint against
Then taped paper along wall on top of the green tape and plastic all over floor and everything near it.
If not a brand new vanity, clean with a solution of TSP and water. Then rinse with clean water
Lightly sand with 150 grit sand paper (I use the sponge sand things, easier) along the grain lines, if possible
I sprayed with 2 cans of Cover Up oil-based white primer. Very light spray of primer. My painter swears that oil based primer really makes the paint stick. Let dry for at least 24 hours
Then sand with a 220 sanding sponge very lightly and clean dust off with a rag
Here’s where it gets tricky… you need a really good paint sprayer for cabinets or doors. If you cannot get the paint sprayer… roll with the most expensive 6" size roller cover that is specifically for ‘cabinets and doors’. First, paint in the nooks and crannies with a paint brush. Then follow over it lightly with a foam brush to get rid of paint brush lines. Then everywhere else possible, use the roller.
The $999,000 price drop just hit the MLS. We will be open for showings tomorrow, but I really don’t expect a rush
We are cleaning tomorrow morning and cannot move the furniture into living room until noon.
Professional photographer is coming back at 1:30pm to take new photos of downstairs bathroom and views out to new deck. We are also going to try to capture a sunset shot Friday evening and load all these into the MLS by Saturday morning.
Why was the price lowered?
Because it has been 2 weeks and no bites at the original asking price. This means we have gone through the entire pent up buying pool and we need to generate new interest with buyers looking for ‘under a million’. I couldn’t hold out any longer.
My new slogan is “Panoramic water views for under a million!!”
The vanity looks really good - wise decision!
You bought a house in SD as a new resident…from elsewhere. How did you find your house? Where did you look?
I agree that this is the audience CB needs.
Ah, well, I’m probably not the typical out-of-town buyer. We’d vacationed here quite a bit in the past. Then in early 2012 we rented two different VRBO houses for a month each - one on Point Loma, and one in Del Mar. We wanted to get a real feel for what it was like to live here. I had made contact with a local Realtor and had been following the market in our price range at that time. We heavily investigated all the potential neighborhoods, drove by tons of homes, and were shown a variety to get an idea of the price ranges.
Then this and that happened and the move moved to low priority for three years. But I stayed on the MLS feed that the Realtor had set me up on (she was wonderful, kept in touch all along) and kept an eye on the market in our neighborhoods of interest to see what the prices were doing. Finally last fall everything was coming together and I knew if we didn’t move, we never would. So we sold our house last December to a developer with a six month post possession agreement and moved into high gear on our search.
We came out to San Diego last December and looked at the houses that seemed to fit our criteria. The inventory was a bit low but we knew the prices had been going up and weren’t slowing down. In the end, we didn’t want anything at that time so kept watching the market and sending our Realtor out on anything that looked like a potential as soon as it hit the market. I was making floor plans based on photos and her descriptions! And I made contact with an angel out here who made it her goal to check out everything we were interested in to gauge the potential. So we had two people with eyes on the ground.
We bid on three houses long distance and were outbid on all of them. We also tried making offers on a couple of houses in contingency. We kept raising our limit. Finally this house came back on the market - it had been on the MLS before, originally DH didn’t want a house with a pool so we passed, then first buyer couldn’t get financing. When it came back on, we took another look and realized at that point this was it; nothing else was available - otherwise we’d end up having to rent. After a bit of negotiation (and the not inconsiderable fact that our Realtor had grown up with the husband of the couple selling), our offer was accepted. We flew out during the inspection period to make sure we actually liked the house in person - first time we saw it.
Other than having one less bedroom/study/office/whatever than we wanted, this house is working out beautifully. The location is perfect for everything we want to do and DH has decided a pool is OK (maybe because everyone who sees it raves about it).
Way more than you wanted to know, @thumper1 ! Short answer - we found this house because I was obsessively tracking the MLS several times a day.
But… you found the house from out of town and actually put in an offer sight unseen. You were not going around to Open Houses every weekend because you were not in town.
So, the key for you was that you engaged a local realtor who set up a San Diego MLS feed to your email. So, you would have been a client of one of the agents that came through my house to ‘preview’.
Did your agent look at houses/send houses above your price range? Just in case it might have been a perfect fit and you would try to put in a low offer?
Yes, the key for us was the local agent. She knew what we wanted and what we could spend - she did suggest a few places above our price range because she knew the market was rising when we were looking and that we would probably have to go up. But she let us come to that realization ourselves. I was tracking so closely that I often contacted her before she could contact me when a new house hit the MLS. We kept raising our limit since we decided we didn’t want to settle on other neighborhoods.
Our agent was out of La Jolla so I don’t think she did the Point Loma previews - but she made it to every house of interest within a day of our contact.
We did put in a low offer on the first house (on Mendocino) but that house went well over listing. It had 4 bedrooms! We learned our lesson! Our other offers were at or slightly above list. Our agent also set us up with a local mortgage guy so we could be pre-qualified with a local lender.
We get the WSJ but I don’t think an ad there would have drawn us into an out-of-town market because I was very comfortable with the online MLS feed.
I do know that when we were out here in 2012, multiple offers were coming in during open houses.
I can’t understand not wanting a pool. In that climate especially, I would really, really want one.
Upkeep