Ode to Gregory part 1 -out with the old

Who is gregory you ask? My house, hubs and I named him after Gregory house MD... What? People name their cars - I can name my house!

It seems weird to write a love letter to my house, but I do a lot of weird things so why not add this to the list?

1 year and 1 day ago I moved from the only address I'd ever known to a smaller house across town. The reality of it was that it was a purely financial decision (well moving was - this house was kismet - we'd already decided on a town house). There was no way we could afford to keep "the big house" between the mortgage, taxes, utilities and upkeep we were falling deeper and deeper into debt (between $1000 and $1500 A MONTH). Hubs never would have suggested we sell it - it was after all the place I was born, fortunately for a VERY short time I saw an extremely frank psychiatrist who was like "regardless of money you will never heal in that house, add in that you can't afford it and it will kill you before you foreclose". I went home talked to hubs and within a week was getting the house ready for sale.

Selling it was --- hard? I was not worried about the building but the STUFF inside. We knew we would be downsizing and I was a packrat. The emotions of getting rid of things "that mom had _____" (bought, touched, or looked at) but slowly with the help of a stager that our realtor recommended we went through every last thing! We cleared our cluttered >2000 square foot house & painted and FINALLY put the beast up for sale. We priced it fairly (enough for us to find a town house in a town we would like - we had been pricing and looking at them and pay off our mortgage) and had an (accepted) offer within 4 days (really the first day but we couldn't formally accept because we had posted an open house for the weekend and we were obligated to have it).

Then it was the torture of inspections and title 5 and every other tedious thing that could go wrong! Ohhh roof that decides to leak and I have to repair? Check! Ohhh propane line I hit with the lawn mower for the first time ever and have to replace? Check... This list sadly goes on and on.

Meanwhile we were house hunting. But I think I'll leave that for part 2!

*****note all these pictures were taken AFTER staging - and all my stuff was in storage :-)

+++have you ever sold a house?+++