A Fine Mess

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One of my favorite Laurel and Hardy movies is called The Music Box. The basic premise of the movie is Stan and Oliver are hired to deliver a piano to a house. The house happens to be at the top of a hill, at the end of a very long stairway. Naturally after getting the piano halfway up the stairs, a series of incidents cause it to go crashing back down to the street below. But the guys persevere, and eventually get the piano all the way up to the landing, right in front of the house. That's when the postman comes by and informs them that there is a road they could have taken right up to the house. They did all that work for nothing.

So as of last Friday my house has been back on the market. If you remember I took it off the market back in October and began a project of sprucing the place up so that it might sell. I spent around ten weeks or more painting the outside of the house. Ten weeks of pain and suffering because within two days of starting, I screwed up my ankle going up and down the ladder. Still, I managed to do the job and it looks pretty good. After painting the house, I drained the swimming pool so that I might patch up some spots and give that a couple of coats of swimming pool paint. That took me four weeks because of the torrential rains that managed to come along just as the patching material was setting. I had to dig out the patches twice and redo them. On the third attempt I used quick setting concrete to foil Mother Nature. After that I painted the pool, two coats, and had a horrendous argument with Mark about whether or not I should do a third coat. That was the argument where Mark threw a lawn statue into the empty pool, shattering it on the bottom of the pool I had just painted.

All in all, it turned out really nice. The house looks fresh and clean, the swimming pool sparkles, and the hundred dollars worth of plantings I put out in the yard make the finishing touch. So bring on the real estate agents, the lookers, those thinking of buying, and the rich investors with money. The house is for sale! Or I should say, was for sale. It took only four days for me to get two offers. Two very good offers at that. The listing is now suspended because I accepted one of those offers. And the offer I accepted was from a guy who toured the place last year but did not make an offer at the time. Here is the kick in the ass about the whole thing. The guy did not come back and tour the house again. He made his offer based on what he saw last year. Last year, before I busted my ass painting the house and patching up the swimming pool. I did all that work for nothing.