She had some staging comments but nothing unexpected.  The greatest piece of advice she gave us was to not drop the price, but instead to update the kitchen.  The reason we hadn’t done that was we thought it would be too much money and still might not get us a buyer.

Here’s a before picture of the kitchen:

Our new Realtor assured us we could accomplish a kitchen face lift for cheap and she even had a small army of contractors that could do the work at very good prices.  The first thing on the list was granite counter tops.  I am not a big fan of granite, but if that’s what the buyer’s want, then fine, granite they could have.

We thought it would be $3,000-$5,000 for granite but the estimate including installation came in at $1,900.  Done.

We had to hire a carpenter to level the cabinets and add a little more support to a few of them.  That didn’t cost much.

Here’s a picture of the cabinets after the carpenter did his magic and leveled them and created supports for the heavy granite.

At this point the new wood floor was installed.  That was also less than expected.  For a factory finished hardwood, we paid $1100 installed.  And it looked amazing.

I then headed down to IKEA to buy some new appliances.  We got the Nutid oven, the Eldig cooktop, and the Luftig range hood.  Pretty good deal for under $1300.

Our existing dishwasher was fine, and we decided to get a refrigerator off of Craigslist to save several hundred dollars.  We found a good stainless Frigidaire for $400.

The existing cabinets in the kitchen were made from 200 year old attic boards, so we felt that they needed to be saved.  They were looking a bit tired, but otherwise were fine.  Plus, they were huge, so ripping them out wouldn’t have added a lick of functionality.  Our realtor brought over a can of gel stain that had poly in it and suggested I try that in the dents and cracks to bring out the distressed areas.  I did some internet research and discovered that distressed (“reclaimed”) wood is all the rage.  Ok, I thought, but let’s take it up a notch.   More dents = better!

I got a handfull of nails, screws, bolts and other miscellany and wrapped it up in a cloth and proceeded to beat the crap out of the cabinets (and the few pieces of new wood that were added by the carpenter).    Then I applied the gel stain and was amazed at how great the cabinets looked.  It really brought them back to life.

Here’s a picture with the finished look on the right and the unfinished on the left. It’s kind of hard to tell at this point that they were going to look good.

The cabinets ended up looking amazing. It was risky bashing them with blunt metal objects, but it really paid off.

Here are some after pictures:

Total cost of kitchen renovation was just under $6000.
Appliances from Ikea: $1300
Craigslist fridge:  $400
Wood Floor: $1100
Granite Counter tops $1900
Sink:$200
Faucet:$180
Carpentry:  $350
Electrical:  $300
Plumbing: $50

We received an offer when we were still in the middle of renovations, and they hadn’t even seen the finished product.  We closed in less than a month and were super happy with our decision.  I think dropping the price $10,000 would have  been a mistake.  It turned out to be a much better idea to spend $6,000 on the kitchen.  It breathed new life into the house and got it sold!

We moved into our tiny house in Freeport two weeks ago and couldn’t be happier.  We are almost unpacked and everything fits just fine.  I’ll post some pictures when we are completely unpacked in another week.   We are having house guests mid-August so we have a deadline looming to keep us motivated!

Where have my dreams gone?

But then over the next few weeks I relaxed into it and the ideas started flowing. As of today, I have about 62 items on the list. They include many travel destinations (Machu Picchu, the monasteries at Meteroa, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (thanks Dan!)) as well as things that I’ve already done but now want to do with my kids (swim with dolphins).

I am lucky that I’ve already done many things that would have been on this list (skydiving, living in a foreign country, backpacking around Europe) but that means I have to dig deep to come up with more things to do.

It’s been fun trying to push myself to add items to the list. My husband is writing his own list, too and it’s great when some of our items match (we both want to have a beer with Mike Rowe) And it’s also very cool when some don’t (an African safari?). We’ll both get to have even more adventures helping each other to check items off of our lists.

I was surprised by one item that I wrote down. Run a 10K. Until I wrote it down, I hadn’t realized that it was already on the list in my head. I’ve run 5K races but my conscious mind told me that 10K is just too far. But is it really?

So, last month I committed myself to run the Beach to Beacon this year. And despite the registration snafu that occurred, I was able to get a spot. I’m still hoping that the registration issues will be worked out and my husband and our friends will be able to run as well for team Colby Co.

I’ve been running consistently since the beginning of the year and I still have 4 1/2 months to train. I’ve been running on a treadmill, but starting today (supposed to be 55 degrees out!), I will run outside as much as possible. I’m hoping to do 3 1/2 miles outside today.

It just doesn’t work.  What does work is doing one thing at a time and actually getting them done.

One at a time.

Focused attention and action.

Shut off the email.  Put the phone away.  Close your office door.

Start first thing in the morning with the one most important thing you have to accomplish.  Not the easiest thing.  Not the most enjoyable thing.

The most important thing.

Get it done and you will feel amazing.  You can move on to the next thing knowing that your day has already been a success.