Bittersweet

Well our house is officially for sale. I've never experienced such a large bag of mixed emotions before like I have in the past month. Ever.  There have been moments of frustration, questioning, excitement, pride, complete exhaustion, sadness, unbelief, dumbfoundedness, deep gratitude, anger, joy, reminiscing, tears, blankness, guilt of shrugging other responsibilities, and many feelings of "aren't we done with this yet?!"

I think one of the hardest parts, surprisingly, for me was packing up decorations from the boys' room. It was like tearing a piece of my heart out for some reason. 

The past 3 months have been filled with an effort to finish up our last projects: bathroom cabinetry, laundry room walls and floors, new fascia & soffit, window trim and finally exterior painting. You don't know how satisfying it was painting the house knowing that this was the last hurrah, the final energy-sucking project!

Lucky for me my energy level came back up from the 1st trimester doldrums right on time to begin packing, decluttering and cleaning, getting the house show-room worthy; a process that took two weeks longer than I thought it should have.  

And finally, I made the flyers and Ben put out the for sale sign yesterday!  We get the final appraisal report on Tuesday, so once we have our asking price finalized we'll post on KSL and other websites.  Then hopefully we'll get people walking through. Hopefully!

Here's our house-for-sale blog if you want to see the final pics:

 http://provohouseforsale.blogspot.com/

And here are a few before pics... (again, what were we thinking?)

Our room

 Lo's room

Remember how we bricked our fireplace and then tore it all out a couple years later? Awesome. 

You never know what you're gong to get when you tear up carpet - what a gem of a floor!

And remember when our roofing escapade took a terrible detour last fall? 

(3 different guys accidentally stepped through my living room ceiling in 4 different places...  I really couldn't blame them at all, though, because we were SO grateful for all the hours of help we had from friends!!)

All that loose insulation, mouse crap and asbestos all over my toys, tv and living room carpet... with my boys running around the house. Ug. 

Yes, I could look up at the sky from my living room :)

I'm laughing out loud now looking at these pictures, but really I was in tears at that point when Kaye and Riley magically showed up at my door asking how they could help. Riley went right to work salvaging and puzzle piecing my ceiling back together.

And pics from our latest and last project!!

And here's a great thanks to Dave, Jera, Desi and Kaye for all helping prep and paint the house! 

Ben ended up getting sick for a day and a half in the middle of our painting weekend. Poor guy. That was my day to push through and paint the trim.

That blasted sun was in the perfectly wrong spot that morning. 

You know how the more you serve people, the more you grow to love them? That is exactly what I feel about this house. This was quite "the little house that could" when we moved in (to put it nicely).  And It hasn't been until now, when I think about giving this sweet little home up, that I realize how attached I really have become to these walls and floors. Project, by project, hour by pain-staking hour we've grown to come to love our little place more and more.  I was just scrolling through all of our pictures in our "House" folder, looking at the before and after shots and I just remember all the hours, sweat, tears, late nights and money we've invested here and more importantly the lessons we've learned, the skills we've gained and the memories we've made. This is all sounding like a cheesy greeting card, but nevertheless it is all very, very true.

And now as Ben and I look at homes for sale that are bigger versions of our "little house that could" we quickly move on and say never again! We learned so much living here in this house from 1931... but I think those lessons really should only be learned once a lifetime. :)