Selling a House

The house has been up for sale for 6 days now. And during that time we have continued to work hard on the house. There is the daily routine of cleaning, vacuuming and straightening. There are also a few projects that did not get done before we listed although most of these projects are focused on smaller details.

One thing that we needed to do was re-paint a few of the exterior windows. We had painted the house last year but some of the paint had lifted. We hired a painter to come in and do the job.

Our painter was working under a tight time frame. Due to a scheduled showing that day, he only had three hours to go around the house, spot prime and spot repair selected windows and then apply a finish coat.

With less than 40 minutes before the showing, our painter had a little accident. He spilled a gallon of paint. Directly in front of the main entrance of our house.

When I opened the front door of our house all I could see was white paint on the concrete porch. The spill area was not really that large but the shock of the event made it seem absolutely gigantic. In my mind, the paint was everywhere and we would never, ever get it removed from the front porch. Potential buyers would walk up to the house, see this paint stain, and promptly walk away.

What would we do?

Turns out that you can remove exterior paint from concrete quite easily with just a brush and some water. I was amazed. After we finished there was simply no evidence that a gallon of paint had found itself spilled all over the front porch. However, the stress of the moment was high as we tried to get the paint cleaned up and then finish the remaining tasks to get the house ready for the showing.

On top of all the stress, the real estate agent showed up 25 minutes early for the showing. We were still cleaning things up.

“I’ll come back.” She said.

She never did.