Tuesday, May 31, 2011

2nd and 3rd official completed makeovers

With the restaging of the house brought opportunity for bringing some things in from the garage to use in the house.  I'd been waiting to make this coffee table into a bench and realized the foot of the bed in the larger guest room would be a perfect place to put it. 

Coffee table before:

And after!

I LOVE it.  And it was super easy. 

Even easier was just painting these tables.  Not quite as exciting but at least they serve a purpose while we wait to furnish the new place.

Goodwill end tables before:

And after


Next up will be a pair of Captain's chairs from Goodwill - plan to re-paint and replace the canvas/fabric.

The rollercoaster continues

But I hope the ride is almost over.

Last week we got word that most of our requests had been met and implemented into our documents (lease and addendum), along with a new surprise.  The "key west" cottage, the one that I have been chomping at the bit to decorate and collecting furniture for since FEBRUARY, is now occupied and won't be open to us to use or alter until August.  While at first I wanted to scream with frustration (and I sort of did), after my head cooled a bit I realized that since they state that the occupants would most likely want to continue renting the place from us, that's guaranteed income starting day 1 vs having to advertise and hope people want to book.  And while I love the idea of having the unit available for our friends to stay in, we can't deny the appeal of guaranteed rent.

In addition, there is someone utilizing the kitchen facility that may also want to continue, to the tune of a regular rental income.  Since the last occupants had pretty much unexpectedly (to us) stopped serving, we were trying to figure out whether we'd undertake the restaurant ourselves or find a new tenant.  This solves that problem.

So all in all to have these (maybe, and I say maybe since everything seems to change by the day) tenants in place when we take over is a good thing and will limit what we have to focus on at first.  Having too much to take care of in the beginning would definitely stress me out.  Now I guess we can just focus on the boutique, the owners cottage (where there will be room for friends to stay, albeit not an individual unit unless we stay somewhere else), and the boating business. 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Island Time

What a lovely sounding phrase...and maybe once we're on it we'll actually appreciate it.  But for now I hate it.  It's what has turned what we thought would be a three month process into six.

Originally we had thought "maybe" we'd be on board with this business starting in May, considering the verbal agreements were actually in place in February.  Those hopes were quickly dashed when we realized how much needed to be done, so then we thought we'd be set on June.  Most of Feb and March was spent making sure we could get financing, since there were some questions about property lines and easements.  Then there were some restaurant equipment questions.  March quickly turned into April.  Since we need to get everything settled 60 days prior to the takeover date, going into April meant moving the takeover date to July.  April was spent doing inspections and contract language on the sellers part.  Well an inspection showed termites, and the contract had some language we could NOT sign onto.  Each thing we've thrown back has taken at minimum a week....if not two or three.  So now we're looking at starting in August.  And that's IF nothing else comes up....

Monday, May 16, 2011

Restaging awesomeness!

Not sure how I could have been reluctant?? (well other than all the work required)  The house looks SO MUCH BETTER.  I wish we had done this years ago.

We did all the changes described here, as well as rearranging the 2nd bedroom, the one that was already a guest room.  We repositioned the bed 90 degrees and put the dresser in the closet to make more space.  Not only did it open the room way up, now as you lie in bed you can actually see the water.  I keep joking that it's a "partial water view" - like those hotel rooms that bill themselves that way but you can only see the water if you stand on your tiptoes and lean out the window. 

So - here are the new and improved rooms!
2nd bedroom before - it was pretty much impossible to even take a good picture of the set up, but before the bed was against the solid wall facing the window facing our neighbors house. 


2nd bedroom after - now the window facing the neighbors house (the window to the right) is also the slight water view and there is more usable room around all sides of the bed.


Office before



Office after

Entryway before

Entryway after.  Totally amazed at how perfectly the book cases from the office fit on the wall and around the mirror.  I will probably paint them white/off-white cause I'm not crazy about the color in here.


And the craft/sewing room was shifted and condensed to make room for the office desk.  This is a big improvement since I never liked sitting at the desk in the office cause it felt so away from the rest of the fun going on in the house.  Now it's closer to the action with a full water view.  Love it.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Reluctantly Re-staging

I think our house is perfect, of course.  But after over a dozen showings and no offers, not even a "I can't even believe you would insult us with such a low price, get off of our property now before our dog pees on your leg" lowball, I'm lead to believe we need to step up our game.  We just lowered our price, so that might do it, but I've been thinking about anything else we can do to help move things along.

Our layout is a bit unique and I think people might have higher expectations in our price range and square footage, despite the fact that they are mostly paying for our land.  Our bedrooms and bathrooms are small, and we can't (won't) do anything about that.  But one thing I think we can do is make our layout appear more usable by at least taking the office out of our 3rd bedroom and making it back into a bedroom.  HGTV, realtors, and the rest of the world all stress that people can't visualize anything on their own and to make it easy for them, so here you go, you unimaginative people who can't see past a wall color or a furniture set up....you win.

Here's our office now.



And our entry space,


which is really wasted space since the only one who ever sits on this couch, and I mean EVER, is the dog.  And he has 2 other couches, a futon, a large ottoman, and our bed (when we're not home to know about it) to monopolize. 

So I'm thinking, move the bookcases and the desk out of the office/bedroom.  Store the desk but use the book cases where the couch in the entry way are.  We've already downsized the book factor by at least half from when those pics above were taken, so they will be more decorative and WAY less busy than in the picture. 

Give away leather couch and chair pictured above, store the spare tables.  Set up the ottoman bed (the striped chaise thing in the office pics, which folds out to a full size bed) as a "real" bed, flank w/ the 70's end tables (painted....they are just primed for now) and goodwill lamps...


...and the very next person to see the house will be in instant love and give us $50k over our asking price. 

Monday, May 2, 2011

Ok, let's try this again: ONE MORE WEEK!

Yeah, so things didn't go as planned....we got the lease for review a few days late, and there was no way we were getting everything resolved by this past Saturday.  So we're hoping we can have everything settled by the end of this week so we can sign this weekend.  We have to keep reminding ourselves that Matlacha must be part of this "island time" we always hear about.  Must be nice!  Not sure if my anal retentiveness about punctuality will ever succumb to island time but we'll soon see.

Not too many new furniture additions since we can't hold another item in the garage, but I did score a free desk last week.  Just needed a little bit of wood patch where it appeared a dog did some chewing.  Splurged on some pretty drawer pulls to replace the very basic wooden ones it came with.  Some primer and paint and it will make a perfect desk/vanity for one of the units.