Twas The Night Before the Showing

...and all through the house
Every creature was stirring
Like a Tasmanian Devil and her spouse.

We've had a few open houses at our house since we've had it on the market. Preparation for these open houses creates a flurry of activity in the day before and morning of. We spend a great deal of time cleaning the place so it looks just so, and baking something so the house smells homey and comforting. I take on the Tasmanian Devil persona, and am sure that I look like a swirling cloud running through the place polishing this, wiping up that, and putting everything else away. I obsess over paw prints on the floor in the dining room, the faucets at the sinks are polished to the point where a clear reflection of myself can be seen in them. Dust doesn't even think of falling on a surface when I am in Tasmanian Devil mode.

We had an open house at our place today, I think this is our third or fourth one that we've had since October. In between open houses we've reduced the asking price a few times, and we make minor improvements here and there to make the house just a bit more appealing, and hopefully just a bit more sold. Before the last one we replaced the leaky faucet in the kitchen sink, and actually plumbed the sprayer on the side--about which I used to say "Oh, that's just for decoration" because it never worked in the six years we've lived here.

Our most recent improvement happened last night, and took us two and a half hours to complete. There used to be this Godawful paneling on the outside of our kitchen counter. It screams cheesy, and now that it's been subjected to 14 years of sun exposure it is a dingy, faded, pinkish color that makes Todd and I wince when we look at it. Last night we decided to do something about it, and bought some tongue and groove pine panels from Lowes.

This is what it looked like before. You can see where the molding was in the center, and how much the paneling faded in the sun when we pulled the molding off of the middle:


Here Todd is starting to install the new pine panels:


Todd and his miter saw, cutting the panels to fit the space:

Todd messing about with the outlet, so that it will fit with the new panels. Side note, when your husband is fooling around with electricity, don't take a picture of him doing so with a flash on the camera. It makes him jump about 20 feet in the air, and yelling "HOLY CRAP! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" It didn't occur to me that the flash from a camera might elicit that kind of surprised response. Sorry Todd, I didn't mean to scare you into thinking that you were about to be electrocuted. My bad.

This is what it looks like now that we've covered that terrible panelling with the pine boards:

And all it took was about $50 and not even three hours. I hope the new owners will like it.