Black Belt Mama

Before and After

I have no skin left on my knuckles.  I'm completely exhausted.  All I do is think about how I can restage, rework and get an offer by Monday when our contingency is up on our new house contract. So, do the changes that we've made make a difference?

Kitchen floor before.  We had a 16 year old floor that had faded and was stained in some areas:

 

Kitchen floor after.  We put in a new tile floor (peel and stick) in about five hours:

Living room before, which was completely set up to watch the TV on the opposite wall:

 

Living room after, which is now staged to focus attention on the marble gas fireplace.

Big I's room before, where a big full size loft bed blocked the window and made the room appear small:

Big I's room after replacing her loft bed with a twin sized day bed:

So, think I can have my own show now or what?

Obsess Much?

Things I did this week to prepare for our first showing tomorrow:

1. Removed every single thing from my refrigerator, removed and cleaned all shelves and drawers, and then put it all back together with the precision of that dude from the creepy Julia Roberts movie from long ago.
2. Cleaned underneath the drawer in my freezer, because yeah, I know every house I've gone into? I've looked under the drawer in the freezer. . . NOT.  I just felt it had to be done.
3. Painted the molding in two of my bathrooms, making sure to paint with precision behind the toilets because, you know, everyone will notice back there.
4. Painted the molding in my hallway.
5. Touched up the paint on my bathroom cabinets from where my ACL brace chipped it off.
6. Washed the slipcovers on my sofa (Lil C decided to choke on a chip and then spit all the contents onto my sofa). 
7. Yelled at the girls "Don't Touch The WALLS!" every five minutes.
8. Bought a new rug for our entranceway.  $149.99 on sale for $39.99, yeah baby!
9. Bought two new pillows for the sofa because that will totally make someone buy my house.
10. Scrubbed the stove until all the dried spaghetti sauce specks and all the skin on my hands was gone.
11. Washed all the rugs from the bathrooms. 
12. Swept the kitchen floor like 4000 times. 
13. Silently cursed my neighbor who has decided it's perfectly acceptable to still have Christmas decorations out, and also boxes she doesn't want anymore, and some box she thinks will magically get shipped back to the store without her telling anyone (like FedEx or the company where it came from) that she needs to return it. 
14. Folded and put away many huge loads of laundry.
15. Bought yellow flowers because it's supposed to invoke the desire to buy.
16. Wiped the toothpaste out of the girls' bathroom 200 times minimum.
17. Made an appointment with my Realtor and the builder next week to discuss creating the house we lost from scratch.

***There are new reviews up at The BBM Review.  Sometime within the next week or two, there will be a give-away that martial artists enthusiasts will love.

***Are you a lurker here?  Do you want to start a blog but don't know how to start or what to write about?  I have a new gig teaching an online course called "Black Belt Blogger."  To find out more about it, you can go here.  And maybe YOU will be awarded an Honorary Black Belt Blogger badge. . .