Why do we wait?

Well, Eddie and I finally decided to take the plunge. We are selling the house and moving into a condo. Ahhh. Simpler living. Can't wait. But, there is a long road (in a short time frame) from here to there. While we wait for the closing day on the condo, we are busy whipping our house into shape to put on the market. We are finishing projects right and left, but most of them are things we've wanted to do for years. Some of them date back to when Eddie first moved in . . . several years ago (we won't disclose just how many).

The same thing happened to me before Eddie and I were married. Overall, my house was in good shape, but I struggled year after year to strip the paint from the front porch so I could repaint it. When I knew I would be moving soon, though, I asked a contractor, "can't you just pour a layer of concrete over it and be done with it?" As it turned out, you certainly can. It looked fantastic. I was only able to enjoy it for a couple months. It was the same with the kitchen floor. The cheap tile installed by the previous owner came up in 30 minutes, only to reveal a stubborn mess of mastic (or whatever that stuff is) underneath. More than one person spent countless hours trying to scrape that junk off the floor. The same contractor took one look at it and said "no problem, we can sand that out." And so they did. Filled in the cracks and put on a nice, dark stain. It was what I wanted all along. Again, it was great for the few short weeks I was able to enjoy it.

Over here, we just had a new dishwasher installed. We had been washing dishes by hand for months because after we replaced the kitchen faucet, we couldn't attach the hoses for the portable dishwasher anymore. Let me tell you, I am running that bad boy every other day! Before the dishwasher, we put in a new kitchen floor. The old floor had a cool design on it, but it was wood painted white, and after 10 years, there were stains that wouldn't mop out. It never really looked clean to me, though I could attest to scrubbing it within an inch of its life. The new owner won't have that problem. They will have the nice, new floor. And the freshly painted trim, and the refinished floors.

So, why do we wait? Why do we pull out all the stops and produce our best work on a place right before we leave it? Did that lesson learned in Girl Scouts (leave every place better than you found it) imprint that much? Is it simple economics (if we do all these projects, we can sell the house at a higher price)? Or is it karma? The condo we are buying is a much newer property, so it doesn't have the quirks and character and architectural accents of the old houses we've been living in, but it is SPOTLESS. Everything is clean (at least until we and the animals get there) and fresh and painted and in good condition. All we will have to do is move our furniture in and enjoy. We hope the same will be true for whoever buys our house. Maybe we shouldn't have waited to do all these things, but I guess it all comes around in the end.