The house is as updates as we will get it. The next updates will be for the new owners. The Realtor officially put the house on the market and scheduled two open houses this weekend. Yesterday, Susanna went to a much deserved afternoon at the spa. Izzy, Hoagie and I had to find a place to eat lunch and hang out for a few hours while people walked through the house. We decided to head to Olde Mistick Village. What I didn’t realize was that this weekend was the second annual Strawberry Festival at Olde Mistick Village. The parking lot was packed, but food trucks were there, so finding a place to eat while towing a dog around wasn’t hard. Hoagie didn’t like the heat and spent a while just sleeping under a bush while Izzy spent longer in her favorite store, Holistic of Mystic, than I thought was possible in such a small shop.

The first half of this week is forecast to be very hot (upper 90s), so we will need to find a cool place to hang out for any house showings that get scheduled.

After nearly 19 years, we are officially moving out of Preston. The house paint has been touched up, the inside and outside of the house is clean, pictures are taken, the floor layout is mapped, and the contract signed with the Realtor. The house officially goes on the market later this week with an open house scheduled next weekend. We still have a lot of stuff to get rid of and several weeks to hopefully have everything wrapped up here. Our next big stop is Sweden! We’ll be hosting an ice-cream farewell gathering in July to say goodbye to everyone.

Susanna and I have been working diligently to touch up on paint and do the final few repairs on the house prior to listing it.

Today I finished the back stairs. The old stairs were in pretty bad shape and looked terrible. I replaced the front stairs last year and decided to match (or somewhat match) the back stairs. The front stair treads are pressure treated lumber with green porch paint. The porch paint looks nice, but it gets worn through on areas that are used frequently (such as the back stairs/porch). I couldn’t find green composite lumber, but did find brown. The brown matches the trim style on the house (green trim with brown highlights), so I used those instead. The brown isn’t a perfect match, but it is reasonably close.

I’ve been working on painting the workshop trim. My long term plan had been to replace the siding, but I don’t think that makes sense with us putting the house on the market in the next few weeks.