Tilly Mill Project

The house on Tilly Mill is complete- finally.  While renovating this house we decided to remove the old aluminum siding since there wasn't a way to repair the many holes on it.  Parts of the siding were also bent and again there wasn't a way to straighten it out.  The siding was removed and we found wood siding beneath it- the wood siding was mostly in great shape- BUT there were also holes on it that could not easily be filled and painted and made to look good. 

Hardiplank was the best choice for the outside of this house since it keeps the original look and it is also very easy to maintain.  The inside of the house needed mostly cosmetic renovations and a few key details- baths and kitchen.  The top cabinets that were in place were made of  plywood, the bottoms were the usual press board, they were in great shape so we gave them a slight coat of minwax and placed new hardware on them.  Replaced the old appliances with black appliances.

While repairing the stoop, we discovered rotten wood so we decided to remove it altogether and replace it.  Since we were already replacing the stoop, we decided to build in a big front porch.  We also repaired the side deck and re-stained it to protect the wood.  We recycled some of the old carport to make a partial fence to the backyard.

The basement is currently more of a storage/workshop area.  We cleaned it out and painted the walls white to lighten up the space.  We also replaced the exterior basement door and replaced a window that had been boarded up to allow more daylight inside the basement

We planted only a few decorative plants in the front and seeded the front lawn- since there is a water restriction and it is cold outside, we left the future garden project to the new homeowner.


As far as listing the property, we figured we would try the by-owner route and started advertising it on the usual spaces such as craigslist.org and other free sites.  Because we want to keep the houses affordable, there isn't much room for a 6% commission, however, we understand that sometimes Real Estate agents have to be involved.  There is definitely a growing portion of the market doing their own research when purchasing a home- those are the homebuyers we are hoping to reach with our renovated homes!

This time, in addition to postlets.com and vflyer.com - we also found Iggyshouse.com  This site not only lists the house on their website for free, they also list it on MLS for free.  We read varying opinions on their service but have found them to be very easy to use.  The house was listed on their site and added to MLS and was under contract a week and a half later.  Not Bad! 

The house is currently under contract and scheduled to close on November 30th, 2007.  I will post an update once the details on the closing are completed and closing is final!

Here is what the house used to look like: