Presentation is everything

I had a list emailed to me, of things to do before the house gets put on the market. Things were getting organised at home, and this was a list of stuff that that needed to be done.

• chop fire wood,


• fit a moulding to the laundry door frame,


• fit moulding to the cornice in the study, and spa room,


• secure the lattice on the front decking,


• dump our old dishwasher and fridge,


• tidy the garage and clean out the rubbish,


• organise a trip to the dump,


• paint the bedroom, bathroom, study and spare room,


• get the broken key out of the laundry lock,


• repair hole in the driveway bitumen,


• repair kitchen bench top, and


• decide on the furniture to sell or keep.

A thorough tidy up and clean out like we’ve never done before, that should probably been done years ago.

If you’re selling your car, you clean and polish it. It should sparkle. The punters should be able to see their face in the paintwork. There should not be a single spot of dirt on the windscreen. So, it should be the same when you are selling your house. Give the punters nothing to complain about. Make them go oh-ah when they see your house.

There was an experience when selling my house in Tasmania that is burned into my psyche. The house was on the market for ages and not selling. The whole thing was getting us down. The house had a mezzanine floor. So, it was kind of two storey, and because of that it had huge sloping steel roof. There was also under house parking, and it had huge foundations for all this to rest on. The garden was neat and the block was adjacent to a park, where peacocks strolled on occasion. Actually, this park was one of Launceston's nicer places to be. The roofline of the house was a dominant feature of the building. It was a colorbond steel roof but it was looking a bit jaded and dusty due to oxidation over the years, but it was sound. We wondered that because everything else had been spruced up, and because the roof was such a dominant feature of the building, that it too needed some attention.

You can buy car shampoo that’s a sort of soapy preparation that leaves a shiny waxed effect when it dries. We got some of this wash & wax, donned overalls, and with buckets of the preparation clambered onto the roof, slopped it onto the steel sheets, rubbed and polished off the old oxidised layer and wiped it dry and clean. I’m sure the neighbours must have thought we were nuts. It was a little dangerous, but the view from the rooftop of a two story house gave an entirely different perspective of the suburb that became a bonus to a tedious job. The next day that roof glistened like new. No kidding. And it may have been coincidence, who can say, but after the Saturday open inspection on the very next weekend the house sold.

It was time to work on our Melbourne house, and make it sparkle too, and the list of things to do was just beginning. The trouble is, I’m in Canberra and the house is in Melbourne.