It’s official. We have a “For Sale By Owner” sign on our house. The King put it out on Sunday afternoon. He asked me to come and stand by him while he did it. He needed a little support. I understand, because I needed him to.

I’m torn. On one hand we always knew we would sell this house. We designed it so that it would be the type of house people would want to buy. All the fixtures and appliances were chosen to match the general public tastes. We knew this was coming. Then why was it so hard to put the sign out?

I’ve said it before but I never know if people understand me when I say that The King and I built our house. The King designed it, his Dad (the engineer) made it “build-able”. We formed and poured the foundation, which was the most horrible part and took us way too long (and didn’t save us money in the long run). The King did the plumbing, the electrical, we laid the wood floors and stained them (twice, because the first time just wasn’t enough). Okay, we paid someone to do the drywall, but only because we wanted a specific type of finish that we couldn’t do. We installed all the appliances. Oh, and we even built a 2+ car garage to boot.

Since we had been living in a 200 square foot studio apartment (and sleeping in a twin size bed) for two years while we built the house in all of our spare time, we moved into the house as soon as the toilets flushed. This means the finish work wasn’t completed. We didn’t have any trim, doors, the bar wasn’t done and neither was the master bathroom. We vowed we would finish the house as soon as we could. We weren’t going to be those type of people that lived in a house that wasn’t done.

I am not kidding when I tell you that I spent the better part of our first year in the house painting the railing. The entire second floor has a railing around it that extends down the stairs. It took me a long time. A very long time. I loath the very pretty, pretty railing.

I have spent the better part of this last year painting the wood for the trim. Look around your house. Notice all the trim you have. Now try to imagine spending time in your garage painting 3 coats of paint on every single piece of your trim. I can paint trim in my sleep. Sometimes I feel like I do.

The King has spent the last 2 months very busy inside the house while I am busy outside (in the very well ventilated garage) painting trim. He finished the bar (it took less than 20 minutes and should have been done 2 years ago), made and installed the door for our miniature coat closet, totally finished the master bathroom, finished the tile for the kitchen backsplash, trimmed out the glass block window, hung all the trim that I have painted, and hung all the pocket doors throughout the house. The in-laws even came over and helped last week. They finished building the fence in the backyard.

Do you know what this all means? It means that after tonight (I have one little spot to touch up and The King has to hang the last of the trim in the office) THE HOUSE WILL BE DONE. It looks amazing, amazing, amazing. I have never felt this amount of pleasure after completing a project. I just look around the house and think of all the Saturday mornings when The King made me go to the house to work, all the Holidays we gave up, all the vacations we missed, all the dinners with friends we had to pass on. All of it was worth it. We have a beautiful home.

A home that we are going to sell (disregard that we plan to make double what we put into it). Someone else is going to bring their baby home from the hospital to this house. They will send their kids off to their first day of school from our surprisingly clean front porch. It will be someone else that spends their summers trying to keep the grass in as perfect shape as The King did.

While someone else lives in our house, we will be living in an apartment (local still to be determined) while we do it all again. And this time, instead of starting from scratch-we are going to tear the house we bought last year completely down and build a new house in it’s place. Only to sell that one also. I think we’ve started a trend.

**Oh, I will not mention the Christmas bubble light I accidentally broke on the wood floor right inside the front door last night. Do you know those things are filled with some sort of acid? Acid that burns into the wood floors in about .03 seconds and leaves a very horrible and bright orange mark that is etched in the wood. Well it does. Believe it or not, The King was able to get it out by putting more acid on it. He fixed it all in under an hour. While I sat on the stairs and cried (but I never stopped painting). He is my hero. The man can do and fix anything.**

**Oh, and did I mention we had a doctor’s appointment yesterday? I am officially 11 weeks and 4 days along. We heard the heartbeat and I was able to let out the breath that I had been holding since our last appointment. The doctor also told me I can stop taking the horrible, horrible progesterone pills from Hell this week. Am very happy.**