Even though I left the previous tile- both floor and bath surround, I still feel like this room is a totally different space. David commented it's one of the nicest and most fun in the house now and Scotty told Russell that it's her pretty bathroom, not his (ha). 

The half moon windows in the kids' rooms really threw me at first. The previous homeowners had left the top half uncovered, which I think is hard for little kid's sleep routines. Scotty did get used to it after a few weeks but I want all the help I can get sleep training the next one.

There was the regular faux wood white blinds on the lower half of the window, but the child strangulation blind cord stories make me nervous. Scotty already loved climbing up on the ledge and playing with the cord so blinds were a no-go for me. David prefers the unobstructed light as well.



I stalked all the houses in the neighborhood that had these windows and the most prominent solution were those outdated and sad looking paper fans in the moon and blinds below. The nicest looking solution was custom shutters in the half moon that matched the shutters in the rest of the house. Since I don't want change out all the windows in the house to shutters I was kind of stuck.

I looked online assuming everyone in the neighborhood was missing some brilliant, nicely designed half moon window solution but alas, nobody has really solved the half moon window problem. They're pretty windows really, but it's hard to leave windows uncovered in kid's rooms even though they aren't a privacy concern.

So I finally decided to just do a single panel curtain that would cover the entire window, from half moon down. The nice thing is there's a pocket on the side of the window where you can tuck the curtain when you want it open so the window looks nice and open from the front of the house during the day.

I used this tutorial from Blesser House. I'm obsessed with their first entire playroom makeover. They were trying to create these $63 Pottery Barn Teen pom pom curtains. I would say- if you want black out curtains like the PBTeen ones, this tutorial will be more expensive.



I don't really want to re-write the same tutorial but here's a couple tips that weren't included:



The adhesive takes forever!! Halfway through this project I realized I got suckered into a no-sew project for no reason, haha. I should have just sewed the dang pom poms on. If you don't have a sewing machine here are some tips for using the double-sided adhesive:

- The instructions say to turn off the steam and to turn your iron down. I finally couldn't handle it anymore and turned the temperature up and it was totally fine.


Costs:

Ikea Lenda Curtains: $13.35 per panel (the other room has the same window so I'm using the other panel in Scotty's room. Such an awesomely cheap solution!)
HeatnBond iron on adhesive $2.99 (I used a 50% off Joann's coupon)
4 Yards of Pom Poms  $11.92
Curtain Rod - $12-13 ish at Walmart. I forgot to keep the receipt.

Project Total: $41.26

I fall into this trap where I'm planning out rooms -from paint to decor- fully aware it's going to take us a long time get each room completed. The home improvement projects, paint, window treatments, rugs and furniture will be time consuming and cost money. But I get so excited because I figure out how I want a room to come together only to realize... I don't even have a timeline for it happening. It may be years.

I have approximately 5,438 things in line before my grand plan can happen. Some things are exciting, like buying and installing hardware for the built-ins. Some things are practical things, like getting a bigger squeegee for the glass shower enclosure and saving for retirement, which both rank higher on the list than a cute lamp. Eventually, I'll get to the lamp, but eventually makes me kind of sad because I see the final goal so clearly in my mind.

But first things first- a couple of the keys were sticking down after being played. After some Youtube research, David was hoping there was just a little something stuck under the keys. He carefully removed the keys and we were kind of shocked.
Look at all that dirt and those pebbles under there! David ended up removing all the keys and just vacuuming it out to get everything.

As he sanded and the wood lightened we both realized this guy looks great lighter. With the darker stain it's kind of massive but lightening it makes it much less visually heavy. We realized we want to strip it and restain it a more modern weathered color. We both loved this stain used by The Created Home.

Interestingly, as I was listening to my favorite podcast about DIY & Design (Young House Love Has a Podcast) they just talked about how obvious DIY projects, such as painting pianos are going out of style. People still want to DIY but they want it to look custom, not DIY. For example, stenciling walls, floors and rugs are trending out because they are obviously DIY. Non- DIY projects like shiplap, wall paper or built-ins or wainscoting are hot. You still do them yourself but they look like they could have been custom finish work.

I definitely felt like in 2013 a painted piano would have been amazing but in 2018 it felt outmoded. I'm glad we caught ourselves before putting in a bunch of work to make this pretty piano outdated in a new way.


The only reason we didn't follow through and finish the project right then is we value our brains too much. We didn't want to sacrifice all the brain cells it would require to use stripper indoors without cross ventilation. (I mean I guess we could have thrown open all our windows and put on our snow clothes for a few days straight but something didn't seem smart about that...haha).

So we'll restain the piano in the spring when we can throw everything open and Scotty, baby and I can go to the park/outside to escape the worst of the smell. Stay tuned for the finished piano coming Spring 2018- also I'm so punny bahaha.

David did demo on the mantle and surround the day after Christmas and has almost finished building the two side built-ins in the garage. He'll install those and then do the mantle itself. I'm so so so excited about this project, I'm seriously in love with how this room will come together. Basically, I got so stinking lucky to have married David, builder extraordinaire, it's not even funny.



Right now all the furniture is stuffed into the pretty front room that is finished but was unfurnished. So the house feels a bit off kilter, but it really worked out that we had another empty living space to just move everything too. If you want real time updates, check out my insta-stories, where David kindly lets me post his projects. He jokes that I owe all my content to him and he's right haha.

After putting in so much work to renovate the Orem house ourselves and save money, it seemed like a natural extension to sell the house ourselves, avoid real estate commissions and maximize our profit. When we heard about Homie, a service that has freeway billboards on the I-15 screaming things like, "avoid the sin of commission" we were onboard.


Hopefully this is helpful if you're in Utah and you're interested in either selling your home yourself or are thinking about using Homie. This is pretty detailed, let me know if you have any questions.

THE GOOD

1. The Money

If you take the traditional route and go through a realtor, you pay your relator 3% of your home's selling price and you pay the buyer's relator 3%. That's 6% people! So if you sell your house for $300,000 you pay $18,000!!! I don't know about you, but I have other uses for that money.

With Homie, they charge a flat fee (it's about $1,000) instead of taking 3%. Included in their fee is your yard sign, a professional home photographer, listing your home on the MLS, Zillow, KSL homes, & Trulia, as well as support from their real estate attorneys who do all your paperwork and provide advice.

You decide if what, if any, commission you're willing to pay the buyer's relator. We decided to pay the full 3% because we wanted to sell and we wanted agents to be motivated to show the house to their clients. I think it was a wise move because six of the seven offers we received were made with traditional agents.

Even with the 3% Buyers Agent Commission (BAC) we still saved over $9,000 using Homie. If that's all you read, know we feel like Homie was worth it just because of that.



2. In Our Comfort Zone

David's job at the real estate investment firm he works for is identifying and coordinating financing and purchasing of apartment complexes across the country. David knows real estate. Obviously the multi-family market is more his wheel-house but he's still super knowledge about the process of single family home purchasing.

While Homie does offer some good articles and their support team can be responsive they do not hold your hand like a relator does. If you've never bought or sold a home and are unfamiliar with how the process works, I don't know that I'd recommend selling your home yourself or even using Homie. It would probably be stressful and there's a good chance it wouldn't go as well. Nobody is watching the deadlines in your contract for you, you are initiating and communicating with your lender, inspector, title company, buyer's agent etc.

Not only do they not hold your hand as far as the process, their marketing support is just listing the home and making sure you have good photos. You do all the tours, staging, question answering, communicating with agents, etc.

Luckily for us our city's real estate market was hot this summer. There was limited inventory and a lot of people looking to buy homes. Our mother-in-law apartment drew a lot of attention. We also watched a neighbor's home sell and mimicked their relator's strategy of listing it pre-open house and not doing any tours prior to the open house to build hype and it worked for us. I also obsessively read home staging tips, we did so many pre-listing cosmetic projects, and then ran our own successful open house (our final buyers came to that open house).



3. We Both Committed

We tagged teamed the process and played to our strengths. David did all the heavy lifting on getting the house really ready to sell- a lot of yard stuff and painting. I coordinated all the cleaning (windows, kitchens, bathrooms) and the staging and pre-packing. I did almost all the tours and was the point of contact for all the scheduling. David did the Scotty hanging out during the open house and during evening tours. I made a spreadsheet of offers to compare apples to apples. I communicate with our Homie attorney as well as the title agency while David works with the lender.

Obviously, you'd still need to do some of this if you had a relator but it wouldn't have to be self-directed or motivated. I think for you to have a good experience, you definitely need a good partner through the DIY process.



THE NOT SO GOOD

1. Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

Homie Support is definitely not unresponsive but also it's an email only help line and they're obviously slammed. Only 2 of our 7 offers made it to our Homie dashboard and the only reason there's 2 is because one offer was submitted via Homie and the other I specifically asked them to upload. The rest I kept organized in my email/spreadsheet. We had to hear from the buyer's agent that we under contract. Homie literally never told me, I had to email them and ask them to confirm we were under contract because I hadn't received the signed contract. I then had to email three times before they finally changed our Homie listing as "under contract." Luckily I think I only had to email once or twice to get them to change the MLS listing.

Basically the sign up/set up process is smooth sailing but their limitations show once you get into the hairy, fast paced offer period. It's stressful because offers come with response deadlines and suddenly you're trying to track down pre-approval letters which relators are telling you they submitted to Homie but you can't access them because they aren't on your dashboard and haven't been emailed to you. Luckily you have your Homie assigned attorney's cell number and if you keep emailing support they will get back to you.

Basically, you really need to pay close attention to what's going on and keep asking for help when it's important. They're also really nice and know they're not 100% on top of everything so that was appreciated. This wasn't great but was the hassle worth 9k? Heck yes.



2. The Platform has Problems

So besides the manual upload of offers, I heard over and over from relators and potential buyers that the Homie scheduling system is glitchy and hard to use. It's frustrating because I wanted the process to be as easy as possible for buyers to come look at the house. I also heard from our attorney that they're switching systems so she sometimes didn't have paperwork or offers.

For example, we sent out a best and final notice to our first 4 or 5 offers and she had a hard time figuring out who came back with new offers because of their system. This is obviously not great and stressful. Luckily, a lot of people really wanted the house and were willing to work with us when we said, "hey, sorry can we extend our response deadline a little?"



3. "Avoid the Sin of Commission" isn't Completely Accurate

So this didn't apply to our selling experience but to our buying experience but it's still important to know whatever side you're on. Homie recently became an official brokerage. That means in the eyes of the law and title companies, you're using a traditional real estate service.

What happens is the title agency reads the contract and takes commission and gives it to the relators involved. Now that Homie is a brokerage, if they are representing you on the buy side, they will collect the 3%. They say they do this in part to protect you as the buyer. Previously, sell side relators would take advantage of the fact there was no buy side relator and take the entire 6% commission allotted by the seller.

Now Homie will give you as the buyer some of the 3% commission they collect from title back (I think the amount they give you back depends on the title company's rules or something like that) but THEY KEEP THE REST!!! That's right, Homie now takes commission.

This matters when you want to make a lower offer based on the fact you don't have a relator taking commission because technically you do have a relator. We offered 3% less than asking on the home we're buying because we thought there was no commission. Luckily if you ask, Homie will provide an escrow instruction document for title stating there is no commission to be give and both you and the sellers sign it.

But to me, I think all their marketing about "no commission" is kind of misleading. Our attorney was upfront about it so I guess that kind of makes up for it but it's once again one of those catches where if you're unfamiliar with the process you could get burned.






Sorry for the novel, but hopefully this helps one person who is looking to move and save some money! I would potentially try doing it all the way myself next time to save the extra $1,000 but I really have enjoyed the legal support as well as the online listing and photography so maybe we'll stick with Homie. Overall positive experience, but definitely not for real estate newbies.