2019 was a stellar year for sellers who keep the advantage going into 2020. However, according to a HomeLight Top Agent Insights Survey from Q4, over 50% reported that there is a new trend arising, and we’re veering towards a more neutral market. There is an uptick for buyers for high-end and luxury properties while the seller’s market remains strong for those at the entry-level of the spectrum.

To make selling your property as profitable and as stress free as possible, let’s focus on three of the biggest challenges a seller may face.

Low Inventory

This has been one of the biggest issues to the market, and the trend looks like it will continue well into 2020. With the demand for housing in growing urban markets, investors who bought foreclosed homes found that they made more on rentals than they would by selling the properties. Thus, the shortage began for first-time buyers. Further to this, boomers have been reluctant to sell opting to skip downsizing and stay put. To add to the mix, there is an affordability crisis with soaring prices in certain areas making some experts worry that 2020 will see even less inventory. In contrast, many agents from the survey predict that the inventory will stay the same or increase in their local markets bringing some relief to the inventory problem.

Overpricing

Beware the temptation to go with the highest market price. Keep a finger on the pulse of the market conditions in your area. Prices are predicted to flatten so you may need to make some adjustments to your pricing strategy. The risks of overpricing include shutting out potential buyers, longer listing times that negatively affect your property, and price reductions that can get low-ball offers and months of costs. The more probable outcome is that you end up helping your neighbor sell their home while yours remains with a For Sale sign in front. Stand out from the houses in your area and work with your real estate agent to list your home at the right price.

Recession Fears

Talk of recession in 2019 was headline-making news. Fortunately, this did not come to pass. In a recent U.S. News report, 53% of forecasters surveyed do not expect a recession in 2020 but predict one by mid-2021. While many may have fears associated with the last housing downturn, according to Realtor.com, if one should hit prices are not likely to dip 50% as they did in 2007. The overall opinion is that the housing market will remain at healthy levels for both buyers and sellers through this year.

For those who are ready to sell, the forecast for 2020 is good and we are still in a sellers’ market. With the current drop in mortgage rates, a lower unemployment rate, and salary increases in some metropolitan areas, the boost in buyer demand for entry to mid-level homes is on the rise. 2020 seems like the right environment to sell your home and transition into the next home of your dreams.

Here’s my quick supply list:
- Staple gun
- mdf/composite board
- Wood glue
- Nail gun
- Fabric spray adhesive
- Batting (it comes in a roll; I bought mine by the yard at Jo-Ann Fabrics)
- Fabric (for four 33.5 inch wide windows, I bought three and a half yards of fabric and rail-roaded it)
- L-brackets
- Decorative trim

Step 1: I began by tracing a scalloped shape onto some computer paper and transferring it to the mdf with a sharpie. Then, Tommy used a jigsaw to cut the shape and we assembled the front piece and the two side pieces together.

FYI, our windows were 33.5 inches wide, so we made the center piece about 34 inches wide, and then made the two side panels five inches wide (so the pelmet box extends five inches out from the wall/window).

Step 2: We used wood glue and a nail gun to put the pelmet boxes together. After the wood glue was done drying (we let them dry overnight to make sure they were good and sturdy), I sprayed them with a fabric spray adhesive to attach some batting. Then I stapled the excess down tight to the board.

Step 3: I set my batting-covered box face down on top of my fabric and trimmed away some of the excess. This way, I wouldn’t have to deal with lots of extra fabric bunching when it came time to staple it down.

Step 4: Around the scalloped edge, I snipped some slits in the fabric to help it bend more easily as I pulled it tight around the corners.

Step 5: Pulling the fabric tight as I went, I stapled the fabric down to the board, about two inches in from the edge. Pulling the fabric “tight” is the key, because it straightens out wrinkles and creates a smooth finish.

Step 6: I didn’t finish the back (which many people do) and probably looks very nice. Instead I just tried to do a nice job finishing the corners that I knew would be visible.

Step 7: I turned the cornice right side up to check fabric smoothness and make sure everything looked tight.

I am holding one of the nailheads between my two fingers to mark where I will nail it down. You can see one of the holes the nailhead gets hammered into right above my pinky finger.

Here’s the finished product, all trimmed in.

Tommy used L-brackets to mount them on the wall.

Done! A great weekend project.

After receiving several suggestions from one of our recent blog posts, I decided to whip up a frame for the TV. I also thought it would be a fun little surprise for Ellie to come home to.

My vision for the TV frame is essentially just a box that fits overtop of the TV and then just sits on it. The TV itself is very securely mounted to the wall (large lag screws ratcheted into several wall studs) but you would still want to be careful not to make it too heavy and go beyond the maximum weight limits of your wall mount. Mine just sits on the TV, but another idea I had was to simply screw in a 1×2″ directly behind the TV and have the frame rest on that…..then you could screw the frame down into the 1×2″.

Anyways, I have a very slim TV mount that I purchased from Monoprice and the TV screen sits just 3″ from the wall. So I needed a box that was 3″ deep and then either window casing or door casing for the trim. For my specific TV, I needed the trim to be at least 3.5″ in order to cover up the bottom part. So I went to Home Depot to check out some of my options. I ended up buying;

• 16″ x 48″ piece of MDF shelving
• 16′ of 4″ Door Casing Trim

Let me start off by saying……I would not build another one the way that I built this one. It’s tremendously hard to be this cheap. My goal was to spend the least amount of money possible to build an apothecary table for our front entry way. I just picked up a ton of pallets for free from the Craigslist free section. I used this Ana-White building plan; Apothecary Console Table, and Pottery Barn’s Andover Table, here. I needed to change the overall dimensions so that it would fit onto our hallway wall. I also needed to change the dimensions based on the resources that I had….aka. pallets.

I had to dig deep through my pile of wood from pallets. If you want to know one of the best ways to disassemble a pallet check out my post, here, about that. I needed a 12” wide board but obviously none of the pallets had this size board. Some had a perfect 6” wide board and some had 5.5” wide boards. I knew that I was going to want to cleanup the sides by running the boards through my table saw, so I decided to make the whole console 11” deep. I found enough boards that were wide enough to make my sides, top, bottom, and top shelf. I took out any remaining nails, ran the boards through my planner to get smooth, and then ran the boards through the table saw twice to get the edges clean/square.

I had to strategically pair up the boards so that the widest boards would form my sides and then second priority being the top and bottom. I took the pair of boards, used my biscuit cutter every 9” and then clamped and glued them together to form a single 11” wide board.

I chose to wait til they were joined together before I cut them to length. So once the glue dried and cut them down to 35” for the sides and 33.5” for the top, bottom, and top shelf. Once they were cut the length, I started to plan/prepare to build my outer box. I used my Kreg jig to drill pocket holes on the inside and had all my boards ready to go. After that, I used wood glue, clamps, and screws to get the box formed. I also used my square onto every 90degree angle and a level for the top shelf.

I then had to join together another 11” wide board that would become the cabinet divider and the middle line that you would visually be able to see when the doors were closed. This divider along with the top shelf and the small dividers for the top shelf are critical to give this console table the appearance of being filled with 20 individual drawers where in reality it only has 4 drawers and they rest are false fronts. Close examination of the Pottery Barn table revealed to me that’s how they did it.

On a visit to a local antique store, I came across this random piece of old wood left outside. I brought the owner over to it and to some other pieces I had my eye on and asked him how much he wanted for it. $5. So for $5, I got this amazing piece of old antique wood. It was a little rotted on the edges so I had to cut that off and then I needed to cut it to length. To do this, I made my mark, lined up my circular saw, and then clamped down a piece of wood (square to the edge) to serve as my circular saw’s guide…..to ensure a nice clean/square straight cut.

Next up…..the drawers. I dug back deep into my pile of wood. There was not many 5.5” wide boards…..but I had just enough to cut all the sides, fronts, and backs for the 4 drawers that I was going to construct. Since I was going to do this 4 times, I clamped down some wood so that I could just push things together and nail them in. I used wood glue and my finish nailer to whip these together.

I almost forgot that they were going to need bottoms. I used whatever boards I could find and cut them to fit.

One other thing that I noticed on close examination of the Pottery Barn table was that along the bottom footer they had it indented about 1/2”-1”. So…..I made some little marks on the bottom and followed the ol’ principle of measure twice cut once. Once I was satisfied, I used my jig saw to cut it out. I then took a 2.5” wide pallet plank and nailed it into the bottom to serve as the footer/toe-kick.

After lots of looking for some sort of free solution….I folded and bought some 1/2” plywood to make the doors along with some european hinges. I made the opening exactly 24” tall so that I could just buy a 2’x4’ piece of plywood. I cut these down to a width of 16.5”.

I decided to build some shelves on the inside. To do this I just used some thin scraps that I had lying around, screwed them in level on both sides, and then nailed in some pallet planks on top. I wanted the shelf to act as a door stop so I used this little trick. I placed the plywood inside the cabinet and then clamped a scrap piece of wood to the face of the console. Then from the inside I pressed the thin scraps firmly against the plywood to ensure a nice snug door closing.

Here’s where I ran into the most difficult part of the whole project….getting the doors to fit nice and snug and not have any gaps. Any gaps would look real sloppy and I would lose the visual effect of appearing to be 20 separate drawers. This is also the part of the project that my camera’s battery died. Let’s just say there was lots of trial and error until I finally realized that the problem was with the board that I created to form the top shelf. It bowed in the middle….so although it was square on both sides and with the divider….the left side had a gap. The false fronts would cover up some of this but there would be a clear as day 1/2” gap between the two. Unacceptable. I ended up just cutting and sanding a very small piece of wood to fill that gap. It worked.

Time to instal the false fronts. I started at the top and the most important part of this process was to have nice, clean, straight, level, and consistent lines/spacing. I made my marks and then clamped a scrap piece of wood to the console and made sure that it was level. The board ensured that the bottoms of my false fronts were straight, to ensure that they were spaced out correctly, I used a scrap piece of wood that was exactly 1/2” thick. Starting from the left and working to the right, I would place wood glue on the back and then used my finish nailer to nail them into the plywood. I repeated the whole process until I got to the bottom. I allowed for a 1” gap between each row.

Equally as important to the drawer fronts being straight/consistent were the knobs. I found the center of the top drawer front and the bottom drawer front and then held my meter stick up to it and drew one long straight line. Repeated this for all 5 rows and repeated the same process for all 4 columns. I then drilled a hole at the intersection and then screwed in some wooden knobs that I picked up from Home Depot.

Time for paint. We decided on the white weathered technique that I’ve used here and here. So I painted the whole thing with my off the shelf white Valspar. After it was dry, I strategically sanded down edges, knots, and other strategic areas to give it that distressed look. I was going for a subtle look. After that, I used Special Walnut stain to dirty up the white as well as to soak into the spots that I had sanded down.

I also decided to put a coat of poly onto the antique wood top. It darkened it up a whole lot. I was initially bummed about this but I’m starting to be won over by it.

Now it was already to be put together but I still needed to take care of some last minute details. First up, the backing. I needed to have something on the backside of the console. Again, I looked everywhere for something free. I found what I was looking for in our own house. I removed the backing off of one of our dressers (Ellie doesn’t know this yet….so we’ll keep this between me and you). I could have just nailed/stapled to the backside of the table but since the console was going to be at our entry way right at our front door, I thought you’d be able to easily see it and did not think it would look good. So I took out my router, with my rabbiting bit, and removed 3/8” along the inside edges. I had to use a chisel to clean up some spots/corners.

One other thing that I had to do before assembling is add some weight to the backside. Since the doors with the false fronts are pretty heavy, when I had both the doors open the console wanted to lean over. To compensate for this I just cut one of the real thick pieces of pallet and nailed it to the upper part of the cabinet. It won’t be noticeable and it adds enough weight to make it more stable.

Phew…..last step…..assembly. I used some wood glue, centered the antique wood top, clamped it all down, and put a couple of screws into it from the underneath. I cut the backing to size and then stapled that onto the backside.

Alright….the moment you’ve been waiting for…..the final product accompanied by some free lamps that I found alongside the road.

Well…..there you have it folks. The longest blog that I have ever written. 95% of it was made with wood from pallets…..who’d-a-thunk-it. Leave some comments, I’d love to hear what you think about this project.

1) Install “Arctic Ice” back splash from Home Depot in the Kitchen.

2) Lay and stain hardwood floors in the kitchen and family room to match our existing hardwood in the dining room and foyer. Labor intensive and challenging, but if we do everything ourselves, we can save $3 – $4,000.

  3) Turn our fourth bedroom into an office. It’s currently empty, but we can’t wait to build dual work stations and shelves. IN PROGRESS.

4) Hang some “ceiling medallion” wall art along the staircase in the foyer. 

 5) Remove the silver nailhead trim from the window cornices in the family room and spray “antique bronze” then re-apply. (Long story short, we’re still not 100% sold on those window cornices). Swap out brown Venetian blinds for white or sheers.

So we didn’t do the ceiling medallion collage (I may still save that for another location in the house); however, we did install a photo collage along the staircase in our foyer.

I found some beautiful frames with linen matting at Pottery Barn marked down to 60 percent off at an after-Christmas sale.

Here’s the step-by-step of how we did it. I should note first that I used scrap paper to do all of the initial placement and arranging. I had some kraft wrapping paper left over from Christmas, so I traced each of the seven frames onto the Kraft paper and cut them out before I began my arrangement.

The best part about this little hanging trick is you can nail right through the paper and rip it away once you are ready to hang the actual frames, leaving the nail in tact.

1) Using our trusted green frog tape, I extended one long piece of tape about three feet above the handrail, making sure that the line of tape was perfectly parallel to the handrail. The long line of tape would serve as my “anchor line” to make sure I was arranging the frame gallery along the same “axis line” as the staircase itself.

2) I had seven frames total (they say odd numbers work best for a frame gallery). Three of the frames were 8 x 10 inches and four frames were 4 x 6 inches. I began the arrangement with the three larger frames first, anchoring the one 8 x 10 frame on either side of the long piece of “anchor tape.”

3) Then, I found the center point on the anchor tape between and hung the third 8 x10 frame right in the middle. I hung all of the 8 x 10s as potraits, so that I could create a stair-step affect as you looked down the anchor line.

4) I added the four 4 x 6 frames by putting two on either side of the middle 8 x 10 portrait frame. I hung all of the 4 x 6 frames landscape to create some variety in the lay out.

5) After I did some final tweaks to make sure I was happy with the way the arrangement looked, Tommy came in with nails and a hammer to prepare the wall.

6) Here’s the end result, after we replaced the kraft paper with the actual frames.

What do you think? Have you ever tried the tape and paper trick?

On Thursday July 25th and Thursday August 15th from 5-8pm, Grace Community Presbyterian Church is hosting a Spirit Night for Tucker at the Virginia Center Chick-fil-A (10176 Brook Rd, Glen Allen, VA 23059). Children from 3 years old up to 5th grade participate in GCPC’s Vacation Bible School for one week each summer (called Kids Give Back). They learn about God, Jesus, faith, and how to love God and love others. Every year they also teach children tangible ways of giving back to others, their community, and across the globe. This year, they’ve decided to extend their love to Tucker and to our family. Focusing on Micah 6:8 “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God,” they have organized a Spirit Night with the proceeds going to our Tucker fund.

So, grab your family, your friends, and your neighbors and we’ll see ya on July 25th and August 15th. Make sure to print out this voucher and bring it with you so that Chick-fil-A can track all of Tucker’s supporters.

• Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night Voucher July 25

• Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night Voucher Aug 15

Here’s when we first moved in;

And here was our old “new” deck;

So, for the last 3 or so years we’ve been happy with the color of the deck but I haven’t liked the function of the deck. When we would have people over, we were confined within our 12′ x 21′ block. People wouldn’t really sit in chairs and instead just spread to the edges…partly because we didn’t have enough seating and partly because anywhere else would disrupt traffic flow. I wanted to create a space that would pull folks into the rest of the yard and give us some more entertaining space. It needed to have a clear visual line into the yard, provide lots of seating, and have nice and wide steps leading into the yard. So, I came up with a design, knocked down all the railings and began to build.

Using the old deck’s 4×4″s, I created framing for a 12′ x 12′ L-shaped bench. The styling is very similar to the farmhouse table benches that I build and the L-Shape mirrors our window bench within our kitchen. As you look out the kitchen window, visually, our inside now connects with our outside.

On the other side of the deck, I maintained the railing height but repurposed that part as a serving table using the same 2×8″s that I used on the bench seating.

I then began to build the steps. I opted for a a method that is basically like building three sets of smaller decks. I cemented in 4×4″ posts and used 2×6″s for the framing. A typical step is about 11″ deep but I wanted steps that could be dual purposed as seating so I built them 14″ deep using 2″ 2×8″s.

I originally wanted no handrails but when I stood back and looked at the deck, it didn’t seem right to have nothing. I was also worried about people falling off the one side. On the bench side, in order for a handrail to make sense it needed a little something something. I decided to build a planter box that the handrail that could then flow out of. Once I built the first planter box, I realized that the other side needed one to balance it out and give us some symmetry. I had to then rebuild the serving table portion and beef it up some to match the beefiness of the planter box.

The building was complete and then I slapped on a couple coats of this amazing new deck paint called “Deck Over.” It’s 10x thicker than paint, has a little texture to it, and fills in cracks from old wood making it look new again. I painted everything with two coats of the tan and then hit up some detail work with some fresh white. There’s some better pictures to come but here’s the gist of the deck remodel.

The “New” Old Deck;

The first project that I completed was an attempt to ease the awkwardness of running inside a closet by mounting a tv in front of the treadmill. I unfortunately didn’t document that one…but here’s what it looked like;

While running and staring at the tv, I began to think of a way to dress it up a little more to make it look less unfinished. I’m not sure if this closet will always be designated as a treadmill closet…so I wanted to make something that could easily be removed and restored to a standard shelf with clothes hanger. I decided to make a simple facing to cover up some of the blank space.

I started by cutting a 1×3″ that would make the top and bottom horizontals. I then measured and placed the inside verticals that would sit up right against the tv. Once I had this frame, I added in filler pieces. I decided to go with a diagonal design to fit in with some of the other chevron patterns throughout the office. I used a finish nailer and nailed from the inside out so that there would be less nail holes. I needed to notch out where it would fit over the existing closet supports. I also drilled a hole for the IR remote sensor. I nailed in two support verticals into the closet support, slid the face over everything and then nailed it into place. To finish it off, I added a simple top plate and bottom plate.

There’s a couple of other organizational types of projects that I would like to incorporate into the closet and when all is said I done….I’ll slap a fresh coat of paint over everything. For now, this gives me something a little more pleasant to stare at while running.

I then took it all apart for staining/sealing. I followed the same stain/sealing process that I’ve been using lately. In essence; pre-stain wood conditioner, two coats of stain (Early American on this one), one coat of sanding sealer, sanding with 220 grit, 4-6 coats of General Arm-R-Seal (I use semi-gloss), sand with 220 grit before final coat, one last final coat of Arm-R-Seal.

Here’s how it turned out;