STYLE FOR LIVING: Things to help the buyer of your home
LYNDA REEVES
Province
Once, when I bought a house, the former owner taught me how to leave a house in a way that will make its new owner feel grateful and touched.
First, it was clean. Incredibly clean, right down to the kitchen drawers and shelves, ovens, fridge from the basement to the attic. The windows and mirrors sparkled. Even the broadloom had been cleaned. It felt brand new, even though it was an old house.
All the nail holes where her pictures had been were patched and the walls repainted. Fresh toilet paper and paper towels waited in their holders.
In the basement she had left a shelf of things that I would need. There were lightbulbs, paint cans, labelled by room, firewood, parts for appliances, hardware that matched each door and window, leftover shelves and pins for the bookcases, shutters, bathroom tiles, baseboard, mouldings and trim. She even left extra pieces of broadloom in case I needed to patch something.
In the bathrooms and bedrooms, she left me some privacy in the form of drapes on the windows. A note asked me to return them to her once mine arrived.
On the kitchen counter was a box filled with the things I would need to help make my new house a home. It was so kind and thoughtful and, as I came to learn, incredibly helpful.
There was a piece of cardboard for each room, with a dab of paint from the walls along with the paint name, number and manufacturer. Then there were lists. What kind of furnace, when it was installed and the name and number of the company that had serviced it and when.
The trades who had worked in the house were listed with contact information, including window washers, chimney cleaners and eaves-trough experts. She provided the name of the sewing room who had made the drapes and the carpet installer she really liked.
She noted her favourite stores and services. She provided garbage-pickup calendars. And she left instructions for when to turn on the sprinkler system and which trees needed spraying in the spring.
There were the blueprints from her renovation, before and after photos of every room, and of the garden in each season. She listed what was planted, since it was winter and I couldn’t tell.
Of course, there were instruction and warranty packages for every appliance.
She told me the things that she was planning to do next, had she stayed in the house: Install a new sprinkler system because the old one didn’t reach many of the flowerbeds, for example. Of course I forgot about that list until my flowers started to dry up. After that, I paid attention to the list and did most of what she had planned.
And finally, there was the welcome package in my fridge. In it were the breakfast basics you never have on your first morning in your new house. Plus bottled water, great snacks and cold drinks for the moving crew.
I could not believe the work she had gone to to make me feel welcome. I remember hoping she would receive the same gift at the other end, knowing it was unlikely. Who would do all this? Someone who understands how it feels to love and care for a house and hope that the next person will do the same.
I have no plans to move, and yet I find myself collecting every warranty and spare tile, and bit of extra hardware. I imagine it must feel great to leave things as she did and if I’m ever a seller, I have to at least try to do the same.
Lynda Reeves is the host of House &
Home with Lynda Reeves, Monday and
Friday on the Global Television Network
and Saturday on PRIME.