Rather than making my usual rounds of happy hour spots, new clubs, and/or concerts, parties, and fun events, I spent all of last weekend digging in the yard, pulling weeds, trimming hedges, and doing all the many little projects I had been ignoring for most of the summer. For all my hard work, I have a neat and cheerful yard and patio, and an incredibly embarassing plumber's sunburn from crouching in the flowerbeds, thanks to the not-terribly-practical realities of gardening in low-rise jeans. This week, we hired a painter to come in and help us pull a Trading Spaces-worthy switcheroo in our kitchen. It's amazing what a little paint can accomplish. Equally amazing is what the lack of paint can improve, at least in the case of our vintage chrome kitchen hardware, which was gleamingly revealed after stripping many coats of paint off of every hinge and handle. (It's interesting seeing the paint colors, actually. Our kitchen currently sports shades of white, cream, and sage, but was once an icky bluish gray, a perky-pukey mint green, and a sunny '70s yellow.) We've also touched up other spots, adding new fancy faucets, upgrading lighting fixtures, painting baseboards, and cleaning out many piles of really important paperwork and other various stuff that collects in the corners of my office and living room. So what is the point of this sudden rush of home improvements? Naturally, now that the house looks better than it ever has, and we've fixed, improved, and added every little item we've ever wanted, we are planning to move. It's a sad fact, but I imagine that for many of us, selling our homes means making lots of great little improvements. It's an equally sad fact that the new owners are highly likely to re-do everything anyway, and our new place will require us to start all over again. Still, I'm happy we're finally getting the place back on the market. We tried for a month or two last fall to sell the joint, but we pulled it back off the market for "the holidays" and here we are, just listing it again. Now, for the waiting game. So. Anybody wanna buy a half duplex in West Wash Park? Feel free to drop me a line below. I'll be here, surfing the real estate sites and planning my next Trading Spaces project in a new home.