Occupation Circumnavigator: Sailing Around the World looks like a really neat book. I also added Fibreglass Boats: Construction, gel coat, stressing, blistering, repair, maintenance to the shopping list.
I did a little research over at Home Depot today on various things for getting this house in order. It seems to me that the key to getting the best price possible must be to make the first impressions as favorable as possible and then fix all the obvious flaws. For us that means siding, front door, and kitchen for first impressions, and a raft of smaller fixes otherwise, like sanding and painting window frames, installing light fixtures in the garage, repairing our shower walls upstairs, and replacing the flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms.
I saw some nice-looking modular kitchen cabinets for around $200 a piece. I guess we'd have about 12 pieces to replace. I have no idea what level of effort is involved with installing something like that. I think we could put in some new counters relatively inexpensively since they're so small. So maybe about $3500 including a new sink plus lots of sweat to redo the kitchen, which should look great with all the new appliances we've put in over the past couple years.
I think we should probably also replace our main entry door and frame. Yeah, that magnet's nice in the winter, but we won't be selling in the winter, and it's distinctly annoying otherwise. What's a nice exterior cost, about $800? How hard is it to install? I'm thinking, "really hard."
Siding looks like it's about $24-$32 per 4x8 sheet. Here's where it's nice to have a simple rectangular house. I think about 40 sheets would cover the whole house, and 20 more would take care of the garage. So about $1800 in siding for both, plus paint or stain and lots of sweat.
We also for sure need to do something about the pantry and the storage in the cabinets.
We tried to read the bowsprit chapter in The Capable Cruiser yesterday. That was another big "huh?" I'll need to continue to do some research on the concepts from these chapters to really get them. Not that I believe it's critical to fully internalize the Pardeys' pontifications on bowsprits and staysails, but I'm guessing that if I want to understand anyone at all on the topics, I'll need to know enough to understand the Pardeys too.
OK, Pardey time. 'night.
