Recently I related this story to a client who was planning paint colors for her new home. Years ago my husband and I decided to repaint our master bedroom in the middle of the winter. It used to be a horrible green (inherited from the prior owner) but we had picked out a warm, golden yellow color for our new decor. It was winter and cold and pouring rain. We had unexpected company, so started late and finished well after midnight. We decided to close off the room so we wouldn't have to smell the fumes all night and sleep up front.

So far, so good. But it was one of those older homes with only a space heater in the hallway, so the freshly painted room did not get any heat all night (what were we thinking??) When we woke up I rushed back to see our beautiful new bedroom, only to find that most of the paint had slid off the wall and was now in huge pools on my beautiful hardwood floors!! So I had green and gold streaks and a horrible mess to clean up!! I really didn't know whether to laugh or to cry!! It took about 3 weeks to cleanup the mess, then we had to start over (and this time used space heaters to make sure the room was warm enough for the paint to adhere.) The finished product was beautiful, but it was many years before I tackled another paint job!

There is a moral to this story, though, and that is this: It always pays to hire somebody who knows what they are doing! This is especially true when you plan to sell your house. For most people, that is their single most important asset, so why in the world would you hire an amateur to sell it, or even try to do it yourself? There are a thousand things that could go wrong, and that an inexperienced person might not think about ahead of time. One seemingly simple mistake, one sentence uttered at the wrong moment, one appointment missed, and you can lose much more than the commission you hoped to save. When trying to explain the value of an experienced, full time, professional agent, this story often comes to mind!