Parade of Homes, Day 1

Our house was open from 11-5 Saturday and Sunday as part of the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association Parade of Homes, which is a builders' showcase. It was one of 68 homes that were open throughout Northern Virginia -- the majority of which were for sale. In addition to doing some landscaping to spruce up our front yard, our builders sent someone over to clean our house on Friday morning. They were grateful that we had agreed to allow strangers to traipse through our house for 2 days, and didn't want to further inconvenience us with the pressure to make sure it was spic & span by 11 am Saturday.
A crew of people from SAI (our builders) and My Green Cottage (who does their marketing) showed up a little before 11 to set up yard signs, brochures, etc. Our architect, Marta, and her husband, Amalio, arrived a little later.
The weather was a bit tropical -- warm, windy, and rainy -- so they decided to make everyone take their shoes off. Here are Amalio and John (SAI's master carpenter) showing off their best visitor-greeting smiles -- and their matching socks.
Susan, the president of My Green Cottage (MGC), enjoyed the tropical weather on our back porch while working on a DVD about our house on her laptop. She also kept an eye on the toolboxes built by the SAI crew from construction scraps. They asked people to vote for their favorite one and enter a drawing to win a prize (I think it was dinner for 4 at a restaurant). I imagine it was also a way to create a mailing list...
Edward from MGC spent the whole time standing in the kitchen taking people's votes and entering their info into his laptop. Here he is chatting with Steve B from SAI (in blue shirt), Marta and Amalio, and the guy who owns the company that did our hardwood floors (in suit).
Despite the rainy weather, we probably had close to 100 people come through the house on Saturday. Several people were disappointed to learn that the house was not for sale, and we got lots of great compliments from everyone we spoke to. I had sent an announcement to our neighborhood email newsletter, so lots of neighbors came by to check out the house. Many of them thanked us for doing such a nice renovation and helping to preserve the character of the neighborhood, which I found very moving.

Dane and John from SAI stuck around after everyone had left to fix a loose towel ring in the bathroom. It ended up being a bigger project than I anticipated, but they graciously kept at it until it was fixed. They are as handy as they are handsome!
We finally had the house back to ourselves around 6 pm. It was great answering questions and listening to people say nice things about our house all day, but also pretty exhausting. We ended up spending the rest of the evening on the couch trying to make a dent in the TV shows that have built up on our DVR.