Sounds like some form of landscape fabric to me and as others have stated, been there, done that, and wouldn't do it again. In a blackberry plot I might do it because of their growth nature, but in a perennial bed no. There is a belief that landscape fabric will permanently prevent weeds from spreading, but a couple of years ago at my parent's place we removed a whole section - about 30 feet in diameter. It was the most difficult thing a few workers and I had ever done. She had unknowingly planted a suckering shrub which started coming up through the fabric after few years. When we removed the fabric we saw the extent of the root system of this monster under the fabric and needed a backhoe to get it out! In essence, the fabric hid the growing problem underneath for about 10 years... If the fabric had not been there, the problem would have been noted much earlier and would have been dealt with much easier. My practice of mulching with organics to feed the soil which in turns feeds the plants was confirmed as being a good practice. :O) In the gardens, I mulch with mostly a combo of shredded leaves and UCGs - Used Coffee Grounds... For paths, I use sheets of newspaper topped with wood chips from a sawmill up the road. You can see one path behind the raised gardens it in the following photo.

Too many photos. You only need 1 photo of the dining room and don't need to photograph every bedroom and only 1 or 2 of the front of the home. The living room photo, move that orange/brown leather chair before you take the next photo. It hides the room. You can slide it back after the photo. Also, you need contact info and asking price on the web site. Also, you need several bullet points that describe the house and/or area on the web site. Maybe talk about the square footage and lots size also. maybe taxes and age of house and major features (new furnace, roof, fireplace, x bedrooms, 2 car heated garage, etc)? Don't list small crap that everyone has, like garage opener and such. What made you BUY the place? Often that is a selling point as well that you can market. List on craigslist.com as well and post 4 photos and write about a paragraph or so. And repost on craigslist about every 10 days. Don't get lazy and not post the photos, thinking the web site link will do. Folks need to see the pix on craigslist or they won't go to your web site. Also ref to your web site from craigslist. Get a custom made For Sale sign for your front yard. Go to a sign shop. They make them for under $100. It is well spend. You pick the color, font, sign size. I usually go bigger than the standard R.E. sign. Pick a color that will stand out against the green grass or white snow. I like electric blue and yellow. You can even use an icon, such as a golf club if that was the type of home you were selling. Put major features (finished basement? acre lot? waterfront?)on the sign and # bedrooms, bathrooms and your phone number. Get flyers for the front yard. Keep them in the little box that you put next to/on the sign. Keep the flyers stocked. realize neighbors will take them, especially the first week. Don't worry, it is natural curiousity. Also reference the web site on the flyer, saying for more PHOTOS go to www.sitexyz. Make sure you have at least one front photo on the flyer. Have price and address in bold either at the top or right below the photo in large/bold. Have your contact info easy to see on flyer. I sold several FSBOs, so am giving you advice that truly will help you. Also, I suggest a discount broker to get into MLS. But then you have to pay an agent that brings the buyer (2.5-3%). If you do this, you need to be able to not pay this commission if you sell to someone that doesn't have an agent. In my case, this occurred and I simply paid the $400 or so to get the listing into MLS, and nothing more. Good luck. it is hard work. Then screening the callers is not easy either. Neighbors might lie to get in to see the place. they say their uncle(or mother, brother, etc) is looking to move and they are looking for him. BS 97% of the time. Return all calls pronto. Good luck.

Motherof3, if you'd like an excel spreadsheet for budgeting I'd be happy to share mine with you. I'm doing basically what you're talking about so it's probably pretty accurate to your job. If you're comfy with 400K than you're probably ok with budget issues. I'm pushing $250 now, for a pretty high end job (over half of that is the kitchen). $400 seems high if you're not adding on to the house...but heck, in every community it's different. IF we'd have gone design/build we were talking numbers like $350k so given who you're talking to, that could be right. When we started pushing the budget upwards over $150 we decided we should look to our options. First, was the value there (we paid $600 to have an "as proposed" appraisal done). It did justify the expense as reasonable for resale. (I wanted to see a minimum of 67% return on money spent). Then we looked at other homes on lakes (we're in a townhome on a lake and didn't want to give the "lake" away). We couldn't find anything for less than $950 and it needed about $250 put into it :) We love the home, love the location, and the investment wasn't unreasonable given the value of the improved property, so we went for it. Going the GC route allowed for me to upgrade to a pretty high end level on our remodel. It meant more work for me, searching for everything from light fixtures to sinks, but I enjoyed the hunt (still doing it today actually) and think the final project will be better because of the time spent making it different from the norm (in a good way) :) The negatives of that are you don't have warranty for 100% of the job and fixtures, but I do have warranty on the work by the GC and the items I've purchased on an individual basis. I guess more work for me when they break maybe? But I'm ok with that. Even a good design/build wouldn't go to the efforts I've gone to in finding the right art deco lighting, etc...ok they might, but the budget would have pushed half a million if they had done it. Starting with that budget sheet in hand was a valuable tool for me. I'd before thought "oh $40,000 will do it...then $90..." and then I put it all on paper...and reality sunk in :)

Kudos to teacats and bbstx. We are renovating a very old house and have been taking pics before,during and after every room project.(down to the studs and everything in between). We use a "cloth" crafters measuring tape-looks like a tailors tape-that is 10' long in all of the photos,very convenient to find studs,electrical and plumbing later when it is all covered up. Also, with all of the finished room measurements it is easy to bring along the pictures when looking at furniture and other "stuff" for it.Tapes are cheap too about a buck at Micheals. Also we use a nifty program from Benjamin Moore that lets you insert your room photos into it and "paint"the room and trim from their colors-Note,the colors will not be exact to the true colors due to monitor variations-but we have found it very handy.You can also hang fabric swatches in the room and work around them with color combinations.Think it was around $10.00 several years ago for the download but has saved us a lot of time narrowing down colors and or fabric. Cheers