Monday, August 1, 2016

Staging without renting furniture, will it work?? Sold on DAY 4



You want a sell a house.  What do you do first?  You don't want to rent furniture for staging.  Can you use what you have?  Many times what you have will work.  You just need to make it look fresh.  Add a few pillows, buy some fresh flowers, set the table.

I volunteered to stage a dear friend's home before  sale.  Her kids wanted to make it happen.  So I did all of my usual steps.  First I walked through the house and made my ever loving list.

The house had a lot of furniture.  We agreed that a lot of the furniture needed to be donated or moved to one of the kids' homes or sold.  We made a plan.  The home was nicely renovated but needed a fresh coat of paint.  A painting contractor was secured.

This home had three fireplaces.  Wow,  you don't see that very often unless you are in the gazillion dollar category.  The fireplaces were in serious need of renovation.  Now the fun began.  I worked with the homeowner to sign off on the fireplace finishes.  We agreed on stacked stone, in the family room, beautiful tile in the living room and a tile that looks like reclaimed wood in the master bedroom.  We secured a contractor to reno all three fireplaces.  All they needed was a face lift and we were cognizant of the cost.  We needed to make the rooms pop but did not want to spend a bunch of money.

If you have read any of my posts about staging you know that I like the kitchen table to be "set".  We did a quick recover on the kitchen chairs and set the table with some cute dishes so the prospective buyer would want to have dinner there with their children.
You can see the living room fireplace after the facelift.
100% homeowners furniture.  Nothing rented, nothing purchased.  We just added a few decor items from my stash and always a few pillows.

There is kind of a funny story on the kitchen chairs.  I like to do any easy things that can make a home look a little fresher.  Covering tired, old seat cushions is really easy.  Unscrew the chair cushion, cut the new fabric, staple gun the fabric and rescrew.  The homeowner had already scheduled an open house and I had not yet done the chairs so I ran over to the house to do a quick recover.  My grip is not what it used to be and I couldn't squeeze the staple gun hard enough to secure the fabric.  Marty to the rescue.  I called him, told him there was about to an open house and that I had the kitchen chairs torn apart in the back yard.  He came over and we knocked off the chairs in under an hour.
Kitchen cabinets clear, with just a couple of  decor items.
The kitchen was recently renovated so we just put out a few decor items.  Clear away the stuff so you can see the home.  You might recognize the apples in the corner.  They follow me everywhere.  They are fake and add just the right touch of color.

The bedrooms also just needed to be cleared out and simplified.  Note the fireplace with the tile to look like reclaimed wood.

Another bedroom, just stripped down to the bed and a desk.  We did not recover the window seats, just threw some pillows on top to make it look better.

The home owner is the daughter of my friend, Annie.  Thanks, Bridgette St. Hiliare,  for allowing me to work with you on this very special home.  Bridgette is an agent with Desert Peaks Fine Properties

I cry every time I hear this song, "Silent House" by the Dixie Chicks.....If you do not know it take a listen on you tube and remember your Mom or your Grandmother or in my case Ya-Ya.  Okay I am crying now.....
"And I will try to connect
All the pieces you left
I will carry it on
And let you forget
And I'll remember the years
When your mind was clear
How the laughter and life
Filled up this silent house"

Coming soon:
Surfer birthday
Notes from the Beach
Summer Breeze/August Wishes

Love, Ya-Ya


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