An Example of the Importance of Staging Your Home

While searching real estate listings recently for potential business I came upon this photo of a bedroom and I could not help but gasp! This room needs a stager and it needs one fast! Unless the rest of the house is magnificant in the photos, this would be enough for most people NOT to visit the home in person.

Fireplaces in bedrooms are usually a unique sellable feature, but in this room the strong green with the pink and the clutter... well they just make you want to leave fast! They also make the room appear smaller.

Now this room appears to be a small girl's room, and most homeowners will resist changing anything in their bedrooms because "we have to live in OUR HOME while it is on the market." It is hard for them to take the leap to thinking of THEIR HOME as a PRODUCT they are trying to sell for the best price they can get! Their home is just one of many products available to buyers to choose from.

Think about a job interview. You might buy a new suit and shoes, get your hair cut, and have a manicure to make a great first impression. Would you wear those uncomfortable clothes all the time? No, that would not work functionally if you wanted to go running. But you would wear them when you were for sale as an employee. When you are selling your home it needs to show at its best. Buyers need to be able to imagine themselves living there, and not be distracted by the strong decorating tastes of the sellers.

What does this room need? I would pull out the bookcases completely. They only distract from the fireplace. I would then paint the room, or at least the fireplace wall, a color that would "pop" the fireplace. A properly sized picture over the fireplace would add to drawing your eye to it as soon as you enter the room. I can't tell from this picture how large the room is, or if there are options for the placement of the bed, but I would hope to be able to move it.

Home Staging Helped This Home Sell In Just Over 7 Days!

A few weeks ago I was called by a realtor to help get a property sold quickly. It had been on the market for 186 days in 2007 and had not sold, and the owners were anxious to get on with a new life in another state. It was a beautiful home, with lots going for it, that needed decluttering, removal of extra furniture, and some rearranging to draw attention to the home's focal points. I was lucky that I was able to showcase the home using only the homeowner's furnishings, so there was no need for the extra expense of furniture rental.

 

I spent 7 hours going through the entire home and had the help of the owner and the realtor to speed things up. I did characteristically forget my camera, so I will be relying on limited current and old listing photos to describe what I did. The furniture that was removed was on the second floor, where I have no pictures.

 

It may be difficult to see the differences between the "before" and "after" views below, but look closely. In the first "before" picture below we see the following problems:

• all of the seating is right up against the walls
• the beautiful arrangement of windows on the front of the house is not highlighted as the focal point
• the tables are too far from any seating to be used
• the rug is floating alone and does not go well with the green wall color
• the lower windows have white sheers on them which block light and a beautiful view

 

The "after" picture below is the staged room.  To stage the room I did the following:

• shopped for the best rug in the house that would work with the green walls
• removed the sheers for more light and a view of the yard (a feature for this home)
• floated the large couch in front of the windows a good 6 feet away from the window so that it would be part of the conversation area, and, centered it to help draw the eye to the focal point
• added a large tree in one corner to add height and color to the corner
• placed the 2 small side tables and the coffee table within reach of the seating

 

 

 

After the staging, room still looks large and airy (15x19), but is also looks cozy enought to sit down and visit a friend with a cup of tea.

Now in the "before" picture of the family room below, you might say that it looks wonderful and clean. The argument would be that from the couches you can see the fireplace and the TV at the same time, and the couches are at angles in the corners aligned with the TV leaving plenty of space in the middle of the room, making it look larger.

 

I have a different point of view -- I would say that buyers fall in love with  "cozy and warm" feelings, architechural details, and views.  The fireplace and french doors are the focal points which need to be addressed.  The furniture needs to be floated in the room to draw attention to the fireplace, and the TV needs to be moved to a place where it does not compete with the french doors which afford a view of the lovely screened-in porch and beautful yard behind it. 

To stage the room I did the following: 

• moved the armoire to another corner so it does not compete with the french doors -- it is in a corner that is not often viewed first when you enter a room
• floated the seating in towards the fireplace
• centered the larger couch facing the fireplace to draw your eye there
• placed the shorter couch on the back side of the room, centering it on the french door to draw your eye there
• removed the too-large mirror over the fireplace and replaced it with the appropriate sized art

 I don't have a "before" of the porch, but look how we arranged it to look like a place the a buyer would want to spend his entire summer!  If you have a small square porch you could use this arrangement too.

 

Laurie Heffernon Featured on Boston's Channel 4 - The Story of Marrisa's Bedroom

Several weeks ago I was contacted by Elsie Nolan, a producer at Channel 4 in Boston, and asked if I would like to be part of a consumer report on ways to spruce up your home without spending lots of money. I immediately began my search for the perfect room. I chose to redesign the bedroom of 12 year old Marrisa Bachand of Sudbury, the daughter of Ray Bachand of 60Nobscot of Sudbury.

Marrisa's bedroom had been decorated when she was just entering elementary school and she had been pleading with her father for a more mature room to entertain her friends in. Her father recognized the need for a change but was busy growing his business and it never happened. Enter Done in a Day Decorating!




After talking with Marrisa about what she had in mind, and her father about what limitations he needed to set, we developed a plan that would balance both their needs and keep the cost to a minimum. In the end the only purchases would be paint, a lamp, a decorative purple box, a small picture frame, 8 sheer curtain panels, and a dust ruffle!

Marrisa loved purple and with that in mind Ray had a few years earlier purchased a beautiful quilt for the room that had lots of purple in it and coordinated well with the blue carpet, which was in good condition and had to stay. With the quilt as inspiration, we chose a lovely purple for the walls. Every other decision was driven from this starting point.

Since decorators hate televisions, and teenagers love to watch television, Marrisa's TV would stay but we needed to hide it. On Ray's property stand 3 barns filled with things he knew he might need sometime in the future. Lucky for us, in one of them was an old armoire just waiting to be let out into the world. We also found lots of pictures of horses, and Marissa loves horses.

The armoire was bare wood so we decided to have some fun and paint it a green that we found in the quilt. The dresser in the room had dark pink drawers, so they would be painted the same color. With 3 painting assignments for Ray, the next step was finding an inexpensive way to handle the window treatments.

I called in my good friend, and "window treatment department" Kendra Weldon of Weldon Interiors. Ray and Kendra are also friends. She had some scraps of material leftover from past jobs that would work perfectly. Now they were scraps, and we needed 8 panels for 4 windows so she had to be creative! She decided to design floor length panels with a top and middle section made of 2 different fabric scraps, and the bottom section made from sheers she bought. They almost looked like a dress with a bodice and skirt, and Marrisa thought they would really be funky. Since neither Ray nor Marissa were sewers, Kendra kindly volunteered to sew them herself! We decided to use another scrap to make a head board by stapling it to a piece of foam insulation she had in her garage, and she made some coordinating pillows out of her own napkins.

After the purchase of a few items, a bit of redesign of the layout of the room, and the perfect placement of accesorries and artwork, the room was done, and Marrisa can no longer be extricated from the room except for school and food!

You can read the Channel 4 story and see a video clip on their website. Be sure to click on the link at the end of the story, as well as on the link to the top left of their little TV screen.

http://wbztv.com/consumer/cheap.renovations.how.2.1009655.html

Bed Bath and Beyond

For all of you who collect the 20% off coupons that Bed Bath and Beyond distributes, you should know that the company will soon discontinue their unwritten policy of allowing you to use expired coupons.

I have a huge collection of the coupons in my car since I can use one coupon per product purchased, and because they have always allowed expired coupons. Soon this will not be the case, so use them now if you have things you need to buy there.

Do You Have Modern Decorating Style And Need Artwork?

I just discovered I.Candy!

I.candy offers a HUGE selection of hand-stretched canvas artwork at VERY affordable prices. You choose the artwork you like and then you can choose your size, your shape, and, in most cases, even your room's custom Benjamin Moore colors!

You have the option of a wood or metal frame, or you can go completely frameless.

I like the fact that your shopping can be done from your computer, and there is no need to go from store to store to store and risk coming home with nothing.

Check them out at http://www.icandyartwork.com/index.php.

Trying To Save Money on Window Treatments But Have a Custom Look?

A few weeks ago I worked with client in Sudbury who needed my help with arranging her family room and living room. She has a spectacular home that most people only dream about. As usual, I like to be given a tour of the home before I redesign so that I can get a better feel for the client's tastes, and sight any possible items that I can use in the redesigned rooms. Along the way a learned of some tricks she used to keep things affordable.

She had a wall in her hall dedicated to 20 years of Christmas card photos that her family had sent out. Each one was approximately the same size and was framed in a different thin gold frame with no mat. They were hung randomly on the wall and the look was wonderful.

In the master bedroom she had extravagantly custom window treatments - not just simple panels. She told me to look at the bed. I turns out she bought some beautiful sheets on sale and had the sheets made into these window treatments. This allowed her the custom look without paying big bucks per yard for fabric. I never would have guessed that the fabric was regular sheets! She unique design of the treaments and the use of frilly tassle edging fooled the eye.

Also in the master bedroom was a wonderfully inviting window seat. That, it turned out, was made from a needlepoint rug purchased at Home Goods! It was not quite wide enough for the seat, so she bought a small amount fabric in the same color for the edge, and had the window seat custom made too!

I left a very inspired redesigner and decorator.

When Decorating Your Body, Would You Wear Your Necklace on Your Forehead?

So you can imagine that I have been in more houses that the average person. As an interior decorator it is hard to keep my eyes to myself and not take in my new surroundings, and inevitably my roaming eyes elicit a question about advice. There is a common ailment in most rooms and it is that the art is either hung too high or too low! Some things are so high it hurts your neck to look at them. It would be like wearing your necklace on your forehead instead of your chest! It is especially a problem with people who have high ceilings.

Generally when hanging artwork think first of the function of the room. The artwork should be at eye level. If this is a room where you are typically seated, then stand-alone artwork should be hung with 54" from the floor to the center of the art. If it is a room you are normally walking through, then there should be 60" from floor to the center of art.

Now clearly when you have stacked artwork the grouping can go higher or lower. And, there are many instances involving stairways or cathedral celings when you can hang things very high, but 95% of the time the function rule prevails.

Happy Decorating!