Staging An Occupied Home For Sale

This is the home we staged last week. I am just experimenting on making a slide show with SmileBox and you are my Guinea Pigs.


Staging an occupied home presents challenges that a vacant home does not. You have to work with what they have, keep the home livable, and bring in things from the warehouse to enhance it. All this happens after an extensive consultation and "to do" list for the homeowner which includes items for removal, cleaning up, de-cluttering, new purchases, repairs, etc.

In the best of all worlds, they follow my written instructions to the letter and everything goes according to the design plan I have worked up from my photos. Often we come and find things not exactly the way we had hoped and then the order of the day is ~ adjust and smile.

We decorate the entire house in one day. It is hard work but very fun too. I could not do this without the help of my assistants, Emily and Maureen. They are the best! Nor could I do it without the technical assistance of Jim who helps me move all the heavy things to the houses and de-stage it when it is sold.

Once the written report is done I take that and my photos and begin the process of deciding what I have that will work in each room in the house. The tricky part is coordinating a feeling with colors, art work , accessories, floral and plants, linens, dishes, etc. that will pull the house together.

For this house we brought over two very full van loads of accessories from our warehouse. I spent about $50.00 to buy things we didn't have, but that is minimal and normal now that we have a pretty substantial inventory. As it turned out, I didn't even use the items but, that is OK...there is always another house. (Hopefully!)

What made this home more difficult was the colors in the main rooms are so muted. As an example the sofa is a salmon and muted blueish gray, patterned fabric. It is very hard to make that "pop" as the overused term goes. One of the best colors for making a house come alive is red and that just would not work in this house. Also things like wallpaper in the dining room remained in place although removal was recommended. The chandelier, a favorite treasure brought from their larger home was installed here, but is way over-scale for this room. That meant finding dishes in our collection that were the right colors to blend with the living room and somewhat plain, and having a shorter centerpiece than I would normally use so it wasn't nearly touching the light fixture. Every detail has to be considered. So, come on in and take the tour!



Make a Smilebox slideshow

Our objective is to make the house look inviting and spacious and well cared for by the owners. We also try to make it look like real people live here so it does not have the sterile quality of a model home. We want the prospective buyer to think they would just love to live here where everyday is restful and wonderful! We realize they have probably been working like crazy to get their home on the market too, so when they come here we want things to look and feel done! We want them to feel like they would be leisurely stepping up...!

What do you think? Did we do it?

Room With A Past

I just have to say how much I love visiting Room With a Past once a month. Each month they are open for four days only and it is a wonderful girl party each time. This is collective shop located in a warehouse near us, that sells all things vintage, at wonderful, affordable prices. There is a group of very fun women who run the shop and each of them collects, restores and sometime leaves 'as is'...the lovely things they sell.

Aren't they cute?

The opening each month is held on a Thursday evening and the ladies always dress up in these adorable vintage clothes and hats, they serve goodies and a great time is had by all. You are apt to see several old duffers dozing off in the car while their wife is having a ball. Taking a man in here would be akin to a bull in a china closet kind of a scenario. They would H-A-T-E it!

I just love hunting for just the right accessory for something I am working on or designing. This month I purchased this darling oval mirror for over my little book case in our backdoor entry. I just love the shape of it and it is the perfect size. At $18.00 I felt it was a real bargain. And since it is vintage it is nicely made and quite heavy, unlike the ones made today.


What is so fun about this place is that it is run by women who love to shop and love simple and beautiful things. And as I said the prices are great. When I helped my friend, Faye, decorate her cottage we got so many cute things here.

I love this type of shopping because the thrill of the hunt is so compelling. You just never know what you will find. In the past few weeks I have found these items that I truly love. Both of these came from thrift shops. It is always a hit and miss but the hits are so much fun. It is a great way to go green by recycling, reinventing and saving money.

I wish I knew how to take photos of something that has glass on it and how to avoid the glare. I do know how to turn off my flash but because we have so many windows in our house, it is hard to take a good photo without reflections. I resorted to laying it on our bed which helped some. This picture is a nice big print with great matting and framing. The mat matches our wall color in our hallway perfectly. Price $12.00.

As I have been accessorizing our kitchen, I have been going for an Italian look (my own brand). The accent colors are rust and mustard while the neutrals are a warm creamy latte and brown with black appliances. I have a vintage/old world looking cupboard, made for me by a dear friend that I can never part with, so I tried to find some fun things to put inside. I about fell over with delight when I saw this pot at Goodwill for $3.99.

I love this pot for its vibrant color and the olive branches on it. It is in perfect condition. It is every bit as fabulous as the fancy one I saw at Sur la Table for $79.99. Cha ching...score!

Accessorizing in the Kitchen

Each week over at Hooked on Houses there is a meme to share something that you are hooked on. The is also one over at Kelli's called Show and Tell where I am submitting this post as well. Right now I am hooked on getting our new kitchen decorated and I want to show and tell you a little about it.

Actually it is not even finished yet but here are a few sneak preview photos to give you an idea of what we have been working on lately. I am so excited to have this new Italian look (my version) in this room. I am even more excited about being a team with my husband and doing it all together. I love the colors we have chosen and am feeling pretty happy with the whole project.

Selecting The Perfect Counter Top

Over the last several weeks, as some of you know, we have been remodeling several areas in our home. The current project is our kitchen. This is always the most exciting room to redesign. It is usually the heart of the home and the place that people congregate in their daily lives as well as when entertaining. A great kitchen will sell an otherwise average house in a heartbeat. Whenever people think of a newly remodeled kitchen one word pops into their minds almost immediately. Granite. Everyone seems to want it! We thought we wanted it too until I started actually looking at it.

I think what people really mean when they say they want granite is that they do not want little six inch tiles with grout or a laminate surface. They are looking for a stone surface for its beauty, durability and it value in terms of resale. However, as we have found, sometimes in working with what is already in the kitchen, granite is not the best choice.

Our home is several decades old and has random plank oak flooring with wooden pegs. It is a beautiful floor and in excellent condition after many decades of being carpeted. We had it refinished a few year ago and love it.

I am still looking for the perfect area rug in our dining room!

Because it is in the adjoining rooms of our kitchen, we selected a stone tile pattern for our kitchen and had it installed in our kitchen, entryway, laundry room, pantry and small bath at the same time. We really like this floor and did not want to replace the entire run of it during our kitchen renovation as that would be quite costly and it is practically new.

When purchasing a granite counter top you usually go to the showroom and choose a color and pattern that you like and then hope for the best. Since granite in not a man made surface you will never get one that looks exactly like the one in the showroom. There are always naturally occurring variations in the pieces. Granite is very beautiful and I love it, but it was not for our kitchen and here is why.

Usually granite is sold in 8 foot slabs. I spent quite a bit of time in the granite store selecting what I thought would be a good choice for our kitchen. Then you wait a few days while they actually truck in your pieces. Once you sign off the pieces indicting that this is what you want, you will soon have a beautiful new counter top. It sounds simple enough, but not really. Twice we went down to see the granite they brought in for us and it did not look anything like the sample in the showroom. We needed three slabs and each was as different as you can imagine from the other two. (Note: If you are keeping your flooring or cabinets, you need to take a sample of them with you when shopping for a counter top.)

This is what I learned from this unsettling experience:

• If you have a patterned floor, think twice about granite as your choice. Our particular floor is really beautiful but varied in both color and texture and pattern. The problem~ that is exactly like those same characteristics in a slab of granite. There were pieces of granite we looked at that would have looked like we had run the same material on both the counter and the floor! They were much too similar and there was not enough contrast. Granite seems to work beautifully with wood flooring but not always so well with geometrics or color variations in patterned flooring.

• If you have a counter run of more than 8 feet like we do, you may run into matching problems. We have a 19 foot run of counter which would have looked like a plaid shirt with mismatched stripes if we had selected the granite we liked in the showroom.
  
• You can have a beautiful stone counter tops other than granite that looks great with patterned flooring. Patterns mix best when the scale of the patterns is quite different. Since we have a rather large, random, pattern on the floor featuring both copper and silvery metallic tones, I have selected a much smaller, predictable pattern for the counter top. The pattern is in black which will compliment the black appliances. The color will compliment the warmer tones in the flooring.
  

I ended up selecting a Silestone counter top which was more expensive than granite but was right for our home. The color is kind of a brick and not represented well in this photo. We do have a brick hearth and black cast iron fireplace in the room as well so lots of patterns going on and the counter top needed to be subdued and still compliment the colors in the existing elements of the room. Silestone does have a lovely shine like granite as opposed to a Corian mat surface.

There are at least four companies that make a fabricated stone counter top like Silestone that is amazing. It is virtually maintenance free. No annual sealing or anything like that. I learned that they are all made by the same manufacturer on one machine and distributed to the various retailers. They are made of crushed quartz~ which is essentially granite with a man made pattern for more continuity. When that pit in my stomach went away I knew it was right for us. Whew!

Even though I have worked with several clients selecting countertops for their kitchen renovations, I realized that every one of them had a wood floor and that made granite selection pretty easy.

So when you are making a purchase of several thousand dollars, be informed, select carefully and realize you will be living with it for a long time. If you plan to sell your home, think stylish, updated and somewhat neutral. Remember to think about what is already in the room and coordinate accordingly. Go more to the neutral side and jazz it up with paint and accessories. Something classic will appeal to the largest number of potential buyers and you will tire of it less frequently over time. Happy hunting and think beyond granite sometimes! I'll have some photos of our finished project in a few weeks.

Easter Craftiness

Just kidding! Actually I don't have too many Easter decorations to begin with and I have very little out this year. But something really weird happened ...a tiny wave of craftiness hit me. I am not into crafts and I rarely like anything I make in that department but... I did decide to create...or I should say, embellish a couple of things I picked up for a song this year.

I found this little critter cage for $5.99 at TJ Maxx...it was empty. I thought it was cute so decided to add some lime green moss, a little peep I had and a few eggs. That is about the extent of my craftiness...impressive, huh?

Yesterday I went to this very cool shop with some business associates. You are all gonna want my job when I tell you that we met to go shopping (for the businesses of course) and then we toured a home one of the ladies had just beautifully staged and then found ourselves having lunch. It was a rough day at work but I managed! While shopping I found this cute bird cage for $19.99. It was empty so since I had some moss left and a cute little nest and some eggs I did this. Wouldn't "The Nester" just be green with envy?

I told you I am not much of a crafter, but I can put things together and this was fun, fast, and finished in a flash! My kind of craftiness. The eggs below are some that I have made and or purchased over the years. I love the little chicken wire basket that holds them.

Wouldn't it be fun if you could save eggs your kids decorate when they are little that aren't hand blown and so fragile? Wouldn't it be neater if your little kids could even hold and decorate a blown out egg without cracking it?

Once while decorating eggs with my friend, Lee, I discovered that you can have kids decorate eggs you can keep. Did you know that you can hard boil and decorate eggs that will last forever a long long time? If they don't have any cracks they will be just fine for years to come. I always thought they would start smelling rotten, but nope. All that happens is that the egg inside dehydrates and shrinks and they are like a little rattle over time. Think plastic egg with a small chocolate egg in it. The first few years I would leave them out but hidden for a few months to make sure they were not rotten before storing them away. I have never had a problem and neither has Lee and she still has some that her mother painted for her when she was a little girl. Try it, it is eggciting.

The eggs that you see with the patterns on them are done with hard boiled eggs and spring tissue papers. You just tear some pieces dip them in liquid starch (or maybe Modge Podge) and press them on the egg and dry. Our daughter, Jen, taught me this little trick ten years ago when we were in Scotland she made them for Piper's first Easter. I fell in love with them but they were the blown eggs so would not transport easily. Finally I just made some of my own. Again, my kinda thing. They really are pretty cute for the effort that goes into them.

Well, I hate to put all my eggs in one basket but this is probably the only crafting post you will ever see from this chick!

Happy Easter!
I gotta go feed my carrot!

After Dark

After Dark by Pino

Several years ago I was on the local real estate tour of homes and came across a home that had this beautiful painting in it. It must have been at least a 36 x 48 inch giclee on canvas and it was amazingly beautiful. The depth and texture and the colors of this painting are so romantic and lovely. I have loved Pino's art ever since.

There is something so feminine and gorgeous about this painting and it reminds me of our sweet daughters, an elegant dining experience and an abundant life, not in a monetary sense, but just in life itself.


I keep this picture in our antique kitchen cabinet and really need to find a new place for it somewhere in our house as I am changing the color scheme and style of our kitchen and it just won't work in this room too much longer. It will be a challenge but never fear~I will figure it out because I love this painting! What artists do you enjoy? I love the impressionists and I would love to be tagging around with our daughter, Laura and her husband, Robert this weekend in Paris! Hopefully they will get to Musee d'Orsay in their adventures.

How do you incorporate things that don't quite go with your decor but that you just love and want to keep near to you, your heart and soul? Being eclectic in style is a good thing~it allows for a more interesting look and it truly lets your personality shine forth ~ but it can be tricky. What works for you?

Faye's Vintage Cottage

This is a cottage with million dollar views from every window. This view is out the kitchen window. The house in on a large piece of wooded property with a creek running through the backyard. It is a paradise for sure.

It is such a blessing to love the work you do. This little cottage is the epitome of why I love decorating living spaces so much. The cottage was actually built by my husband's grandfather over half century ago. For years his uncle owned the house next to the cottage and we would visit often.

When it was time for Uncle Bob to sell, a sweet young family bought it. They happened to be members of our church and so over the years, Jim and I have gotten to know them very well and love them a lot. The cottage has served many purposes over time, but now it is at it's best~a guest house and hideaway for Faye when no one is visiting. Last week she and I shopped and worked on the house to make it oh, so welcoming and fun. She did a post on the renovation and you can see it here. Double click on Faye's photos to see the details.

Somehow we both missed getting photos of the dining area in the kitchen. There is a round table with a white and navy tablecloth and a pretty blue and white floral centerpiece and four black chairs. They sit right in front of a bank of window with a patio view. Here a a few photos of room Faye has already shown you from different angles.

She has concealed her treadmill with a
lovely screen just to the right of the couch.

I love the little niche here in the bedroom!


This vantage point with a few more details added in.

Close up of the dresser top. Double click for close up.
The antique comb in the foreground and the sparkly purse
were a few of our finds.
The cobalt blue accessories are perfect in here.

This is a very restful room. The 2 million dollar house we decorated for sale last summer does not even come close to comparing to the coziness and charm of this little cottage. Thank you, Faye, for a wonderfully memorable experience and fun day together! Faye's husband, John, came home right as we were finishing and accused us of totally girlifying the cottage and turning it into a chick pad. Yup, we did it all right! Guilty as charged!

As we were finishing up I couldn't help wishing Jim's Grampa could see it today. The cottage has come full circle! Faye is a very lucky lady and I have to admit, I felt a little green with envy for such a lovely hideaway of her very own ~and right next door to her big house. What would you do with a great space like this one?