House Staging Project!

We’re selling our house! While this may sound exciting, (which it is) spending my first two weeks home from college staging the house was the LAST thing I wanted to do after a hell of a finals week.

However, it turned out pretty nicely, and I’m feeling rather pleased (not to mention our realtor is totally pumped about my work—I feel honored!).
So what is staging, and why do it?

1. Staging is when you set up your house so it looks like it’s something out of Better Homes & Gardens (i.e. you make it look like people who are uber-stylish, psycho-neatfreaks who don’t own anything but a little furinture and some decorations live there—so basically fake people).

2. Pre-staging is hell because you have to move out/get rid of ALL YOUR CRAP. Books, clothes, toiletries, knicknacks:  anything that’s not minimal, tasteful decor and furniture that actually looks nice/matches has to go (i.e. half the stuff at the local Goodwill came from our house). Fortunately, we’re renting my grandmother’s condo so we’re moved in there and not living in the house.

3. Staging makes your house look extremely spacious (the furniture gives people a sense of scale, but having almost no stuff in the rooms makes them appear larger) and stylish, as well as move-in ready, which is extremely appealing to home shoppers. We repainted/touched up half the house to tie it together with a “beachy” theme, which is very popular right now (also, we live 20 minutes from the ocean. Fitting.)

We want to sell our house really fast, and although it’s only been on the market for four days we’ve already had three showings and have more scheduled. Hot damn! This is why we stage.
I have a handful of pics I stole from the listing to show what sorts of things I’ve done. I didn’t stage the bathrooms, and did minimal work in the master bedroom (time crunch) so I left those rooms out of this virtual tour. Anyway, allons-y!

Welcome to the house!

Here’s the kitchen. The wall color is “weathered glass” and I have a matching glass of seashells on the island (ha! island! beach!). Notice the perfectly-matching shell decoration above the stove. I got all the decorations for the house either at Goodwill, from my grandmother’s breezeway or from our house. Not. Too. Shabby.

Now we come to the living room. I found a mug that matched the kitchen walls to tie the color scheme into this room. Also, I painted that table in the corner white and put my grandmother’s candle-lit lighthouse and seashells on it to carry in the beach theme.

We didn’t have enough chairs to go all around the dining table (I put the other two in the eat-in area) so I put these guys at the ends of this massive table to show just how big this room is. I set the table (again, fake people live here).  Notice the beachgrass centerpiece and surrounding seashells. Also, my grandmother’s little three-picture hangy thing fit perfectly where we used to have a family picture frame. I love it when stuff works out like that.

 This is our addition, the “big room” (which is being marketed as the “family room”).  I moved the couch against the windows to create a clear pathway through the room and set up beanbag chairs with PS2 controllers and an open videogame case to make it seem as if the kids left their stuff just after playing a game. I got rid of many of our board games, so I artistically arranged the remaining games on the shelves so as to not look empty.  I also set up a game of clue, cards and pieces and checklists and all, as if two people had just gotten up in the middle of the game for a snack.

This is the office, in the daylight walkout basement. I borrowed my grandmother’s old computer monitor to stage this, and I placed some nice pens/office supplies on the shelves. I used sticky notes to cover up the beat up places on the desk.

Voila! The home gym. This used to be my basement bedroom, but it’s been repurposed. This room is so big, so I put the gyrm-thingy diagonal across the room so as not to leave a huge empty middle. I also kitty-cornered the step-up and the TV to go with the gym.

Last but not least, the bedrooms. This room was mine once upon a time, and, since it’s blue, I designated it the “boy’s room” (#gendernormsareannoying). I used a self portrait from 8th grade to cover up wall anchors and also put up a framed Ninja Turtles poster. I spent far longer than I’d like to admit on that Harry Potter puzzle, but left it unfinished because I wanted it to look like a kid is working on it.

Now the “girl’s room”. My little sister likes horses, so I went with a horse theme in here. The horse comforter, toy horse and horse book open on the bed tie it together nicely. None of the furniture in here matched, so I painted the dresser and nightstand white and did flower detailing on the knobs with pink nail polish. Btdubs the bed isn’t real—it’s three old mattresses stacked on top of each other. They’re going to Goodwill once the house sells.

In short, I chose a theme for the main floor that I knew was very doable (what with my grandmother having a lot of beachy stuff already and some of the walls already being a neutral color) and staged each room as if perfect fake people lived there.

New makeup tutorial coming tomorrow! Hint: it’s super cool. ;)