House Staging 101: The Master Bedroom

I figured I may as well finish up this series of posts on staging. Since I showed you pretty much the entire downstairs I figured you probably would want to see the bedrooms as well.

So here it goes. Our house has 3 bedrooms upstairs, and one bathroom. We use the largest bedroom as the master since we use the lower level bedroom as an office. Both the Princess and the Peanut have their own rooms. Tonite I will feature the Master Bedroom.

When we moved in we did not change any paint colors upstairs. Therefore all the differences you see in these pics is SOLELY from staging.

Before:
Eh, nothing special. The bed laying so close the floor is a little odd, plus the funky red throw pillows aren't really a consistent color with the dusty green walls. (I am not even sure what that red santa looking thing on the far right is.) Plus this photo is not indicative of the actual size of the room

There is so much wrong with this. First off the photograph is awful, all bleached out. Secondly, I am pretty sure this photograph was trying to capture the closet space and built ins, but the angles are just not showing the room in it's best light. And finally, there is a space heater in the room. BIG RED FLAG. Yes, it is true, the money pit is a heating nightmare and the bedrooms do get really cold, but you don't want to point that out to your buyers!

There are some additional minor things I dislike about the way this picture is staged. The two prints on the wall are undersized and it is strange that one has a thick framing mat around it and one does not. All the electronics and bric-a-brac on top of the built in is also very unappealing. It could be worse, but it could be a lot better.

After:We have a very high bed. The bedside lamps throw extra light in the dark back corner of the room and their vertical outline draw your eyes up so you don't notice the slope of the walls. Extra pillows on the bed give it a more luxurious feel.


The photographer wanted to make sure he got a photo down the hall. It shows how much natural light pours in though the hallway and it also gives you a better idea of the upstairs layout (that the master bedroom is at one end of the hallway)


All the frames on the wall are different but they contain black and white photos of the kids. You often hear that you need to depersonalize your house when selling because you want the buyers to feel at home there. I believe that is true in common spaces like living rooms, dining rooms etc. But in the bedrooms I like to leave personal touches. Our target buyers were going to be families (since we have a 4 bedroom house). We wanted to make it seem like this house was a good place to raise kids. That is also why we left the kid's rooms staged as little girls' rooms instead of depersonalizing one into a guest room.

By keeping everything black and white (which works as a neutral) the photographs don't become distracting. If I had my preference we would have got rid of that TV for staging, but LabDad vetoed that. We did get rid of the VCR and DVD player so there wasn't a big distracting tangle of cords.

Instead of the angle (away from the windows) the previous sellers used, we chose to shoot into the window. It is one of the big selling features of this room, and although you don't see all the closets, you see the built ins and get the idea that there is plenty of storage.

So that is the master bedroom. Clean, neutral and well lit.




This post is also included in Adventuroo's meme: Capture the Everyday!

Reading Challenge: Week 2

We are still hard at work plowing through the Kindergarten Reading list for our Spring/Summer Reading Challenge. It has been a little rainy here and so we have been hanging out at the library quite a bit.

In the past seven days we have read 16 of the remaining 122 books, bringing our total books read to 29!

This week, one again there was a clear favorite: Take Care, Good Knight by Shelly Moore Thomas.
In this darling story, 3 little dragons are asked to take care of a wizard's cats while he is away. Silliness ensues when they realize they cannot read his note on how to care for his pets. The Good Knight comes riding to the rescue (with his trademark "clippity-clop") and helps translate the note. The cartoonish drawings are adorable, and not the least bit scary. The Princess loved it immediately and we had to read it at least two additional times.

This book is actually a sequel (I have noticed a lot of books on this list are sequels) to the 2000 book Good Night, Good Knight by the same author. We of course checked that book out on our next trip to the libarary along with the others in the series: Take Care, Good Knight, A Cold Winter's Good Knight, Happy Birthday Good Knight and A Good Knight's Rest (aren't these titles a hoot?)

It was also funny that in our search for Thomas' Good Knight series, we stumbled upon very similar books series by David Melling. The first Good Knight, Sleep Tight came up when we did a title search but his other two (Three Wishes, The Kiss that Missed) were equally enchanting. I am pretty sure princes and princesses, handsome knights, horses, magic and humor would always be a sure win.
So once again this week's books spun off eight additional books and two new favorite authors. I couldn't be more thrilled.

Books on List: 135

Week 1: 13 read (10%)
Bonus Books Read: 3

Week 2: 16 read (12%)
Bonus Books Read: 8

Total Read: 29 + 11 = 40
Books Remaining: 106 (78%)

LabMom's Top 5 Open House Visiting Tips

I have been keeping myself busy on the weekends attending open houses for comps in our neighborhood. Because TheMoneyPit was about to hit the market, I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly what competition we were up against. What they were selling for, what condition they were in, how they were staged etc.

Well, these weekly visits have opened my eyes to the fact that people just do NOT understand proper open house etiquette. Honestly people.. you may one day own the home you are viewing for for the time being you are a GUEST in the home of the people holding the open house. SHOW SOME RESPECT.

Here are my top 5 tips for people visiting an open house.
Honestly, I can't believe I need to even point these out, but because I have seen these behaviors (either in real life or in shows on TV like House Hunters and Property Virgins) I guess I need to point them out.

1. IF IT DOESN'T CONVEY YOU DON'T NEED TO TOUCH IT
This weekend I almost fell over when a woman at an open house with me started to paw through the homeowner's underwear drawer. It was in a large armoir which clearly was not included in the sale. I was shocked. What in the world makes you think you have the right to handle someone's skivvys? What exactly are you looking for? Don't you realize that her Victoria's Secret collection is NOT included in the sale? Keep your hands off!

2. DO NOT LAY ON THE HOME OWNERS BED
Yes, I get it. You feel at home. You are so in love with the house you feel like you need to lay down... but don't! This isn't a hotel. This isn't a slumber party. Get out of the bed.

3.DON'T GIVE A RUNNING COMMENTARY ON THE HOME OWNER'S POSSESSIONS
Sure, maybe the seller has a giant collection of Virgin Mary Shot Glasses. So what? It may be an odd thing to collect but it has little to nothing to do with the sale of the house. We don't really want to listen to you extrapolate on how it must be their way of using divine intervention to battle alchohol addiction. There is no point in oohing and ahhing over the wedding pictures on the nightstand or the funky modern art over the toilet tank. The people who currently live in the house (and all their crap) are not what you are shopping for. This isn't a museum. Stop focusing on the personal effects and start looking at the house. Or else you are just annoying to the rest of us.

5. READ THE DAMN MLS LISTING
Pretty much every open house hosting agent provides a listing sheet when you enter the home. Consider it the cheat sheet with all the answers to your questions. If you want to know something about the house check there first. There is nothing more annoying than trying to tour an open house in peace and instead being forced to listen to someone play 40 questions with the broker.

"What year was this built? How many bedrooms does it have? How much are they asking?.. blah blah blah"

Read the listing already! Sure, if you have a question that isn't on the sheet of course you should ask, but simple things like square footage, bedroom/bathroom number, lot size, and number of parking spaces etc are right there in black and white. Stop being annoying and read it. (Plus it begs the question why are you at an open house if you don't even know the number of bedrooms and/or price of the listing?)

5. YOU DON'T NEED TO TEST OUT THE BATHTUB
This is a lot like rule number 2. Until you own the house, it isn't your bathtub. Don't crawl in there and make some comment about how you "could get used to this." It is a freaking bathtub. We all have seen them before, there is no reason you need to give it a dry run. Take a bath before you leave the house.

So there you have it. Stating the obvious that needed to be said. You wouldn't behave like an idiot in a home you were visiting (well, at least I would hope not), so don't do it at an open house. The home sellers (and your fellow house hunters) thank you.

House Staging 101: The Office

The house is about to hit the market! We are wrapping up the staging and tonight I am going to feature the office/master suite. It is a fourth bedroom on the living level of the house with an attached bathroom. We use it as an office and common bath, since we prefer to sleep on the same floor as the kids, but it could be used as a master if the new buyer wanted to.

When we bought the house, they were using it as a den/family room and this was the photo from the MLS listing:

Honestly, we actually weren't even using it as an office. We were using it as a storage unit. We had boxes and boxes of stuff we never unpacked from the move a little less than a year ago. The room looked a lot like this:

Looking into the bathroom hallway (closet doors on right)

The first thing i did was repaint the room. I wanted it to be a different color than the living space, and I wanted it to be darker to accenutate the white crown molding (it is the only room in the house with crown, which once again implies it is the master)

Yes, we have crap piled halfway up the wall.. it was like an episode of hoarders

Paint before (left) and after (right)

Then we decluttered, decluttered, decluttered. I used all my sewing notions and antiqu sewing machines along with LabDad's giant book collection to stage the shelves.

This is the result:

Looking in the opposite direction (at the closet doors)

Looking into the bathroom

Yes, that is the very same bathroom I made over earlier this year. In case you have erased the horror from your memory, it looked like this:

Of course there is no MLS listing photo, because nobody would be crazy enough to feature this ugly ass bathroom on their listing

Fortunately now the bathroom looks like this:

Much better.

Time for a Moms Night Out!

In honor of Mother's Day, I present you this video:


To all the moms out there.. take the night off. You deserve it.

House Staging 101: The Dining Room

The house staging continues, this time in the dining room.

You had a little preview of what this room looked like back when I was renovating the kitchen:

But that isn't reality. This is what the room looked like when we were actually living and dining in it:

Yes, we live like pigs. Notice the two booster seats and sippy cup on the table. The playfood on the floor, and I am not exactly sure why that footrest and tupperware is there. I think it was headed down to the cellar for staging the upstairs.

I want to point out the kitchen table and how it blends in with the floor. That is NOT COOL. I knew it wouldn't show well in the MLS pictures, so I knew I would have to do something about it.

That became the first project. The table is actually a cheap assemble it yourself number we got at Kmart. Nothing special. I actually have always hated it:

It is solid wood, and it has a good profile, so I knew it could be salvaged.

Step 1: Sand it. I used a fine (220 grit) sandpaper to remove the finish from the table. Although it was cheap, the table and chairs were actually solid wood, so I wasn't worried about oversanding.
Step 2: Wipe down furniture with damp cloth.

Step 3: Paint it.

I used Valspar Latex Enamel. It has a satin sheen (easy for spill clean up) and the enamel is more durable than regular latex paint. It is a great alternative to spray paint which is the paint type I normally use to paint furniture. However, in this case I wanted to paint inside the house, and I had a large surface area which would have required many many cans of spray paint. Because the table was previously stained, I didn't need to use a primer.
There is a great step by step tutorial on the Valspar wesbsite on how to refinish wood furniture.

The original finish was a reddish oak color. I chose Java Brown as the new table color. This was to correspond to my dark furniture in my living room and my dark brown wrought iron side table in the dining room. Here is the difference between the old and new color:

After two coats and complete drying, the table was dark brown. Beautiful:


Now to go on and use my "new" table to stage the rest of the dining room:

You can see I placed a large mirror, some artwork and a vase on the mantle to draw focus to the fireplace. I moved the plate collage to the left hand wall and added a lamp to that table to balance the light from the large bay windows on the left.


Once again however, my personal pictures don't do it justice. The professional photographs give you a much better sense of the room:

I chose dark frames for the mirror and artwork to match with the tables and the orangey-brown vase picks up the warm tones from the floor and fireplace brick.


Normally, when staging a dining room I would have set the table with two place settings, however in this case we are still using this space to eat our meals. Removing and replacing the place settings would be a huge hassle (espeically with two kids under five) so a simple green plant in a basket complete the table.



The left hand wall:

I chose a bowl of fresh fruit and a vase of dried eucalyptus in reds, browns and greens on the side table to stay in the same color family. The dark wrought iron furniture has a glass top which keeps it from feeling too heavy against the light walls and white chair rail and molding.

The window wall:

Two small framed prints, once again in dark frames complete the room. That wall wasn't left blank so that the heavy elements (art, mirror and fireplace) didn't make the room feel unbalanced.

So there you have it. The MoneyPit dining room. Doesn't even look like the same place.

Can money really grow on trees?

In order to get the house ready to sell we needed to spruce up the landscaping for exterior photos. The Princess and I spent a couple afternoons planting a bunch of annuals all around the yard. Great to add a pop of color and make the exterior feel a lot more friendly.

Hopefully the approximately $200 we spent on new plants, mulch and grass seed will pay off in the long run, by making the house more appealing since something the Money Pit really lacks is curb appeal.

Exhibit A: Back Yard of the Money Pit. Can't get much more blah than this:

(How do you like our pirate ship bird house?)

Anyhow.. Here are some of the flowers we planted in our back beds:

Over the summer the beds are full of ferns but because they haven't completely spouted yet, we filled in between them with some pansies:

Hidden away inside a windowbox is St. Joseph, the patron saint of house sales. (Yes, for $4.43 you too can own your own Saint!) In a few weeks he will be buried in the front yard, but for now, the Princess thinks his place of honor should be among the miniature yellow pansies:

And although we all know that money doesn't grow on trees, maybe it will grow among the pansies! Fingers crossed!


This post was actually prompted by the Capture the Everyday Assignment from Melissa over at Adventuroo. I have wanted to do one for a while now, but I finally had an excuse to link up.

Reading Challenge: Week 1

It is time for an update on how our Kindergarten reading challenge has been going since it has been one week since we started.

The reading list (found on the bottom of the right hand column of this blog) is 135 books. In the first seven days we read 13 books. Some were hits and some were misses.

There are two books that were our clear winners this week:

Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

Madeline is a little Parisian girl (one of 12 who live in a house covered with vines, and walk around town in two straight lines) falls ill and must have her appendix removed. Written in 1939, the storyline, although predictable and not really interesting, is delightful in its simplicity and character development. The story is told completely in rhyme which is why it was a favorite of ThePrincess, plus I enjoyed reading it.

Bemelman went on to write six additional Madeline Books (a seventh was discovered after his death and published posthumously.) After his death the series was continued by John Bemelmans-Marciano, which actually defies the story's famous last line: "That's all there is; there isn't any more."


Our other favorite book this week was:

Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola

The story is about Strega Nona ("grandma witch") and a magic pasta pot. Her young assistant, Big Anthony, learns his lesson the hard way when her pasta pot overflows unstoppably after he disobeys her instructions to not touch it.

The book is beautifully illustrated and the moral of the story is conveyed without being preachy or heavy handed. The simple line drawings, earthy colors and fantastical characters are timeless.

It also should be pointed out that this book is a 1976 Caldecott Medal winner for best children's picture book.

The princess enjoyed this book so much, that we actually went off-list read the sequel: Strega Nona's Magic Lessons (where Big Anthony once again is up to no good), and two prequels: Strega Nona: Her Story (a tale of her childhood) and Big Anthony: His Story (yes, a tale of his childhood.)


All in all, we had a great time this week. If we get nothing else out of this project, we have discovered a new favorite author or two and I would call that a success.

Books on List: 135

Week 1: 13 read (10%)
Bonus Books Read: 3

Books Remaining: 122 (90%)

I am linking up this post for Working Mommy Wednesday. The prompts were Setting a Goal and Reading. Pretty sure I nailed them both.

House Staging 101: The Kitchen

As you may recall, my big kitchen makeover was not because I want to live in a home with my dream kitchen. Is was, in fact, a way to make sure we could sell our house for our long distance relocation.

Now that the kitchen is complete, and I have finished cleaning up the mess that was left in its wake, it is time to get onto the home selling process.

I am fortunate that I have sold a house before, and I am addicted to HGTV so I am pretty familiar with the ins and outs of getting a house ready for the market.

For this sale I knew I wanted professional photographs of the house taken, since you can clearly tell when a professional has taken images vs. some relatively clueless realtor.

People's exhibit 1:
Both of these were taken from currently active MLS listings I stumbled upon

Realtor:

Listing here.

Professional:

Listing here.

Now which kitchen do YOU want to buy?

So that brings me back to my kitchen. These were the shots that I took:

And my photographer:





You can get a much better feel for the true size and layout of the kitchen in his photographs. He was able to capture a lot more light (even though they were taken at the same time of day as mine) and his wide angles allow you to actually see the whole kitchen not just short segments.

You can also see how much more I removed from the counters. The coffee pot, knives and fruit have been removed. I replaced it with my white stand mixer which gives you a better idea of how large the counterspace really is. I also replaced my brown utensil holder with a stainless one. I moved the coffee pot and a potted plant on top of the radiator cover (to convey that it is a workable surface) and where a toaster oven used to be, I put a simple tall spikey plant to play off all the circular patterns in the room (the valances, the wreath, the lights, the spice jars and the doorfronts on the washer and dryer). There isn't much on the counters really.. but you can never have too little on your kitchen counters.

LESS IS MORE people!!