House Staging Part 1: Main Floor

When we were getting ready to list our house, our realtor said he’d send over an interior designed who helps people stage their homes. We knew we needed to clear stuff out and try to make it look like no one actually “lives” here, so we had already been decluttering and putting stuff in a storage unit.  I was really nervous about the staging appointment – that we would have so many changes that we’d have to make.  We had some specific things we wanted guidance on, but we otherwise we were pretty open-minded (just nervous).

Sharon Wong from Ready Set Sell was great.  She was so nice and was very tactful about telling us to make changes.  She said our house was in really good shape and that made it easy for her…as far as paint colors, good condition furniture, updates, etc.  She had us make some furniture changes and mostly just put a ton of stuff away, but also add some styling.  She took notes in a workbook for us to keep so we could make the changes.  It had a lot of helpful tips about selling your house and tips for showings.  I would highly recommend Sharon – or any stager – when getting ready to sell.  We worked our butts off for about a week and a half and then finally were ready to list.  The house looks so good with the changes she suggested.  Of course, the major change is that things are decluttered, packed away, or put away – which makes the largest impact, but between her suggestions, and the things I borrowed from Lo’s mom (mostly for the bedrooms) the house looks pretty great.

I took pictures of the rooms on the same day the photographer did.  To be honest, my shots were almost the same as hers…I just didn’t bother to turn the lights on in all of the rooms.  Most of the pictures here are mine.  Some have a watermark on them bc they are from the listings because the angle or the lighting was better.  I thought I’d go through the rooms and talk about the changes she told us to make.  I split it into two posts – one of the main floor and one of the rest of the house.

Entryway: Cleaned off the coat rack, put the closet doors back on (at bottom of stairs), Lo fixed up a few things with the banister (missing “buttons”).

Front room (we never designated one as a living room versus family room):
Remove recliner (it was in the area dividing the dining room from this room, put away a stand that we keep in front of the floor lamp straight ahead.  Put away Boof’s bed/blankets that are usually on the ottoman.  Put away the toybox and all of the toys.  Add another set of throw pillows (I bought the red ones) to bring out the pops of red in some of the photos in the room.

Other angle:
Replace the pictures of Jenson that were underneath the shelf.  I printed off some scenery pics that we’ve taken around town and on travels.  Straighten up the tv stand stuff.  Add magazines to the ottoman.

Dining room:
Removed the matching buffet and moved the tea cart to the other wall (they were in each corner).  Took down some family pictures (where the bamboo is).  The tablecloth was already there, but I grabbed some flowers at Kroger the night before and used them as a centerpiece.

Kitchen:
The biggest thing was clearing off the countertops and fridge.  She had us put out new towels.  (I still need to blog about how we refinished these counters!).

This is another bunch of flowers I bought.  They were on clearance for $1.99 even though none of the buds had bloomed yet.  They looked amazing within a few days when more of the blooms came out.

Kitchen Nook:
Move high chair, put out place settings.  Another vase of flowers that I got on clearance ($2.99) were the best option for a centerpiece.

Back room:
We put away the pack-n-play (we still used it to change Jenson), put away all of the toys (so many toys).  We used to keep Jenson’s clothes in the bins on the other side of the fireplace since we always changed him down here, so I moved it all up to his room and put toys in the bin instead.  It’s really just as easy to change him upstairs.  The rug….I spent too much time thinking about the rug.  It’s actually a piece of carpet (from that room before we put down the flooring) that is edged in gaffers tape.  It used to be a bigger piece and it wasn’t straight on all sides, or edged all of the way around.  Once we removed the PnP and other stuff, we needed to figure out something to do with the rug.  I looked at several stores and couldn’t find a 4×6 rug for the space.  A 5×7 was just slightly too big because it would need to go under the couch legs and it was almost exactly the size of the couch, which was awkward.  So we finally decided to cut the piece of carpet down and edge it in gaffers.  It looks fine.  I know someone wasn’t going to choose our house (or not choose it) based on a rug, so it was silly to fret over it so long.

The half bath downstairs.  It’s nothing special.  We just put out a new towel.  Lo had scrubbed the grout, which helped.

So that’s our main floor.  Turned out pretty well.  We’ve moved some of the toys back for Jenson, of course (but not all).  Boof has her stuff back.  But it’s kind of nice to have things simplified like this.

I’ll post the rest of the house soon.