March 31, 2015

House Staging Part 2: Upstairs

Part 2 of our home staging “fun”. (see part 1)

It required a little more work to get the upstairs “staged”. We never really decorated any of the rooms except Jenson’s, incWe debated on whether to replace the carpeting, but ended up deciding that we wouldn’t recoup the cost, and most people would prefer to pick their own color. Another small obstacle is that the bedrooms, other than master, don’t have closet doors (didn’t when we bought). The openings aren’t standard size, so doors would have to be cut and that just seemed like too much of a hassle. Sharon (the stager) agreed that hanging curtains would work the best. Finding curtains turned into quite a fiasco for me, but that’s for another post, and it all worked out.

The master bedroom mostly just needed decluttered. We bought a “grown up” bedframe a few weeks ago from Ikea, so that actually helped it look better. Our furniture doesn’t match, but we wanted to wait until we moved into the new house before we picked dressers and such. We took down personal pictures, cleaned off surfaces, and Lo’s mom gave us a quilt set that she’d been meaning to give us (missed return window) that dressed up the bed better than our cheap king duvet set. I cut down a small bunch of yellow mini roses and arranged them in a short square vase on the dresser.

The vanity area got some upgrading. I never really used the space for anything other than my overflowing jewelry box and a dumping ground for various small items (sad). The light strip above the mirror was gold and tarnished, as was the ceiling light. Lo painted the light strip with an oil-rubbed bronze Rust-Oleum because he couldn’t find a replacement that would cover the hole from removing the old one (and we don’t have matching paint). He bought the ceiling light at Lowes. We aren’t big on nipple lights, but it was just a matter of getting something cheap that matched.

I cleaned out about 1/3 of my closet or more. I’m so excited to get rid of more of my clothes (once I’m not working). I’ll have to anyway…I won’t have my “own” closet at the new house, unless I want it to be upstairs away from the master.

For the master bath, I added new towels, subtracted lots of stuff from the cabinets, cleaned out under the sink, and mostly empty the linen closet outside of the bathroom (not pictured). The “painting” on top of the cabinet wasn’t supposed to remain. I was supposed to replace it with something “decorative” like a vase or something, but I didn’t feel like searching for something, so I left this here. It’s a painting that I did at a wine and canvas event, which is why I put “painting” in quotations. It looked nothing like the sample that we were supposed to paint. I don’t follow instructions well (both at actually making the painting, and removing it for the showings).

Jenson’s room. She actually said the room was perfect. She loved it. She just said to remove the fan that we run in this room (for white noise) for the photos and showings.

The main bath didn’t need changes. I bought some new towels and Lo cleaned off the counter and under the cabinets.

We had to paint one bedroom, because it was really, really pink. We never bothered to paint it after we bought the house because it was only used occasionally when we had more than one set of houseguests (spare room #2) and it had an “awesome” horse wall. We figured we’d wait until/if we had a second baby and pick a color from there. I can almost promise it would have been gray regardless. Lo had removed the horse mural wallpaper a few months ago, but here it was in all of its glory.

When I scheduled the appointment with the stager, I asked her what the best neutral paint color was, and she suggested Dover White from Sherwin Williams. Lo painted it while I was playing in a volleyball tournament. I checked it out that night and hated it. We had a beige-y comforter in there and light wood dressers (no decor), and it just felt like the room sucked life from you when you walked in. I hated it, but at the same time, didn’t really care. We painted it before the staging appointment so she could tell us what else to do with it. I suggested we use the matching dresser to the nightstand (which was in the basement) and she agreed. The nightstand was just thrown in there last minute when we added a bed and started using it as a 2nd spare room, and we never bothered to switch the dressers. We needed different bedding (with some color), or the same bedding, but with colorful art above the bed. Basically, just make the room look “not dead”. Lo’s mom deserves the majority of the credit for this room. I said I was at a loss of what to do with the room and she gathered some bedding and the pictures and staged it in her house and sent me pictures. It looked amazing, so she boxed it all up for me and I picked it up that weekend when she was watching Jenson for us. We moved the desk out of the room, pulled the chair and magazine basket from another, and I added the curtain on the closet. It wasn’t the right length, but I’d given up at that point. The pictures of the room don’t really do it justice because you can’t see the textures and the coziness of the comforter. I think it turned out to be my favorite room (other than jenson’s, of course).

The Buckeye Room didn’t need much work and it pretty much the same since we bought the house, minus a few minuses and additions through the years when we’d stash various things in here. We swapped the dresser and the rocking chair, but you can’t see the dresser in the pictures anyway. The floor pillows under the O don’t really work, but I couldn’t decide what to do with them, so I just left them. The room is bigger than it appears in the photos, so the floor pillows actually didn’t look bad. The closet “curtains” were a huge relief when I finally figured out a solution. They definitely made a big difference in the outcome of the room.

The basement…so much work has happened in the basement in the last month. Most of it was just sorting and packing, but it’s actually a nice area now. We never used the finished part for anything other than storage (though people would sleep down there when we had a houseful). We always thought we’d turn it into a tv room/playroom at some point, but weren’t going to bother until kids were actually old enough to play down there. We already have 2 living rooms upstairs, so it’s not like we needed another place at this point. It was full of storage bins and extra furniture, most of which we stashed in the crawl space or Lo moved to the storage unit that we rented. We put all of the toys down here that we weren’t allowed to have upstairs for the showings, so it turned into a tv room/playroom kind of like we imagined it would be someday. There are still some random pieces down there, but we thought it showed enough of what the room “could” be to potential buyers.

That’s the end of the staged home tour. No pics of the utility room (not pretty) or yard (not pretty in this weather). I’m sad to leave my raised bed, hibiscus bush, Japanese maple (coco [the dog] tree), and blueberry bushes, but I’ll have plenty of space to plant more at the new place. I’m excited to see what comes up at the new house in the spring.