House Staging Ideas To Sell Your House Faster: a house log
People have been asking us what we have been doing to “stage” our house. Short answer: not much. Well, besides generally cleaning things within an inch of their life and stashing some items in the car a la this method. But we have not put any large furnishings in storage, repainted any walls or ceilings, took out any personal items like photos or wall art, or done any of the other tricks that we have heard through the HGTV grapevine (though I am sure a professional stager would likely advise us to do some – if not all – of those things to some extent). We figure if people see a house that is clean yet personalized and obviously well enjoyed and lived in, it might be more interesting than a house that has been stripped of all personality and evidence that it has been enjoyed and appreciated. At least that is our point of view at the moment. And thankfully we have had a few truly promising showings so we will keep you posted if our approach ends up working out.
That being said, there is one fairly obvious change that we did end up making. We took a good hard look at the rug in the kitchen…
… and chose to nix it.
Even though that is an old “before” photo from our old camera above, we realized the Company Store rug that graces our kitchen floor was doing us a disservice when it came to selling. It not only covered up the hardwood floors (hello selling point!) it also made the space feel less open in person (by creating a big definitive rectangle on the floor). Sure we enjoyed it for the lively texture and softness underfoot, but because people are not buying a rug (they are buying a house), we realized it was likely a smart call to roll it up and stuff it under our bed. Here is what the room is looking like these days (this pic’s taken with the new camera, hence the longer shot, distinct lighting, slightly distinct angle, etc):
You will likely also notice that we took out some of the cute kitchen-y items on the counters to declutter things and show off another selling point in there- our granite counters. After all, we are certainly not peddling a cutting board or a bowl of tomatoes, so we want to be sure the real features of the room are the ones that get noticed.
Oh, and our bathroom caught the rug-removal bug too. Gotta show off that marble tile, right? (Do not worry, we bring out our rug friend when we shower so we do not bite it on the aforementioned marble tile).
Perhaps if none of our upcoming showings work out we will decide to try a few other “staging” tricks. Do you folks have any house-selling pointers (or superstitions) that you wholeheartedly believe in? Or anything that you do not think is worth the trouble?
