The bedrooms...

Here is the first floor of the house I just finished...

Latest project...

Just finished this home staging project - all ready to sell now. These are all 'After' photos - will show the 'Befores' once the house has sold!!!

I will put all the bedrooms in my next blog entry...

How to get others to do the ironing...

On my home staging project today, everyone was avoiding the ironing like the plague - it was too hot!  So I set the ironing 'station' up outdoors, in the sun and fresh breeze, and suddenly there was a queue, and 6 duvet covers, 6 fitted sheets, 24 pillowcases, 8 pairs of curtains, and 3 t-towels were completed in no time!

Shopping...

I've been shopping for this house today - I'm staging it next week. (Don't worry, the homeowners have been working on it since these photos were taken!!)  Looking forward to the challenge!!!

We sort offices too....

I was recently asked if I could adapt my Consultations to suit an office environment - of course the answer was 'yes'!  Exactly the same principals.  Furniture layout, de-clutter, overall appeal to visiting clients, storage solutions, flow etc. 

This consultation was for planning an office move to new premises, but it's the same principles for sorting an existing office - give me a call.

DIY home staging part 2...

Here are more photos of a house that was staged by the owners, after just one of my Home Staging Consultations.

Living Room:

The Ikea armchairs looked out of place in this more upmarket home.

2nd Bedroom:

This room backed on to the only bathroom in the house, and the homeowners decided to take a bit of the bathroom space and add an ensuite to this room.

This is the newly created ensuite. This will add overall value to the house.

Bathroom: 

This still looked good even though it lost some floorspace to the ensuite. 

Does this add value?

Here's a question for the estate agents please.

These kitchen units were painted, (to a high standard), and the walls were given a coat of soft green paint.  I know it LOOKS a thousand times more appealing, but does this actually ADD monetry value to the house?  I would thing so, but I'd love a definitive answer.

DIY home staging... from one consultation

These homeowners only needed a Consultation to set them off on the right track! They followed my directions, and enjoyed preparing their house for sale, once they knew what was required. 

Kitchen

Master Bedroom

Dining Room

                                    

More photos of this house on my next blog entry...

Don't change the bathroom???

These homeowners had their home on the market for over ten months, with a dozen viewings, but no sale. Lots of comments about the outdated bathroom, but even though my clients were happy to replace the bathroom, their estate agents said it wasn't worth it and wouldn't make a difference.

Surely, in a £400,000 home, the bathroom below would be more appealing?  I don't normally advocate changing bathrooms, but I think this is an exception.  It also enabled them to add an ensuite to another large room, so, it's worth it twice over in my opinion:

See the rest of the house in my next blog entry...



Genuine bargains to be had...

Has everyone heared of Achica?  It's an online shop that works the same way as the travel discount sites do - special offers for branded products with brilliant discounts. Only this is for the home and garden. Genuine discounts, just available for a day or two, or until they sell out. I've had a few bargains already:

http://www.achica.com/1285666/LynnP

Eg. Shearer candles £5.20 instead of £17

Aura Jigsaw cushion, £11.20 not £35

Apparently, if you use the link above, you get a £10 voucher, then if you buy anything, I get one too... can't be bad!



Don't just take photos...

I've never yet walked into a house and taken the right photo first time.  I always take a few test shots, examine them, change the room around, then take the real photos.  For example, this living room was lovely in reality, but wasn't right on the photos - the closest sofa created a block to your eyes.  So we moved the furniture around, and the second shot was much more open.

I couldn't get far enough back for a good photo of the bathroom, even with a wide angle lens, so I stood outside the window on a ladder, and took the photo from there!  Then, in one shot, you could see there were two sinks, a bath and a shower, without a weird-angled photo.

The second bedroom just needed tweaking, and the lights putting on. The forst photo was fine, but the second one was better.

This entire photo shoot took one day, with sixteen rooms to style, and at least a dozen different angles outside.  The photos were with the estate agent the following day, and both the client and the agent were delighted with the service.  Most people imagine home staging is for the really messy, badly decorated homes that you see on makeover projects.  Some are, but not all.  Some are simply about setting the house up to take good photographs.  

Photo shoot - 'before' and 'after' photos...

The first shots are what I took first thing in the morning.  I examined them all carefully, then 'tweaked' the rooms, changed the lighting etc and took the 'after' photos.  Much better!  But how many estate agents would just take the photos of the rooms exactly as they find them?  Not having a dig, and I know this is unusual, but I HAVE seen bras hanging on radiators on an estate agent's website!! 

Entrance Hall 

The back of this sofa was the first thing you noticed when you entered the house. Changing the furniture around made it much more inviting.

 Swimming Pool

The swimming pool felt a little 'deserted', even though it was clean and well-kept.  Removing the cover and the toys made it very hard to resist, especially as it was roasting hot outside!  (And yes, I did need to take hundreds of photos outside - I wasn't sunbathing!!)

 

Master Bedroom

In reality, the bedroom looked lovely, but in the first photos, the room looked really unbalanced.  It was the dark chairs, they weighed-down that side of the room. Moving the furniture and accessories around re-balanced the room, and showed just how much space there was.  This is a common problem, some rooms look great when you're in them, but don't photograph well.  Making changes just for the photos isn't cheating, it's just giving the right impression of the room.

More photos in my next blog entry...