Beach House Makeover

I'd love to make-over a beach house - does anyone own one and need this service?!!  Preferably in the sun, and of course I'd need to test it out for several weeks! Something like this would be fine...

 

 

Hotel-style bathrooms sell homes

When you're selling your home, the bathroom needs to be pristine. Spotlessly clean and tidy.  No toothpaste, no children's toys or potties, no wet towels! Try to add a plant, a few expensive, matching toiletries, fluffy new towels (just put them out for viewings), and put the lights on for photographs. Imagine it's a beautiful hotel bathroom!

Before

After

The 'Spare' Room debate

Spare rooms are great for storage, office space, gym, occasional bedroom, sewing room, photography studio - and often a combination of several of these uses!  But when you're selling, they always, always need to be a bedroom. I've had this confirmed by numerous Estate Agents - they all agree that this adds the most value. 

Before

After

Get the colours right

This house needed to be prepared for sale. All the curtains were made from one fabric, which was a golden colour. Similarly, the carpets were golden. There was no reason to change these expensive items, so this set the scheme for the entire house. Some of the grey-based purple paint in a couple of rooms clashed with the gold, so I recommended re-painting the bedroom and hallway. It's vital that the colour scheme flows through the house.

 Before

 After

Don't let your TV take over...

If a television plays a huge part in your lives, and you have given it a really prominent position in your living room, that's fine, but you may have to re-think your ideas when you're trying to sell your home. Not everyone is a TV addict, and others may have different ideas about how the main social area in a home should be used.  

 Before

The room above obviously suited the family's needs, but they realised their cinema-style room wouldn't appeal to everyone, and it also made the room look small. I removed the storage unit in the window, brought down the matching chair from upstairs, and added another decorative chair, to show how easily a lot more seating would fit into the room. 

 After

Don't forget the outdoor spaces

When you're selling a house, the outdoor space is equally as important as the indoor.  Just finish it all off nicely.  This home was staged last week, and even though it was a fairly wet day, we arranged the new pots and positioned the table, and I kept my eye on the weather, and the moment the sun appeared, I put the cushions out and took the photos quick!!

  Before

 After

Moving in to first home

This lovely couple were moving in to their first home. It was fun discovering the right style and colours for them. They didn't want to change any of the wall colours yet, so I added warmth in the accessories.

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...

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 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...