You know you're a stager when.....

Do y'all remember the movie Rainman.......... Dustin Hoffman played an idiot savant whose gift was to always know when Judge Wapner was on (or some such thing). Well, recently, I realized that, I, too, am something of an idiot savant. Actually, many people who know me quite well just refer to me by the first name. Apparently, big french words like savant, are too difficult to pronounce so 'idiot' is what I am called, and what I most often respond to.

Anyway........ my idiot savant-ism has to do with design. Everything I look at, touch, think about, has some element of design. I walk into IHOP and want to turn all the booths on the diagonal. I personally think that with his red hair, Ronald McDonald should wear more green (and possibly purple). I mean, don't tell the Houston Real Estate market, but I'd do all this staging for free:

• Put me in a room full of badly placed, dowdy furniture.
• Give me an hour.
• Walk back into a room that's ready for a feature story in House Beautiful.

Last week, the dermatologist whipped up a new procedure that required me sitting in an empty waiting room for 2 hours - alone, with no supervision. Must I tell the rest of the story?

OK, so it's a nice room:

• Chippendale sofa (upgraded fabric)
• One floor lamp
• One piece of greenery
• 6 mahogany armchairs
• glass top coffee table
• and some other stuff too......

......all of it plastered up against the walls. Unbalanced, uninviting, unattractive.

So, I sat there, and I sat there. I read Fortune magazine, I read Sports Illustrated (really, well, I looked at the pictures), I read Time, I read the National Enquirer. I switched seats four times. Finally, I couldn't take it. Six mahogany chairs went to the hall, the Chippendale sofa..........now under the long mirror. Piece of greenery.........centered under the wall sconces. Mahogany chairs to the left and right of greenery: voila, a vignette! Opening up a decorative box, I found a lovely throw, that draped elegantly onto the sofa. The box, now became a terrific magazine rack. The previously cluttered coffee table, can now host a game of table tennis!

So, yet again.......you know you're a stager, when you just, absolutely, postively, can't keep your hands off other people's decor!

Soon, word got around this office that someone actually had the nerve to fix the waiting room, I believe that I'll have a few consultations coming next week <G>!

P.S. This isn't the first time this has happened. If anyone's ever been to the Oncology/Radiology building at Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia (whose lobby is almost a city block long) - I had that whipped into shape in less than 45 minutes!

Happy Staging Y'all!