Emma Vargas, Simply Staging

Once Upon a Time, about 10 to 15 years ago, in a land called The Greater Sacramento Area, there were many new housing developments popping up all over the place. The "newness" of these homes along with the "lower than average California going rate" made our area very attractive to home buyers all over the California Kingdom. One of the disadvantages of buying a newer track home was that yours would likely be exactly the same as 100's of others in your village.

This is a tale of two track homes with the same exact floor plan, same buyer, same Realtor, very similar lots, "for sale" at the same time... OK, I think you get the point - just about the same everything. There was one difference and I'm sure you've guessed by now what that was, one was staged and the other was not.

We begin our story with the home buyer, they were taken to see the unstaged home first, as they entered, it was the awful smell that struck them first. Kitty litter mixed in with the scent of cheap cologne and a strong, but unpleasant, cover-up air freshener. Next, our buyers notice the walls painted an ogre green (Like Shrek) and brown (like baby poop) and an entry full of stuff, the kitty hair balls everywhere a huge fish tank and wires everwhere. Not a very good first impression. The old hand-me-down furniture, unmade beds, dirty bathrooms and an untidy kitchen through out the rest of the home didn't help improve that impression either. The buyers hated almost everything about it, their words, not mine. This is an actual picture of the home being shown while on the market.

Now onto our second home, the homeowner simply followed their agent's direction to meet with a stager. After they clearly understood the value of home staging, they did almost everything their stager asked; in the end it cost a few paint cans, a storage unit, a few tough weekends, a little inconvenience and a few hundred dollars investment for the staging consultation. Our second home was staged to perfection. Our buyers were welcomed into the home with clean floors, no unpleasant odors, beautifully painted walls and a neutral, but welcoming foyer. Did they want to see the rest of the house? You bet they did.

How do I know? Well, because the Real Estate Agent told me so. At the end of the tour, the buyers were ready to put in an offer on the staged home. Instead of being thrilled that he had finally found a house for his picky buyers, the agent stands there confused.

The Agent: "Don't get me wrong, this is really great news, but why did you tell me that you hated the house and now you want to put in an offer?"

Now it's the buyers turn to be confused. The Buyers: "What do you mean? We love this house! Why else would we want to make an offer?"

The Agent: "Well because you told me on the first house that you hated it and now you want to put in an offer on the same house."

The Buyers: "This isn't the same house as the smelly one."

The Agent: "Yes, it is the same house as the smelly one. It's the same floor plan, same everything! I thought I had mentioned that to you already. Didn't I?"

The Buyers: "Are you kidding me?"

The Agent: "No. I'm not kidding."

The Buyers: "Well, I'll be darned. Now that I think about it, it is the same house. Wow! That's incredible!"

The Agent: "So, do you want to look at the other one again?"

The Buyers: "No. Why would we want to do that for?"

The Agent: "Just in case you want to compare them again now that you know they're the same."

The Buyers: "The only reason we'd want to see that house again is to see how much lower our offer will be because it isn't as nice as this one. But on the other hand, we'll have to do so much work to get it to look as good as this one."

How did the story end you ask? Well, our buyer wanted a move-in ready house and so they offered full price for the staged one.

My agent loves to tell this story because when he does, sellers don't need anymore convincing.

Sure it could have ended with the buyer going for the "smelly" house and my story wouldn't have ended as happily. But don't think for a moment that the homeowner of the unstaged house wouldn't have questioned why his house sold $20,000 to $40,000 below his neighbor's staged house.

The moral of my story: Do your client and yourself a favor, recommend an experienced stager and you too can live happily every after with a client for life. The End

Although these are not pictures of the actual homes described here in the tale, they are actual before and afters of a recently staged home that shows what a difference a few small changes can make. Moving the dresser helped open up the room to make it look bigger from the buyer's perspective.

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Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging Solutions for both the "Vacant" and the "Not So Vacant" homes in El Dorado County and The Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For your proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and see what it takes to get your home "Sell Ready".

That's easy, Right? Painting over it would be the obvious thing to do, but as the staging consultant, we don't own the house; sometimes these things are beyond our control. As much as we'd love to implement all of the recommended changes to a house before it goes on the Real Estate market, for whatever reasons the home sellers aren't willing or able to do many of them.

For our unattractive wall color, no matter how many times we recommended that a more neutral color be painted over the wall color, the homeowner simply ignored our requests and gave us no logical explanations. My only guess was that the homeowner was tapped out financially by the time they hired Simply Staging to help them sell their home, so unfortunately, the ugly wall color stayed.

So, I'm not a color expert by any means, but the more I see Yellow used on walls, the more I realize that it is a very tough color to get right. This last vacant home staging project was no exception. My room was bright, sunshine yellow, and yes, we almost needed sunglasses to go into that room because it was so bright, I'm not kidding, it was very bright - Did I mention it was bright? But wait, there's more, someone attempted to fix the mistake, but instead of repainting over it, they did an awful sponge paint technique over it to try and mask the bright yellow. Unfortunately, their cover-up attempt just made things worse. The sad thing is that almost everything else about the house was really, very nice.

Here is a picture of the room that I am referring to; this picture doesn't do it justice. It was really much worse in person.

Okay, I'm getting to the point here (finally!). The Problem: A potential buyer seeing the brightly yellow painted living room walls for the first time will likely be taken by surprise, then horrified and then will quickly realize that it'd have to be painted over. That means extra work, time and money. Most new home buyers today don't want to spend anything extra sprucing up their new home, they want move-in ready, and that's the reality of it. As easy as it would be to fix the paint color, many buyers won't be able to overlook the problem and accept the house as is.

So, the house is checked-off of their list for consideration and the buyer moves on to the next one. That is how quickly and easily a home can be dismissed. Not very good for the seller - Is it?

The Solution: Make the brightly painted yellow wall color a non-issue, so that the potential home buyer either doesn't really notice or doesn't mind the color. Here's what we did at Simply Staging to minimize the impact of the yellow walls. We hung a larger than life-sized picture on the yellow wall that is first seen as you entered the house from the front door.

The picture was not to cover up the wall, as some might believe, the picture was chosen because it complimented the wall color so well. You see the picture itself was a gorgeous vintage poster, which are currently very trendy and desirable in many of today's contemporary homes. One of the dominant colors in the poster was a yellow very similar to the wall color. We used this picture as the inspiration to the room and made the picture appear as though it was there first and then everything else in the room followed later. We brought in a lot of reds and greens for accents which were colors we pulled directly from the poster.

Notice in this picture of our living room, the walls no longer appears to be as bright as they were before. Luckily, we already had this poster in our inventory and it fit perfectly, but even if we didn't, it would've been an inexpensive purchase, from $80 to $180. See Art.com for more great vintage poster finds.

In fact, bringing in this poster worked so well, that the final buyer was only willing to buy the house if the poster came with it! So, as much as I loved that poster myself, off it went to a new owner and we had another happy seller, a new happy homeowner/buyer (she absolutely loved the poster and how it looked in the room), and a happy Real Estate agent and another staging success story.

Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging Solutions for both the "Vacant" and the "Not So Vacant" homes in El Dorado County and The Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For your proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and see what it takes to get your home "Sell Ready".

Home Interior Redesign is the process of giving new life to furnishings and accessories that we currently enjoy in our homes. It involves decluttering and rearranging spaces so that they flow better, and are showcased in a way that best fits the room's function and the homeowner's needs. It is providing the final touches to a room that gives it that pulled together, "DESIGNER" look that most of us strive for but just can't seem to achieve on our own.

Hom Interior Redesign is a less costly design alternative because as decorators, we can, and will use everything that you already own. Or we can provide input on what new accessories/furnishings, or even new paint colors to bring in to the space if the homeowner would prefer a little something extra. With a redesigner's guidance, we will help avoid costly mistakes; we bring our expertise and knowledge into the decision process, so you can feel secure in knowing that your room will look fantastic.

Here is an example of a recent Living Room Redesign (see Before picture below), my client's furnishings and accessories were beautiful, she had excellent taste and had good idea of what style or look she was going for, but couldn't quite make it work. The other problem was that her formal living room was not being used, no one ever voluntarily sat in there and she felt as though it was a room that was being wasted. Simply Staging's goal was to create a room that would be welcoming, comfortable and inviting so that guests would want to sit down without feeling that it was too formal.

Some of the furnishings and accessories in the room are a little outdated, but still in great condition. However, our homeowner knew that she wanted to replace the sofa and love seat, as well as several of the pictures and fabrics.

In this case, the client knew she wanted new things, but wasn't sure which direction to go and had a very tight budget to work with. This is where a few hours of a Consultation with a Redesigner can be very beneficial, we will help direct you, keep you focused on your end goal, provide you with shopping resources and help you choose which new accessories, window coverings, pictures and colors will work best with the look that we are trying to achieve.

Notice the After picture below looks like a completely different room! We accomplished this fabulous look by purchasing second-hand sofa and love seat, adding fresh paint on the walls, rearranging the furniture placement and purchasing a few new furnishings and accessories.

The room has been transformed into a warm, inviting and elegant living room without being too stuffy. We re-used many of the existing furnishings and accessories; we just managed to make them look a lot better by pulling the room together with color and placement. Our homeowner was extremely happy with the result and was completely satisfied with her Redesign experience. Simply Staging provided many new ideas and input in to her room, the furniture placement was one that she said she would have never done, but yet it looks and feels like the absolute best way to use the space. Another successful Redesign by Simply Staging!

Simply Staging is a Home Staging and Redesign company offering Decorative Solutions for both the "Vacant" and the "Not So Vacant" homes through out El Dorado County and The Greater Sacramento area. Give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and be another satisfied Simply Staging customer.

When money is tight, but you're looking for a kitchen update, consider a Do-it-Yourself kitchen cabinet refinishing job. Whether you're moving and need to update a kitchen before putting it on the market or staying put and just wanting to update your kitchen - updating cabinets is an excellent option for giving your kitchen a whole new look. Hiring a professional is obviously also an option, but you can estimate an average of around $50-$75 per door and when you're on a budget this can really add-up fast even in the smallest of kitchens. If you're not handy, then hiring someone is really the wiser option because doing it wrong yourself the first time will mean you'll have to do it all over again and as you're about to see it will cost you a lot of time and money.

Refinish or Replace? First of all, you need to ask yourself whether or not your cabinets are worth saving. If you find that they're just old and no longer in style, but are in really good condition, then refinishing is a good option. In fact, many of the older cabinets were built better than today's manufactured cabinets, so saving them is a worthwhile cause.

Cabinet Refinishing Options - There are two options to refinishing cabinets, paint or stain. If you choose to stain, then finishing off your cabinets with a coat of polyurethane or lacquer is always recommended to protect the finish.

• If your cabinets are already painted, then the recommendation is to paint them again either the same color or a new color. For example, your cabinets are currently painted white, try painting them black to give your kitchen a nice dark, rich look. Be careful though if you go black, make sure that there's plenty of light in your kitchen otherwise this option will darken up the space and make an already small, dark kitchen even darker.
• If your old cabinets are stained, then you can either paint or restain them a different color.
• The hardest and most time consuming thing to do is if your cabinets are painted and you want to stain them because then this would mean that you'd have to strip the paint first, sand and then stain. This is a much more difficult job and is not a quick do-it-yourself project.

Step-by-Step Refinishing Process - The first step to refinishing cabinets is removing the cabinet doors. Easy to do, but not so easy to put back on if you don't take the necessary steps. Imagine taking off all of the doors and finding when its time to put them back on that they don't fit properly. One of the easiest and most helpful tips you will learn from all of this is anytime you remove cabinet doors, you label them with masking tape to ensure that each one goes back in its proper place and in the same order that they came off.

Protect Your Kitchen - Cover-up counters, floors and appliances with drop cloths. You're going to be making a big mess with cleaners and water so you'll want to protect the rest of the kitchen while you're working on your project. When the project is completed, picking up your mess will be that much easier.

Get your old cabinets as clean as possible. Visit your local hardware store for wood cleaning products. If you're cabinets have been around for a while, then there'll be a lot of oil build-up that'll need to be removed. When using a cleaner, follow the package directions and allow yourself at least a day. This step will require a lot of elbow grease to get the cabinets and doors as clean as possible. After cleaning, you can start staining.

Prep Your Cabinets if Painting. If you're painting the cabinets, then you'll either need to sand or use a deglosser for the next step. My recommendation would be to use the deglosser, it is so much easier and less messy than sanding. The deglosser is found at your local hardware store, you brush it onto the cabinets and allow it to dry - that's it! You're ready for the primer. Of course, you can sand if you really want to, but be sure that the cabinets are really clean and dust free for your primer, otherwise it'll ruin your finish if they aren't. Use a good primer for your base coat and let it dry, as soon as it's dry you can start painting. All of these steps allow the paint to stick to the cabinet's surface. It'll give your cabinets a more professional look and will prevent the finish from bubbling or peeling in the future. Doing these steps guarantee a long-lasting finish.

Don't forget the hardware. Remove all the hardware and clean those too, usually soaking them in hot soapy water is all it takes to get the grime off, a little scrub with a soft brush will usually do the trick for those hard to reach areas. Better yet, if you're going through the trouble of updating your cabinets, why not get some new hardware while you're at it. Buy hardware with updated finishes to give your cabinets a completely new updated look. You'll be amazed at how new your cabinets will look just by adding the hardware, be careful though, some hardware can be very expensive and will quickly add-up. Its best to go mid-range so that the hardware doesn't look out of place, remember the rest of your kitchen isn't getting a facelift so you'll need to consider when too much is too much when choosing hardware.

Final Finishing Touches - To really make your updated cabinets look custom, try adding some molding to the top of the cabinets. For another custom look, try adding some molding to the face of the doors. Get ideas from one of your favorite custom kitchens, look at the cabinets and see if you can add pieces that will replicate your dream kitchen. If you don't own a saw or even if you did you wouldn't know how to use it, then get your local large chain hardware store to cut the pieces for you.

You don't need to be a licensed contractor to refinish your old cabinets. With proper planning, some good old fashioned elbow grease, maybe even a little help and a few weekends (or more), you can get an updated kitchen at a fraction of the cost to replacing them. You'll be amazed with the results and you get to have bragging rights when guests come over and comment on your beautiful cabinets.

Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging Solutions for both the "Vacant" and the "Not So Vacant" homes in El Dorado County and The Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For your proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and see what it takes to get your home "Sell Ready".

What exactly does the term really say to us when we see it describe a house that's currently on the market and being sold? Well, to me, it means that the individuals living there had been proud to have been home owners and once you see the house, you'll realize how proud they really were.

So, when someone says that a house shows with "pride in ownership", we know that the homeowner has taken great care to maintain their house. Such as making sure that things are fixed as soon as they break, as opposed to years later when everything has begun to fall apart. Making sure that the inside and outside are clean and tidy on a regular basis so that they look as good or even better than when the house was originally attained, as opposed to not doing anything and letting things get really dirty and bad.

"Pride in ownership" isn't necessarily measured by how much money you throw at a home either. It would be extremely helpful if there were buckets of money for home improvement projects, but if you don't have a lot of money, you can still show how proud you are to live in a house. All you have to do is invest some time and effort, like good old fashioned weekend work that results in making a home look its very best. Cleaning-up the gutters, or sweeping the front porch, or hammering back in the nail that fell out of the wood trim, etc... doesn't cost any money. General up-keep is usually the least expensive, but the most time consuming work that there is around our homes.

Being proud means we've placed our home at the top of our priority list, the better we take care of them, the longer they will last. Knowing that a home owner has done their very best to make a home look as good as they possibly can is what we think when we hear that someone has taken "Pride in Ownership".

When the time comes to sell your home, take the extra time to clean-up the fan that you've been meaning to get to, fix the broken screen that has been on your "to do" list for a year, fix the garage door so that it finally works, fix the broken sprinkler head so that your lawn isn't half dead, etc... Show the prospective buyer that you care about the house that you are about to sell to them and they too will care. As a prospective buyer, a well kept home translates into one that is in the best condition that it can possibly be. Why wouldn't they want to live in a house that's been well cared for?

So when using the term "Pride in Ownership", it is expected that the house will look its very best. If it doesn't, then the prospective buyer will walk away disappointed, knowing that someone didn't really care and it shows.

Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging Solutions for both the "Vacant" and the "Not So Vacant" homes in El Dorado County and The Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For your free proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and see what it takes to get your home "Sell Ready".