Here are a few practical tips for staging your home. There are some big issues, like the oxblood feature wall, that are best handled through an extensive consultation (if not through a sound psychological examination), but today I’d like to address some short tips I have for you on some niggling little issues you might find when staging your home for sale.

Dad’s La-Z-Boy.

It was probably hard enough to peel Dad out of his favorite Lay-Z-Boy for the open house, but trying to avoid out-and-out mutiny over the fate of the dated and worn-out furnishing might mean that it is staying in your home.

The people that are interested in buying your home are going to assume that if you don’t take care of your furnishings, that the same goes for the rest of your home.

If you can’t live without your La-Z-Boy, and the chair (not the man) must stay in the house while you sell it, use a slipcover like the picture above. Available from most department stores, the slipcover will take attention away from the worn out chair and put the focus back onto the rest of your beautiful home where it belongs.

Grandma’s Lampshade

Your Grandma may have had exquisite taste in her day and as homage to her obvious refinement, you may have let the lamps linger in your house a little too long. If, by now the shades have dis-colored and collected too much dust, they will dim the appreciation that your potential client will have for the room. And they will also dim the room.  Replacing old  outdated light fixtures is a minimal investment and can make a huge impact. Take a look at the light fixtures in the picture above.

Your University Textbooks

Whether for nostalgic purposes or to impress your guests, you know that never again will you open your copy of The Development of Meteorological Theory in Post-war Vienna. And why do you still have the all the papers that you wrote, when they were middling at best?

If donating your papers to the Alumni Library is out-of-the question you still need a way to de-clutter your bookshelves.

You don’t want your sale to rest on a buyer that needs lots of space and have them believe you don’t have any because you couldn’t bear to part with the 60 Can-Lit novels you read one terribly lonely summer making up extra credits in your elective, do you?

Of course not.

Donate them or foist them upon an unsuspecting undergrad as you like, but ensure that your shelves are rearranged to allow for at least one open shelf per case. Because like a closed mind, you can’t put anything into a full bookcase. Take a look at the de=cluttering that took place in the space below.

Sweepings under the carpet

Old worn out area rugs should be removed and replaced with new clean current carpets which will automatically revive a tired room

W.C. Fields was right.

Not everyone loves pets. They may love their pets but not your pets. Lingering odors from someone else’s pets can turn some people off.  Short of putting your progeny up in a motel for the duration, remove obvious signs of pets  and then you have at least one less reason for the potential buyer to think of moving on and one more for them to think of moving in.

Images Staged with Flair

Stage your home! Sell your home!