Home staging television shows are the “rage”. In fact a new one was just released on TLC (The Learning Channel) called “Stager Invasion”.
I remember selling my first home over 20 years ago. I purchased a book about how to help your house sell. The book taught me about neutral colors, de – personalization, de-cluttering and having plenty of lights on in the house. These rules have not changed.
I sold this house in a down economy… and we were lucky that we broke even and didn’t have to “pay” someone to buy our house. The work we did “staging” our home helped to give our house a bit of a bump over the competition.
Why am I interested in staging now? I’m not planning on selling my home… but many are. I don’t know what the future holds… you never know.
I also have a good friend who will be putting her home on the market soon and will need some sage advice from me on staging her home. So I started a bit of looking around to see if I could find a few websites that are filled with information – but – easy to read and understand.
First…
What Is The Difference Between Home Staging and Home Decorating?
No… this is not my office. :0) But what if it were your office? And… You were getting ready to sell your home? How would you “decorate” or “stage” this room?
First – you have to know the difference between decorating and staging a room. And then you have to know just how to stage a room without sterilizing it.
Decorating this office would require new office furniture. Furniture that would house all the equipment this homeowner obviously needs to function.
Plus… you would want to think about wall color, flooring and art. You would make this space – Your Space! Beautiful and comfortable with personal accessories added into the mix.
Staging is different. You still want to make this a beautiful space… but not personalized. Removing all but one computer would be key to opening up this room to many possibilities.
The goal of staging is to sell a home quickly, and for the most money possible by making a home appealing to the highest number of potential buyers.
Staging focuses on improving a property to make it appeal to the largest number of buyers by transforming it into a welcoming, appealing, and attractive product for sale.
Many people believe that staging raises the value of a property by way of reducing the home’s flaws, depersonalizing, decluttering, cleaning, improving condition items, and landscaping.
For vacant homes, staging furniture is used to create a living space the buyer can “see” themselves living in.
New wall color, flooring and art would make this space – Anyones Space.
Here is where some confusion comes into the picture. Staging often requires “de-cluttering” and “de-personalizing”. But – don’t make the mistake that the room should look sterile.
For instance -
A decorated room might have a chair with a side table. An ottoman to put up your feet. A lamp, T.V. channel changer, books, magazines all on the table. The chair might have a needle worked pillow and the ottoman might have a blanket or throw tossed across it. If we really live here… a few pens, pack of gum and a box of tissue might also be on this side table.
A staged room would have the chair, table and ottoman. The lamp would stay. The throw on the ottoman would be in place. Most everything else would be removed. A few “bestsellers” would be on the table with a pair of glasses.
An over staged room would have the book, glasses and throw removed.
Can you see the difference between a staged room and a decorated room yet?
A staged room looks like “I could imagine living in your room”.
A decorated room looks like “You live in your room”.
An over staged room looks like no one lives in that room.
Painting in a stairway can be very difficult especially if the wall is over 12 feet high. Many of the new homes have entryways with that have 20 foot ceilings with stairs going up to the next level. How do you paint a wall that high where there are stairs? How do you cut in at that top edge where the wall meets the ceiling? How about doing a faux finish where you have lots of materials that you need to do the job but it all will not fit on a ladder?
Well, recently we had a question by one of our readers who asked about painting in a stairway -
“How do you paint that top part of the side wall the goes up the stairs. I was not sure if a ladder would be stable enough or do you use a roller with a extended handle? How do you paint the top edge?”
There are a few options that I would like to share with you.
1. Ladder & Paint Can – This is an old trick that is really NOT very safe, but if you have someone at the bottom holding the ladder for you, then this may work for something simple like cutting in. You would lean the ladder up against the wall – one leg on a step and one leg on a paint can on another step. I always wrap the ends that hit the wall with rags so the ladder doesn’t cause any indentations in the wall. You can then use a roller with a long extension pole to paint up to the area that you cut in.
1. SCAFFOLDING - The BEST means of painting within a stairwell are to use baker’s scaffolding. This is a scaffolding that is used mostly indoors. It comes in 6 foot high stackable tiers. The 2 ends can adjust and fit nicely on the stairs with the plank section level in the middle. You will most likely need to use 2 tiers to get up to the ceiling. You can also use a small ladder on the scaffolding to get a little higher – but you will need to make sure that you are very careful doing this. It can be pretty scary at that height. Scaffolding can be bought or you can rent it by the day from any local rental supply store.
Scaffolding is a must when doing a faux finish in a stairway. It can be difficult to maneuver a ladder especially with all of the materials that you will need to do the job. They do have special attachable trays for ladders than can carry more so if you are daring enough to use a ladder, you may want to look into that.
3. Ladder & Plank – You may need to get a bit creative with this method. Here are a few picture examples that I found on www.do-it-yourself-help.com.
As you can see in the first picture, they leaned the ladder up against the actual wall right from the stairs. But again, be sure to have someone holding the ladder for you in case of an accident.
In the second picture, you will see that a few different sized ladders were used with planks in between. You must be very careful if you are going to do this on your own.
Here is a great video on how to paint in stairwell. They use the ladder and plank method.
The Tissue Paper finish is a really great finish to do on slightly imperfect walls. The texture will hide a lot. But if there are major cracks or holes, these should be filled before going over the wall surface with the tissue paper.
We recently had a question from a reader asking about what glue to use to adhere the tissue paper to the wall in order to so the tissue paper faux finish technique correctly.
“Debra, I have a wall I want to do in the torn paper look. I have the paper ready but the only glue I found was for wall paper glue and I would have to spread it on the paper like spreading butter on bread! One piece at a time. That will take forever!!!!! Is there something,a simpler, easier and faster that I can use to stick the paper on the wall?”
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Here is what I wrote back to her:
“You don’t necessarily have to use the wallpaper glue like you have mentioned. You can always use a small mini roller and roll on the glue onto the wall and then slap the paper on. I have also used paint as glue and rolled on a section and then put my paper on. As long as you have a wet surface, the paper will stick to anything.”
Here are some simple step by step instructions to help you create the faux tissue paper finish.
1. Gather your materials
White tissue paper
Paint
Glaze
Wallpaper Paste
Mini Roller
Painter’s Tape
Drop Cloth
Paint Tray
and anything else you might need….
2. Tape off off the room so you don’t get tissue paper, glue, and paint on the ceiling, trim, and baseboards.
3. Crumple the Tissue Paper – tear off all the straight edges off of the paper so you are left with jagged edges, then crumples the paper and open and smooth so you are left with flat sheets that have the crumpled texture left in it.
4. Apply glue / paste/ paint – in 3ft x 3ft sections
5. Apply tissue paper – Start at the top corner and work your way down and out. You can leave a straight edge on the tissue paper that will be flush to the ceiling, corners, etc. Make sure the paste / paint is still wet when you apply the paper. Smooth the paper on with the palms of your hands pulling out towards the edges. Make sure you are not left with any air bubbles. This can cause issues later.
6. Base coat your walls – wait 24 hours and then paint over the paper with 2 coats of latex paint.
7. Glazing - This is the step that creates the gorgeous antiqued, aged, tea stained look. Use 3 parts glaze to 1 part paint and then use a sponge and wash in the color. Rinse the sponge with water and then wash over it again. This will allow the darker glaze color to settle in all the recessed areas of the surface from the tissue paper.
You are left with a REALLY gorgeous finish. Here is an example done by www.matthurd.com
http://www.hgtv.com/topics/home-staging/index.html
http://www.realtor.org/library/library/fg303
http://www.hribar.com/home-staging-stories.html
