Sometimes we have to steal, borrow and add when it comes to staging

This Seattle house in the View Ridge neighborhood is an example of such a situation. The homeowners previously had their home on the market for quite a while without any success. After not seeing any results, they decided to go with a different realtor?who they felt had better marketing and negotiating skills. They chose Phillip Blenkley from CBBain.?

This home was built on a hill and had a very unique floor plan. ?Right away we knew this was not going to be a home for everyone and decided to target professional couples with no children. But what this house had going for it was the views of Lake Washington from just about any window. The home was not prepared for potential buyers who came through and it was obvious why this beautiful house had not been sold.

?Below is the list of the problems that we identified and the solutions that we came up with to address them with our staging approach. We had to borrow, steal, and add on to make it all work.

1. The home sellers had to sell their home right away for the highest amount of money possible for financial reasons. They had a limited budget to work with and it was not enough to cover all that we needed to do. We?started?to think outside of the box, something that most home stagers are skilled at.?
2. This home had five different outdoor spaces and this was one of the main features of this water-view home. These spaces needed to be showcased in a big way, but they had no outdoor furniture. We could have provided these, but the homeowners? budget didn?t allow for that, yet we knew we could not leave these wonderful spaces empty. We decided that these pieces could be borrowed from their friends and neighbors. After all, it was the beginning of March and the weather in Seattle was not yet warm enough to sit outside so it was a good time to borrow these essential pieces. All the outdoor furniture pictured below was borrowed.
3. The dining room was in the family room and the narrow dining room looked like a hallway. One of the most common mistakes that people do when they put their home on the market is when they have used ?rooms for different purposes while they are living in the them, and they fail to change it back.?We asked the owners to place the dining table back into the dining room. There were lots of built-in bookshelves in this room as well. We asked them to pack half of the shelves. We wanted to re-arrange and design these bookshelves, since they were in the main room of the house. We also let them know that we would be stealing items from different rooms and cabinets to fill in the shelves.?
4. For the family room, we needed seating, since the dining table was placed in the family room. ?
5. The formal living room lacked the right sitting, elegance, and definition. We wanted to showcase a large entertaining space and we selected a big sectional for this room.?
6. The master bedroom lacked luster and elegance. We brought in a bedroom set to showcase the generous size of this room.
7. The rec/play room had become a catchall place. We identified the pieces that should stay in this room and we requested that the rest of the items be removed. By adding wall art and redesigning the remaining furniture pieces, we achieved our goal of creating an inviting rec/play room.
8. The second bedroom was a large room, but it only had a single bed which was lost in the room. We exchanged the bed with a queen size bed and added bold wall art. The transformation was fantastic!
9. The third bedroom was not even being used as a bedroom but rather, a boxing and exercise room. We felt it was important to show this room as a bedroom and a home office since it was such a large room.?

By thinking outside of the box, borrowing, renting, and stealing items from one room for another room, we managed to transform this house and prepare it for the market. This house had been on the market for quite a while yet not selling. Four weeks after we staged this beautiful lake view house in Sand Point, it was SOLD.

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These home sellers were super motivated and they needed to sell their home. By following our recommendations, they met their sales goals.?

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