We Booked a Stylist…?

home staging expertI’m 32 and my memory is going. It’s always been like a sieve, I suppose…shouldn’t be surprised that it’s vanishing now like morning mist. Still, it’s lead to some embarrassing situations over the last few weeks, especially since we’re selling our home and that’s always a leading cause of unnecessary stress. Stress makes it worse, I’m fairly sure.

Okay, so our home is a bit…vintage. It’s nice enough, but it was built about 40 years ago and you can really tell from the décor. Funky wallpaper, basically. We were having trouble selling, so we turned to a property stylist Melbourne real estate agents recommended to us. Took me a week to remember to make the call, and then I wasn’t there when they actually came along. I came back from work, walked into the house and found a complete stranger doing what I thought was insulting my chandelier, which happens to be the one vintage thing in the home I sort of don’t mind.

So then I gave them what for, asking who the heck they thought they were coming in and telling us that we needed to change the way we were living. That’s when Glen gently reminded me that we’d booked a property stylist, and I died a little bit inside from intense, searing-hot embarrassment. I just started almost yelling at someone for doing what we hired them to do. At this point I expect that the estate agent is going to come to the door and I’ll tell them in a huff that we never wanted to move. Or maybe we’ll have an open day, go out while they’re showing people around and I’ll freak out because I’ll see signs of people being in the house. Glen has been great through the whole thing, but he’s not psychic; he can’t tell when I’m about to forget something!

And then we’ll end up following the advice of the home staging expert, the furniture will shift, the wallpaper will change and maybe I’ll walk down the stairs one morning and wonder if I’m in the right house. I really need to start taking medication, or something

-Addi

Style tricks of the property trade

house styling companyA while ago my partner and I decided to sell up and move to Bali. We ended up getting major post holiday blues whenever we returned from trips there, so at the end of our last holiday we decided we had to make the move and turn our holiday destination into our home! The biggest thing for us to deal with was selling our house in Melbourne. As we would both be earning far less money in Bali we really wanted to maximize the value of our house before it went to auction. We actually decided to go with a property staging company as they send in interior stylists and totally transform the place to appeal to buyers. It’s crazy how having some trendy minimal furniture can add a few zeros to the selling price.

The best thing was we were able to put all our shabby second (aka seventh) hand furniture into storage while the interior designers brought in scandinavian inspired minimalist wares. We ultimately planned on selling everything, including all our furniture, our car, even most of our clothes. But we figured, we should sell our house first and to a different crowd that would be more interested in forking out for it than the crowd that would want to buy our second hand records. The house styling company in Melbourne was amazing. They worked with us to build on the space in our house and they even looked at the demographic of potential buyers in the area and modelled the house according to what they wanted to see. Our lounge room was transformed into a kid friendly entertainment space, and the spare bedroom we used to keep all our hiking gear became a perfect nursery for a baby! We managed to get nearly 10% over our asking price when it came to auction day!