Debra Gould

Kids Rooms are Key in Selling in Family Neighborhood

If you’re selling a three or four bedroom house in a family neighborhood, it’s important to show kid’s rooms, even if there are no longer young children living in the house. It doesn’t take much to create the look and it’s an important part in romancing the target market for the home.

Home buyers have less imagination than you might think. That’s why home staging can make such a difference in the selling price of a home and the length of time it takes to sell.

When a couple with a young family walks through a childless home, it’s hard for them to imagine how their own family will live there. Questions come up like:

Are the bedrooms appropriate for their kids?
Where will they play?

kid's room before staging

kid's bedroom after staging

There were no actual children living in this house which had been purchased to renovate and resell. Family homes sell better when they are shown with rooms for children. Six Elements uses rental furniture and props to create the right ambiance, even when no real children live in the home being sold.

Professional home stagers always keep the target market of a house in mind when staging. This helps paint a picture for the potential buyer by staging the house the way it would be lived in by them. With minimal furnishings and a few props, it’s easy to show a child’s bedroom!

Learn more about how Six Elements can help you when it’s time to decorate your house to sell.

Debra Gould, President Six Elements Inc.

Internationally recognized Home Staging expert Debra Gould president of Six Elements will supercharge the appeal of any property. If you’re looking to profit in the real estate market, your best investment may be a ‘decorate to sell’ consultation with Debra.

Quick Fluff for the Powder Room

Written by Debra Gould -

Bathrooms are such small rooms and so easy to update without spending much money. Whether you’re moving now or later, why not fluff your bathroom and make it a more enjoyable room? In the case of powder rooms, all you need is some art, a bud vase and a nice fluffy towel.

Learning to See

Written by Debra Gould -

Learning to See:
Bringing the World Around You Into Your Home
by Vicente Wolf

Hardcover – 199 pages
ISBN: 1579652174

In Learning to See, interior designer Vicente Wolf provides real-life advice and over 160 inspiring photographs to open the door on the creative process behind successful interiors, and to open your eyes to the designer within yourself to encourage you to create beautiful rooms that reflect your own taste and style.

This guy is quite famous and it’s interesting to note that he doesn’t have formal interior design training. Perhaps that’s why he’s more about helping your reflect your own style rather than his?

Canada, to order – Learning to See: Bringing the World Around You Into Your Home

US to order – Learning to See: Bringing the World Around You Into Your Home

Tiny Dining Room Gets Color Makeover

Written by Debra Gould -

It’s important that living, dining and family rooms feel warm and inviting— whether you’re trying to sell your home or decorating it to live in.

Here a tiny dining room, that was barely more than a hallway from the front of the house to the kitchen in the back was, given a dramatic face lift.

Old wood chairs were re-painted and an inexpensive wrought iron Ikea fixture is dressed up with beaded red shades.

As one might expect in a home from the early 1900s, the old plaster walls were less than smooth. To visually minimize this issue and save money, the walls were repainted and then a wash of a second deeper color mixed with glaze was added over top. This textured look gave depth to the room while making the bumpy walls no longer an issue.

Rental furniture for home staging adds to what you currently have

Written by Debra Gould -

When it’s time to put the house you are living in onto the real estate market, it becomes a product. Rather than suggesting all new furniture in a resale home, a good home stager will try and work with what you already have in new and better ways when staging your home.

Sometimes though, it’s necessary to bring in rental furniture to add to what you already have, or to replace furniture that’s not appropriate to the purpose of the room, or the target market of your home.

For example, I staged a million dollar home that had inexpensive Ikea furniture in the living room. I moved this down to the basement where it was more suited to a family room. Then I brought in rental furniture to stage the living room to be more in keeping with what the buyer of a million dollar property would expect.

Below is an example of combining what my client already owned with rental furniture that I brought in just before the house went on the real estate market.

Clutter and unnecessary furniture, like the bean bag chair in the center of the room, were removed from the eating area/family room in this home and rental furniture was brought in by Six Elements to create a proper eating area.

Need help with your staging or decorating project?

With a minimum two hour consultation in your home, we will tell you everything that needs to be done in your house before you put it on the real estate market (room by room and outside too). Contact us to learn more or arrange an appointment.

> Read more about our color consulting, interior redesign and home staging services.

If you’re outside the Toronto area, I can still help you personally by phone working from photos you email me. Learn more about this virtual staging service.

Home staging expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements Inc. She has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. Debra has gained international recognition and has been featured in major media in the US and Canada including: HGTV, CNN Money, CBC National News, CBS Radio, GlobalTV, CityTV, The Wall Street Journal, Woman’s Day, Reader’s Digest and more.

Ditch the clutter and use art when staging a home office

Written by Debra Gould -

If you have a functioning home office in your house, the chances are it’s quite cluttered with papers, binders, “to do” piles, stacks on the floor under your desk and general chaos.

This might be how you work (no judgments here, I work that way myself), but it’s no way to sell your home. Besides, do you want a bunch of strangers looking at your real work, or potentially walking off with an important file?

For security sake, make sure you hide all important papers, clear your desk, shut down your computer and if it’s a laptop, take it with you!

home office after staging by Six Elements — Clutter was removed from surfaces and the floor. Here a large painting provides a stunning focal point for the end wall, pulls in the otherwise bright wall color and emphasizes the generous size of the room.

And for the sake of trying to sell your home, make sure you office looks bright, efficient and clutter free. Even it it’s a little less functional while your home is on the real estate market, the goal now is to sell your home as quickly as possible.

You want buyers to walk in and think, “What a great home office. I can totally see myself working in here!”

To accomplish this, it’s also a good idea to remove all personal diplomas, which distract buyers, and memo boards, which inevitably look cluttered no matter what’s on them. Replace these with a nice piece of art that ties in the wall color and provides a focal point. Make sure the size of the piece is proportional to the wall itself.

Need help with your home office?

If you’re need help redesigning your home office or staging any room in your home, contact us.

If you’re outside the Toronto area, I can still help you personally by phone working from photos you email me. Learn more about this virtual staging service.

Old wallpaper no barrier to inexpensive makeover

Written by Debra Gould -

Many of us live in older homes that have layers of wallpaper that have been there for years. The thought of removing it becomes a roadblock to redecorating because we’re afraid of all the plastering work that will be needed if we take it down.

This is particularly true when you live in a home with plaster and lath construction, which was popular through to the 1950s when drywall was introduced in the US and Canada. If you’re not sure what type of walls you have, try hanging a picture. The nail will go smoothly into drywall, not so with plaster and lath that will crumble with age sometimes turning what was supposed to be a tiny nail hole into a quarter inch diameter mess!

If you’ve run into this problem just hanging pictures, it’s not hard to scare yourself out of removing layers of old wallpaper that may indeed be holding those old walls together. This doesn’t have to stop you from radically changing the look of your room with a new color of paint.

With proper priming you can paint over wallpaper!

Granted, this isn’t considered the “right” way to do things, but does it really matter if the alternative is living in a depressing space that you hate, or losing money trying to sell a lack-luster home?

bedroom before color makeover

bedroom after color makeover

Given this older home’s plaster and lath construction, removing multiple layers of 20+ year old wallpaper could have turned into a 5 day messy and expensive re-plastering project. Instead this transformation was achieved over a weekend.

After priming, Debra Gould chose a deep caramel color that was painted right over the ugly wallpaper. New and more colorful bedding, and a properly proportioned night stand and lamp that she selected, completed the redecoration of this master bedroom.

Need help with your decorating or color project?

With a minimum two hour consultation in your home, we will tell you everything that needs to be done in your home (room by room and outside too). Contact us to learn more or arrange an appointment.

> Read more about our color consulting, interior redesign and home staging services.

Feel free to add your comments to this story. Have you ever tried to take down wallpaper before painting?

The Home Zone

Written by Debra Gould -

The Home Zone:
Making the Most of Your Living Space
with an introduction by Caroline Clifton-Mogg

Hardcover – 256 pages
ISBN: 1841722677

This book is one of my favorites. In The Home Zone, top interiors writers and hundreds of inspirational photographs of real homes guide readers through five popular decorating styles and discuss working with color, lighting, flooring, window treatments and soft furnishings. You’ll also learn about space planning and issues specific to each area, from choosing the right bathroom faucet to picking a kitchen layout that works.

To order The Home Zone in Canada

To order The Home Zone in the US

Too Much Clutter Hides Room’s Purpose

Written by Debra Gould -

Not everyone lives in a home the way they would like others to see it when it’s time to sell. My clients realize that in order to sell their homes more quickly and for more money they have to turn it into a product that will appeal to potential buyers.

In this house the family room had become a dumping ground for clutter that ranged from video games to kid’s toys and a myriad of family photos of all shapes and sizes crowding the fireplace mantel. Fine for living but not for selling!

You Might Not Need a Dining Room But Buyers Expect to See One

Written by Debra Gould -

I’ve staged hundreds of homes and discovered that many people don’t use their dining rooms as such. For some families it’s a big empty space filled with toys, for others, especially when the dining room and living room are one, it becomes one big living room with the family eating in the kitchen.
[Read more…] about You Might Not Need a Dining Room But Buyers Expect to See One

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Debra Gould

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