We start at the curb with a clear, unclouded eye. My friend D.C. holds a yellow legal pad and a blue ballpoint pen, poised to take notes about what needs to be done to get his Florida house ready to sell fast at a great price.
Though I have professionally staged many homes for sale, we both know, this is no ordinary sale for him. It’s also no typical staging project for me.
The house is loaded, in every sense.
D.C. lost his wife to cancer two years ago, and he’d long known that he couldn’t stay in the home they’d shared and raised a now-grown family in if he wanted to move on with his life.
And he does want to move on — with me.
Like I said, not your typical home staging.
“I wouldn’t want another woman to live in that house, and neither would she,” he told me when we first met on a Sunday afternoon over a glass of sauvignon blanc. My own 20-plus-year marriage had ended after a three-year separation, and D.C. and I were both tiptoeing bravely forward, older, wiser, warier.
Dating does not get easier in middle age. If anything, it’s more complicated. In your 20s, what do you have to deal with, really? You likely don’t have much in the way of kids, real estate, stretch marks, former spouses or dental work. You don’t have decades of baggage, or the vaguest idea what an HDL to LDL ratio is, let alone what your own is.
“I plan to remulch,” D.C. says, bringing me back to the lawn outside his house. Yes, where was I? So easy for me to drift away from curb appeal to matters of the heart.
We scan the landscape together.
“Good,” I say. “We’ll put some brightly colored flowers in these pots.” I point to the pair of lifeless urns flanking the front door. “Give the front entry a good cleaning.” I draw a streak in the film on the glass of an outdoor carriage lamp. “And replace the doormat.” We look down at the worn out “Welcome.”
Outside decisions are easiest. As we step over the threshold, I take care to check my straight-shooting self at the curb. I’m a Westerner and a journalist. My tell-it-like-it-is approach doesn’t always play well here in the kinder, gentler South, where politeness prevails and locals beat around the bush so much they sometimes get lost in the shrubbery. My directness can go over here like a sledgehammer on a dandelion (I’m working on it).
D.C. holds his pen a little tighter, his pad a little closer, bracing. I do my level best to tread lightly as I go room-by-room, calling out the changes and trying not to hurt the feelings of anyone dead or alive.
This is for sure: After two years of bachelor living, this four-bedroom, single-family home needs some work.
Fortunately, D.C. had done a good bit of heavy lifting. He’d had the roof replaced, the pool resurfaced, the patio area power washed and the main living areas painted. He’d also had the worn carpet replaced.
With the structure in good shape, and the backgrounds, or “shell” as they say in the business, updated, we could start staging.
We go room to room. My advice sounds repetitive: Declutter, de-personalize, deep-clean. I look at him frequently like a medic checking vitals. The patient was holding up well, remarkable under the circumstances.
We had only just begun.
Join me next week as we use what’s already in the house to set the stage for a show.
Syndicated columnist Marni Jameson is the author of two home and lifestyle books, and the forthcoming “Downsizing the Family Home: What to Keep, What to Let Go” (Sterling Press). Contact her through marnijameson.com.
Showing your home some tough love
Regardless of whether a home is yours or someone else’s, the steps to getting a property market-ready are the same.
1. Look at your house like a stranger. We all have blind spots when looking at our homes. Try seeing yours as if for the first time, and invite someone honest and objective, like your broker, to tell you how a buyer would see it.
2. Take care of structural issues. If the roof leaks, the plumbing needs fixing, or the rain gutters are failing, fix it. Make sure the house is sound and in good repair; otherwise you are just inviting a lowball offer.
3. Create great curb. If the house doesn’t look great on arrival, it won’t matter how nice the inside looks. Force yourself to see the cobwebs in the eaves, the grimy windows, the dirty walkways and decks. Power clean the exterior. Do what you need to do to make your brown lawn green. Tend neglected planters. Place colorful pots of flowers by doors.
4. Update the shell. If floors and walls aren’t in good condition, paint, recarpet or refinish floors. Remove dated and dirty window treatments. Avoid the temptation to offer buyers a carpet or painting allowance. That’s lazy and won’t woo buyers.
5. Stay neutral. Select paint and carpet colors with neutral, coordinated colors. I like to choose colors from the same strip of a paint sampler to assure they share an undertone and will work well together. Then I choose carpet one shade darker than the walls. D.C. had painted his dining room Sherwin-Williams Bagel, which looked terrific. But then he veered from the palette when he chose Certain Peach for the great room and Snowblind for the halls. He thought it would make the hall look brighter, but in effect, it just made the cream-colored baseboards and doors look dirty. We repainted the great room and hall Interactive Cream, one shade lighter shade on the same strip as Bagel, and it gave the interior cohesion.