Design Style Taste
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Home staging kit for do-it-yourselfers |
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CD or download kit offers tricks, tips. Sense of space key for condo sellersSome homeowners like doing it themselves, right down to staging their homes. That's why Marty MacPhail and wife Bonnie Dell, owners of DesignStyleTaste, put together a home staging kit to tap into the ever-popular do-it-yourself trend. Dell has a designer background and MacPhail has a background in marketing. The Toronto couple has been helping real estate agents stage homes and condos over the years, since before the practice gained popularity. The authors have several suggestions for showcasing a home in their staging kit, which is available in CD-ROM or downloadable format for $19.99 plus tax. |
The Do-It-Yourself Home Staging KIT covers 87 pages and has four components: Staging Basics; Before and After Photos; Tips & Techniques (which take the reader from room to room and item to item) and checklists (analyze your home and plan your staging strategy). Creating a sense of space will be of particular interest to condo owners, since they have a limited amount of square footage to work from, MacPhail says. Here are some tips from the kit: - Painting rooms can increase a home's value and open up a space. A neutral or beige colour throughout provides continuity and appeals to the majority of buyers who can comfortably live with a neutral colour, rather than bolder, brighter hues. - Homeowners need to depersonalize their condo of the mementoes, including family photographs. |
Knick-knacks can crowd the space and potential buyers will be distracted by the collectibles, rather than notice your condo's features, he says.
- Aim for less is more with paintings. Let a potential buyer focus on one large painting on the wall, rather then be distracted by three or four.
- Be aware of traffic flow. Remove furniture in front of windows, such as a sofa, which will detract from the view. If a room's space is long and narrow, then position your dining room table to face vertically instead of horizontally, so the area doesn't look cramped.
- Condo owners often bring oversized furniture into their home, since many are downsizing. It looks out of scale in the limited space. "People should be thinking about renting appropriately sized furniture," he says. The home staging kit is available through the website at www.DesignStyleTaste.com |
