House Staging - Complete!

Hello all! Tasha came back out to the house yesterday and helped us get all the details ironed out on the house. I am please with the results. There are some rooms that I can't really tell that much difference and others that look a ton better! So, overall, I would say it was worth it to have someone come in and tell us what looks best. Now, hopefully our house will sell soon.

Here are some pictures:

Living room

Before

After

Basically, we moved our TV onto a TV stand over where the couch used to be. We took all out small things off the walls and shelves and got some larger pieces and some greenery. How much did we spend buying items for this room? About $55 with tax.

Master bedroom

Before

After

It's really hard to tell what all we did from the pictures, but on the other side of the entertainment center, we had a chest of drawers. We moved that to the guest bedroom (along with most of my folded clothes). We took everything off the entertainment center except the stereo speakers and bought a silk arrangement. Scott and I each had a body pillow. We only had red covers for them and it is really hard to find body pillow covers. We also needed new body pillows. So, I bought us each a king size pillow and pretty yellow cases to complement our bedskirt. Then, we had one nice new pillow in a sham and one of my old ones in the other (you can tell if you look really closely in the before picture), so I bought a third pillow! We are supposed to open the blinds every day and we changed the way we make our bed. Oh, and we are supposed to leave the lamps on...I am a little nervous about the one over on Scott's nightstand because it sometimes make popping noises and is really more for show than to leave on all the time, so maybe I'll just turn the one on my nightstand and the one on the dresser on. I don't want to burn our house down. Cost of items in this room: $66.

Master Bathroom

We didn't take any before pictures of this, but I have some from when we took pictures of the cats drinking water. These are from before we ever cleaned up from originally putting the house on the market:

Here's the "after":

This room was probably the most expensive overall because we have all kinds of colored towels and we needed a stack of white or cream colored towels. Plus, I bought the orchid and that little cross stitch used to be up on the wall on the right over the tub and I bought a painting of a couple of plants that went better in that space. Cost for this room: $128. (Most of that was on towels and mats.) I did go to TJ Maxx for towels, but if you want really nice towels, they are still about the same cost as you would pay for cheaper towels at Target. So for 4 bath towels, 5 hand towels, and 5 washcloths it was $80 (I thought I was going to have a heart attack every time I checked out with stuff for this house, y'all). I also put my fan away, so we will see how long that lasts with summer coming up. It gets hot in that bathroom with the door closed while Scott is sleeping and we have six big lightbulbs, plus I have just gotten out of a hot shower and I have to blow dry my hair! Whew!

We did have our laundry sorter (which was white plastic pipes holding up three blue mesh bags) in the bedroom right beside the bathroom door. We threw it away (it was starting to fall apart) and I bought three of these laundry bins at Garden Ridge for $4 each. They are in our closet.

This is our "water closet". I already had those baskets on that shelf thing. She liked my basket usage. I don't know what we would do without them since we don't have any cabinets for our personal items in the "water closet". Plus, that's where we stash our wash cloths too.

Dining room:

Before

I did have my candle sticks on the table, but somehow they weren't there in the picture. So, I didn't just have a blank table.

After

Tasha said that we needed greenery on top of the china cabinet. I had always wanted some up there, but I had been too cheap! Also, I had always really wanted to put an arrangement of calla lilies on the table, but I thought the cats would ruin it. They are such good boys. It has not fallen over yet! I had to buy a little lamp to go on top of the sideboard that is over on the wall facing the china cabinet, the calla lily arrangement, and the greenery (just so you know it is attached to this little piece of rubber matting (I got more green stuff for my money that way), so it is propped up on a stack of magazines so it didn't sit down into the top of the china cabinet. Cost of beautifying this room: $86.

Office:

Before

Believe me, this is pretty good from what it looked like before we ever listed our house. This is our catch-all room. We spend a lot of time in this office!

After

The biggest job was cleaning out the closet. We pulled everything out and took a bunch of stuff to storage and to goodwill (this was the second purging, obviously it really does take twice to really get rid of the stuff you can do without). Then, I put my scrapbooks up in the closet and all our frames were lovingly wrapped in bubble wrap and put in storage (stress - what if my hand-made frames from Amy get messed up). We cleaned off our desks and bought some leather bins to put all of our office supplies in. I put my big philedendron on top of my sewing table and took a few clippings from it and made a new one in my yellow pot. I love this yellow pot. It was my mom's. But, I kill everything that I put in there. Maybe it doesn't drain well enough or something. We also took the picture collage and our calendar off the wall. But, I was sneaky and hid the calendar between Scott's desk and his computer so I can still look at it when I need to. This room was also kind of expensive because of those leather bins. I spent $42 on them. The good thing is that I had purchsed several different types and I get to take those back! (I added a close up of the leather bins/baskets/whatever.)

I have never taken a picture of our guest bathroom, but here is the "after" shot. We really didn't have that much to change in there. We had a picture on the sink counter we put in storage, we had a choice of soaps and we put one away, and Tasha kind of rearranged the stuff that was left so that if looked more angled. Oh, and the thing that made the biggest difference was something I always thought was a no, no. She opened the shower curtain halfway. This made a huge difference. I bought a little bottle of pomegranite body wash and put a wash cloth that matches the purple towels on the towel bar in there on the little bar in the tub. I love this room. It was the first room in the house we "finished". To be honest, I think it is the only room in the house we ever finished because it was so expensive for me to buy the rugs and stuff. Cost of finishing this room $4 (for the body wash). Tasha loved my use of baskets all over the house. I'll show you some other places I already had baskets that she commented on both times she was here. It made me happy that I had invested in those nice baskets back before Scott and I were even married. This one in here is one from a funeral, I believe. You know they come with 2 or 3 plants in them. Those are perfect for toilet paper. My good friend Lindsey came up with that idea in college. Thanks Lindsey!

Here is the guest bedroom. I don't think I've ever taken a picture of this room either, and we didn't take any "before" shots before we started tearing things apart. Basically, the bed was flush up against the wall and the headboard (which matches the chest of drawers that you see here) was still on the bed. It was such a dark color that it kind of cut the room in half when we pulled the bed into the caddy corner position that Tasha suggested. So, Scott took the headboard off and we took it up to the bonus room. There used to be an old white chest of drawers in here, which we took to storage. Tasha just used the stuff we already had and rearranged them to make the room look homier. After she took this picture, we propped up the pillows on the bed and it looked a lot better. So, I am going to use some of the money from returning some of the stuff we didn't use to buy four nice new pillows. I figure if we ever have guests, they will like having new pillows instead of our old leftovers that are in there now. That'll probably cost about $40 if I get the nice ones at Target.

Okay, this post is so long now. Sorry. If you are still here, I am impressed! I didn't post any pictures of the kitchen, but we didn't change that much in there. We just kind of grouped things together that were spread out. We also put our toaster under the cabinet and put the toaster oven in storage. Oh, and I did buy a new houseplant for the windowsill to the living room because the one I had was mostly dead. Here is what it looks like. I just need to actually transfer it to the pot I have it set down into.