Pineapple Interiors and Staging Denver are accustomed to staging homes for Builders, Realtors and Homeowners to assist them in selling their homes quickly and for the best possible price. Together these two companies have a combined 23 years experience in doing just that with amazing results. With no cost to RTMD, the staging companies combined their resources to fully furnish and accessorize the home quickly. The results beautifully showcase the work that has been done on the home at 12825 E. Wyoming Place in Aurora, Colorado making it even more appealing and comfortable to potential buyers. RMTD’s goal was to have someone in this terrific family home for the holidays. The home went under contract in just 6 days!

Tammie O’Brien of Pineapple Interiors said, “It has been a blessing to us to serve the Denver area for more than 6 years and it is our pleasure to give back to our community in this manner. When you join forces with people and organizations such as Staging Denver, Joyce Sedam and Rebuilding Together Metro Denver, it’s easy to make a difference”.

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Preparing your home for sale is just like selling any other product.  Your product needs to stand out from the others out there, be the very best of the best, and leave buyers with a feeling that something about your product was better from all the rest.  Surprisingly, it’s easier than it seems to help your home rise above.

With just a weekend’s time and a little elbow grease, these easy projects can help your home become the total package:

1. Clean and repaint baseboards and trim:  Cleaning up and brightening the white on your trim and baseboards will allow your home to feel more unified.  Crisp trim will draw the eye toward the architectural detail of your home…something you want to show off!

Here is a great tutorial for help getting started…

2. Give your front door a face lift: When buyers approach your home, the “sales pitch” begins right away.  Buyers want to instantly feel cozy and at home, and a peeling, old front door is anything but welcoming.  A quick, fresh coat of paint will easily do the trick.  Adding seasonally appropriate and maintained potted plants to your front porch will add to the charm.  Don’t neglect your house numbers either, make sure your address is not only visible from the street but visually appealing, too! This great site allows you to browse through thousands of fonts, and choose materials, as well.

3.  Wash your windows and screens: Maximize the views from your home by making sure buyers can actually see through them! Dirt and grime build up over time, so its important to wash windows, inside and out, and don’t forget your screens!

4.  Update fixtures and pulls in kitchens and bathrooms: For very little time and money a huge impact can be made by replacing outdated fixtures and pulls with current updated hardware.  Changing out brass for oil rubbed bronze or brushed nickel fixtures can instantly make a space feel new.  Coordinating pulls, found at any home improvement store, will make your home feel high end, without the high end price.

From this…

To this…

5. Re-caulk or re-grout tiles, tubs and sinks: When living in your home it’s easy to overlook small cracks in grout or that one spot near the tub you keep meaning to re-caulk.  Buyers will notice. If necessary, scrape away existing grout then re-caulk or fill the holes.  It will surprise you how much nicer and cleaner the new layer will look.

Try to view your home from a buyer’s perspective.  Every detail is important. Work hard to create an atmosphere in your home that feels well maintained and loved.  Buyers want to feel that the home they are interested in will hold up for them, and has been well taken care of,  little things go a long way to ensure that feeling. So contrary to popular belief, when preparing your home for sale, it IS time to start sweating the small stuff!

(images courtesy of google images)

A potential buyer’s critical eye is certainly NOT left at the steps of the garage.  In fact, the image of a well maintained garage will excite your male counterpart to dream of HIS tools and toys in that space, ultimately adding to a quicker sale.

So, is your garage sexy enough for those discerning buyers?   The good news is, the space does not have to look like a catalog ad  with epoxy-flecked floors and perfect custom cabinetry, but there are some key steps to ensure they don’t run to your competition.

• Make sure the space  shows it can fit as many cars as it’s designed for. This may mean storing those extra items off site while selling your home, such as bikes, wagons and extra yard equipment.  If you have a three car garage, that must show clearly.
• If it is dimly lit, add a few extra utility bulbs or lights.
• Clear as much as possible off the garage floor. This includes yard equipment, the boxes you may be pre-packing, grandma’s rocking chair, etc.
• If the garage has storage shelves, use them and keep them tidy. Plastic bins can make a world of difference for a small investment.
• If possible, store trash cans outside (but out of sight) to avoid odors .
• If there are lots of stains on the floor, consider concrete paint, available at your local home improvement store.
• For showings, park any large vehicles off site.
• Store boats, trailers and RVs off site.

Sellers often ask if they should drywall the garage. It likely depends on the price point of the home. For an “average” priced home, we say save that for your new garage. It will likely not make or break a sale, or bring higher offers.

Not sure if your garage is sexy? Take a picture and you will get a better idea of how buyers will see it.

Use these steps to get your garage ready for sale and have buyers deciding on the perfect spot for the permanent bottle opener…already imagining themselves enjoying that first cold beer with the guys!

Moving can already be a daunting and scary process for children of all ages; and in our opinion, minimizing those feelings is more important than making their room picture perfect for potential buyers. The main consideration when “staging” kids rooms is to make them appear as spacious as possible and of course, storage is always key. If your child’s room has floor to ceiling Justin Bieber posters, talk to them about keeping their favorites hanging and carefully storing the rest for their new “super cool” room when you move. If there are hundreds of stuffed animals taking over the room, perhaps they can also “move” into special new baskets and bins.  

When it comes to kids rooms, we say a kid should still be a kid!  With that being said, here are some tips to “stage” childrens’ rooms without bringing on the tears:

• Remove any extra toys that aren’t regularly played with.  Donate, pre-pack or store. 
• Neatly organize remaining toys and books in bins or baskets
• Remove from closet and store any off-season clothing. If possible, keep items on shelves to a minimum and floors clear. This will help the closet appear larger.  See our post on closet organization for more specifics.
• Clean carpets and walls.  Now’s the perfect time to whip out the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and clean up that crayon on wall masterpiece and re-hang the curtain rods that may have been pulled down while playing. 

And finally, if the pink play kitchen is something that actually gets played with, is in good shape, and adds to the room’s memorability because everything else in the room is so nicely tucked away, let the kitchen get by without demolition.

A kid’s room that feels loved but looks tidy will allow potential buyers to linger there just a bit longer, imagining their own child living in and loving that same room.

It’s easy to get stumped when staging or styling a built-in.  All that space can be daunting.  Which is why the Pineapple team has come to the rescue with some simple guidelines to help you get started!  We’ve added some visual examples along the way with each of our tips, too…  

1.  Use Plenty of BOOKS!  Though this may be our most obvious point, it’s sometimes easy to over think the layout and neglect the shelves’ true inhabitants!  Organize books by size and color, changing up the way books are placed on each shelf.  For example, stack books vertically on one shelf, then line up books horizontally on the next to create visual interest and balance.

And, did you know you can order books by the foot??  You can even choose your color scheme!  So cool.

And if you’re really an over achiever take a look at this…

2.  Layer, Layer, Layer!  Besides books, you will want to include other interesting objects on your shelves.  Think vessels like vases, jars and baskets.  Use other small figurines or  unique items to place on top of a stack of books or as book ends.  Use greenery to bring in fresh color and a natural element. These details will allow buyers to feel at home and cozy when inside your house! 

And it’s no coincidence that we used the word layer three times…remember THE RULE OF THREE!  Things generally look best when grouped in 3’s, and balanced based on size.  For example, try grouping a taller vase with natural birch branches or grasses, a medium sized, leather box and a small scale bird figurine.

REMEMBER, as always, when showing your home, TO MINIMIZE LARGE PERSONAL COLLECTIONS and TASTE SPECIFIC ITEMS to ALLOW POTENTIAL BUYERS TO ENVISION THEMSELVES LIVING THERE WITH THEIR THINGS!  In other words, when showing your home, built-ins are not the place for your entire collection of antique nutcrackers.  Even at Christmas time.

3.  Maximize Your Space!  Don’t be afraid to remove or rearrange shelves to create more space.  This way, you can add pieces of art or larger items.  And believe it or not, leaving open space (gasp!) in the shelves is okay, too!  Using negative space can help draw the eye to pieces you’d like to highlight, and most importantly, give the appearance of more total space in the built-ins.  (See last week’s post for more explanation on how jam packing spaces like closets, or in this case, shelving, with more things actually makes the space feel smaller)

 Here’s a great example of how to use larger spaces to display art work:

And finally, our last, and MOST IMPORTANT tip:

DON’T FORGET YOUR BABY IN THE BUILT-INS WHEN YOU’RE DONE.

(photo via i suwannee)

Whether you live in a grand home with super spacious closets, or an average home with small or even adequate closets, you have to CLEAR THEM OUT!! When closets are filled to capacity, whether they know it or not, the *not enough storage and closet space* alarm starts going off in buyers’ minds.

During one home staging consultation this summer, we opened a guest bedroom closet door and an ironing board literally scared us! It looked like it had caught on fire at some point. We had a good chuckle with the homeowner as we explained the need for a new ironing board cover.

Here are a few pointers for clearing out your closets:

• Pre-pack all off season clothing and if that is not “enough”, clear out more!
• Clothes on closet shelves should be neatly folded or placed in bins and baskets. When we say neatly folded, think department store.
• Any loose items should be placed in bins and baskets (socks, undergarments, ties, belts, etc)
• Floors should be completely clear with the exception of a laundry hamper and one or two shoe shelves
• Upper shelves should be very neat with minimal items

You might be saying, “How do I live like this?” and we feel your pain, but we also are experts when it comes to getting your home ready for sale. The bottom line is, selling your home and living in your home are two completely different things!

Oregon based stager, Margaret Oscilia said in a recent AgentGenius column, “properties that appeal to home buyer’s emotions sell quicker and for more money. While buyers shop with logic – it is the one they fall in love with that gets the offer”.

In 2010 we helped buyers fall in love! The average DOM in Denver were 90-100 while the average DOM for homes staged by Pineapple were about 50! Check out some of our latest “love stories”…

22069 E Arbor Drive, Aurora, CO

It was Tuesday when we received a familiar call from one of our Realtor clients in somewhat of a panic. She listed this home a few weeks earlier and had not received a lot of interest. She had two showings scheduled for Friday of that same week and had a hunch it would sell if we could get it staged by then. We pulled it together just in time for her afternoon showings and her hunch was right on.  The home was under contract by the following Monday and has since closed!

Living Room

Great Room

We often hear Realtors and homeowners say they want to “wait and see” what happens before they stage. As you know, new listings see the greatest number of buyers in the first two weeks;  you only have one shot to make a great first impression. Doesn’t it make sense to give every first showing the best possibility to be the last showing?