That Time We Sold Our House in 4 Days

Exactly one year ago today we put our Norton house up for sale. It was a Thursday.

By Sunday afternoon we had accepted an offer and 30 day close. We didn't close on our new house until December, but that's a different post for a different day (maybe next week?).

What I will talk about is our staging process. It was one of the most challenging aspects of the home-selling process (aside from a nerve-wracking Septic Tank inspection), but as you can see a little hard work ahead of posting the listing paid off. BIG TIME.

I did plenty of research ahead of time to help me with our Staging Journey. Here are some resources I found helpful. Thank you Pinterest.

Here you can see most of the pics that went into our listing from my somewhat forgotten pre-Grace blog. I am hoping to get back to that blog soon, and probably will once we begin the Renovation Journey this Fall. (I love a good Journey as you can see.)

For starters, let's take a look at my kitchen on moving day.

Nice, huh? Makes you want to move right in. The lighting is bad, the trash is making the neat freaks start to shiver a bit, and the clutter is making you cringe. Right?

Now, on to the Staged Kitchen:

Damn girl! Once I saw this shot I almost didn't want to move. It had light, it had life, it was appealing! But more importantly Buyers could see themselves in this kitchen, cooking dinner, hosting a family party - whatever they could imagine - because it was nice looking, yet still neutral.

We made a similar transformation in our rarely used, junk-collecting guest bedroom.

Without making a huge investment we were able to turn this eyesore into an inviting space. We spruced up the wall color with Sherwin Williams Watery and removed the 90's style border, rearranged the furniture, added some fun details, and swapped out the heavy curtains with something more ethereal. Voilà.

On Staging Day I moved through the house one room at a time. My husband was cleaning out the garage at that point in our moving process so I was a one woman show. When I first started I thought, this is going to be impossible, how am I ever going to take all of these staged pictures before 1. we lose light and 2. my deadline of August 1st!

I started with the living room and just removed any personal items, clutter, and set up my tripod with wide angle lens. All of the junk I had to remove went right into the Dining Room. My "Sausage Factory" if you will. Basically the place you don't want anyone to see - you only want them to see the final results. Once I finished with the Living Room it looked so awesome that it gave me the energy to keep on going. Room by room until I finally finished - while the light was still good I might add!

I'll leave you with a great pin that helps walk you through the decluttering process. An essential step in Staging your House to Sell.





Inspiration from the original article on my other blog: http://www.melissajean.me/2013/08/selling-our-home-on-market.html

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