The kitchen is the heart of the house
and must be sparkling clean and
free of clutter
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Staging your house for top dollar
Staging your house just before it goes on the market can make a dramatic improvement in your sales. Staging's goal is to highlight the home's strengths and downplay its weaknesses. House staging is the biggest house-effect out there and for good reason: it works!
8 Staging Steps
8 easy steps that you can use for each room in your home to stage it quickly and professionally.
Staging Your Dining Room
Dining rooms were once a symbol of wealth. Ordinary middle class people ate in the kitchen. Then every new home had to have a dining room and people found out that it wasn't a lot of fun eating in the dining room every night.
3 Steps to Creating Fabulous Kitchens
Make the kitchen appear larger; so that it seems to have more room than it presently appears to have. This involves reducing clutter and items on the counter tops, as well as removing extra pots, pans, and other stored items in the cabinets.
Cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom including windows, floors, countertops, appliances and cabinets. This is the least costly, but most important step.
Add the Wow: flowers, fruit bowls, and maybe new kitchen towels.
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Kitchen Staging --
the heart of the house
Getting the kitchen staged
The kitchen is really the heart of the house and the one room that demands the most attention. This article is not about remodeling a kitchen, but about setting the kitchen up for selling the house.
Actually, staging the kitchen is one of the easier rooms to do. There’s no re-arranging furniture, or trying to figure out the best vantage point.
Countertops should be absolutely clear of every appliance, utensil, gadget, spice jar, knickknack that you own. In other words, the countertop needs to be bare. Once you have achieved that and found a home for all the stuff you removed, then you can add 3 non-appliance items. These items should be of a color and shape to draw attention to it without being distracting. For example, a bowl of fruit, a flower arrangement in an attractive vase, a serving tray with bottled water and refreshments. That’s it. Clearing the countertops allows the eye to focus on the functional space of the room.
Obviously, you will want the stove, refrigerator, sink, range hood and microwave to be spotless inside and out. All the light bulbs need to be in working order.
In your search for information about staging a kitchen, you’ll probably notice some different takes on how to stage a kitchen. These different takes come from 2 different camps: house stagers and home designers.
The professional stagers aren’t really looking to make your house look good through decorating it, they are looking to make the house look good from the buyer’s point of view. That means they have to be able to visualize the house with their furnishings. Designers try to make the rooms look good by decorating them which is not the same. The stagers want to show off the architecture of the house and not the furnishings.
Refrigerator
The front of the refrigerator needs to be free of all refrigerator magnets, children’s artwork, post-it notes, photos, everything!
Even though the inside of your refrigerator should never be considered part of the house sale, it will be. People are curious and they will open that door just to take a peak at what’s for dinner. So the inside should be pleasant smelling (use the open box of baking soda tucked in the back and out of view). It should be neatly arranged and not crowded with lots of Tupperware containers filled with leftovers. Get some attractive bottled water containers and keep these in the front. Add some fresh fruit (oranges and limes add both color and a pleasant aroma).
Stoves, ovens, microwaves, range hoods
These appliances should all be spotlessly clean inside and out. They require no staging other than to be clean and free of fingerprints.
Accent lighting
Besides the general task lighting already in the kitchen, if your kitchen doesn’t have under cabinet lights, add some inexpensive night lights in the sockets to brighten up dark areas.
Cabinets
As with everything else in the house, cabinet exteriors and interiors need to be absolutely clean. If you have shelf liners inside your cabinets and they’re more than 2 months old, replace them with a neutral or complimentary color to the kitchen. If you have newer cabinets without shelf liners, don’t add the shelf paper.
Remove as many items from the cabinets as possible. Most cabinets have an assortment of everyday glasses and plates, plus lots of everything that only get used occasionally. Remove everything that you don’t need for day-to-day living. If you everyday plates and glasses are worn, get some new plates and glasses.
Home kitchen offices
If you’re fortunate enough to have a small home office in your kitchen, make sure it is neat and tidy. Remove all personal items (calendars, date books, planners). People are nosey, and they will go through things if given the opportunity.
Etceteras…
If there is anything else in the kitchen that can be removed (shelves, non-built-in cabinets, etc.) and they are not necessary for the function of the kitchen, remove them and store them someplace else.
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