Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Got Kids Got a Home for Sale Heres Seven Tips Especially for You
Got Kids Got a Home for Sale Heres Seven Tips Especially for You
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| Do your children really need a closet full of toys all the time? |
If thats your situation, I feel your pain.
I know how stressful it can be when youve just touched up your wall paint, and discover two days later small handprints all up and down the stairwell.
I know how stressful it can be when your realtor calls from down the street, wanting to show your home in a few minutes, and the living room is draped in blanket forts that cover an intricate complex of Lego villages and train tracks.
With these things in mind, Ive collected my favorite tips learned from PWHOM -- parents with a home on the market.
Systematize. Have routines. Do the same procedures daily. For example, everyone makes his or her own bed as soon as he or she gets out of it, one child puts away dishes after every meal, and another sweeps the front steps each evening. Soon, youll have these habits down pat. Life is simpler with simple rituals, and young ones learn new tasks faster when the tasks are repeated at short intervals, like daily, or even twice daily.
Simplify. Put away the toys and games that are not essential. Most children will not miss the majority of their books, toys, games, dolls and stuffed animals. If storing all but their favorites creates a problem, rotate toys in and out of storage, and explain that the situation is just temporary. Its important for your own sanity that children understand -- as best they can -- the importance of all you are doing to help sell your home.
Squirrel-ize. Thats right, think like a squirrel, and hide things. People on a tour of your home dont need to see your basket of diaper changing essentials, the science project your son is in the middle of, the pile of sports equipment near the back door, or your daughters doll collection. Think accessible, but still out of sight and in a place where home buyers dont look. Here are some hiding places I like for temporary stashing:
- under the bed, in sliding boxes
- an emptied, designated dresser drawer
- pretty shoeboxes, hatboxes, or these DIY cardboard vases
- an ottoman or bench with a storage compartment built in
- the washer or dryer
- the trunk of your car
- a vintage piece of luggage or wicker basket
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| Delegate tasks on your pre-showing checklist to everyone in the household. This is my #3 grandson, and he actually likes to vacuum. |
Supervise. Once infrequently used rooms are decluttered and clean, dont let them become catch-all areas for stuff that has no home. If you can close off rooms like the guest room or powder room, placing them off-limits to family members, thats another possibility. Remind them that its just temporary.
Schedule. Make a checklist of what touchups need to be done just prior to a short-notice showing. If you leave the house for work in the morning, never knowing if a Realtor will bring people through during the day, having a touchup checklist is even more important. I know its asking a lot, but selling a home is like running a business. Children, even young ones, should have a designated role in touchups.
Secret-ize. Put away things like schedules and calendars that show when you wont be home or where your children will be, any paperwork and decorations that show your childrens names, or photographs of your children. You do not know who is coming into your home or what they want to know about you. I dont think I have to go into the details. Its all about keeping kids safe.
Synchronize. Work with your Realtor on timing so that showings are not a problem. Most parents prefer showings during school hours. Ideally, you should never have to refuse a showing. Some buyers breeze into town for the day and dont have much scheduling flexibility. Its more important to let your home be shown with some toys scattered about, and some wet towels on the rods, than to let a possible buyer escape. Many buyers interpret a demand for 24-hour notice as "not serious sellers." Be show-ready! I know it can be a hassle, but stay focused on the prize.
Youll drive yourself mad if you expect organized perfection. Its a balancing act. On one hand, buyers know you dont live in a model home, but on the other hand, buyers watch HGTV and they know the market now is a buyers market. Whatever leverage you can gain by making your home the one that looks better than the rest, gives you a clear advantage.
I give other tips to help you navigate the waters toward a sale of your home in my eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and For Top Dollar. For just $4.99, it will pay for itself over and over and over. Or Ill give you your money back.
Got Kids Got a Home for Sale Heres Seven Tips Especially for You
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Balcony Garden Designing Tips
Balcony Garden Designing Tips
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Friday, August 19, 2016
Woodworking Plans Tips Wooden Plans
Woodworking Plans Tips Wooden Plans
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Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Journalgarden Designperennial Flower Gardeninggardening Tips
Journalgarden Designperennial Flower Gardeninggardening Tips
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Journalgarden Designperennial Flower Gardeninggardening Tips
Friday, July 1, 2016
Best Tips for Staging Your Porch
Best Tips for Staging Your Porch
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| A porch is always an added attraction. |
That’s where we went as soon as school was over, until the day before school started. I loved it.
A few years after he built the little two-bedroom home, he added what he called a sun porch onto the south side of the house.
It was only big enough to accommodate the four-piece rattan furniture set my parents bought for it. Three walls were windows, it was bright in there all day long, and we could watch cars and people go by. I loved it.
A few years later, he built an open porch off the sun porch, stretching the house east, and expanding the living space by the size of an average bedroom. We could watch sailboats glide by, and from our back porch in Connecticut we could see on the horizon another state – New York ! I loved it.
A few more years went by, and he continued to clear the lot around the house of rocks and boulders common to seaside property. Eventually, all these broken rocks became the foundation and the walls for a terrace. He built it all himself. It stretched across the entire back of the house, and it transformed that little bungalow into what seemed like an estate. This is where we enjoyed clambakes and birthday parties for many years. I loved it.
Like most people, I have only happy memories of porches.
Does your home for sale have a porch? If so, lucky you!
Whether it’s in the front, at the side, or behind a house, a porch makes any structure appear larger, more welcoming, and more connected to the out-of-doors.
A porch can create memories (or fantasies) of times when life was leisurely, when neighbors visited just to “sit a spell.”
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| Centsational Girl recently created this colorful patio for a friend and blogged about it . |
Or a porch can telegraph buyers that once they buy your home, they’ll have a special place where they can enjoy private time to relax and unwind – everyone’s dream!
To other buyers, a porch is a place to entertain. Even a small balcony makes people envision inviting friends over for drinks and conversation, or a meal in the open air.
If your home has a porch and you don’t stage it, you’re missing a chance to woo buyers. Here are my favorite porch-prettying pointers.
Color Counts
Even though I recommend neutrals inside a staged home, outdoors is a place to punch it up. With brighter natural lighting and less defined boundaries, saturated colors will get the attention you want, making househunters take notice of this amenity.
Purchased outdoor furniture gets brighter each year, so you have no excuse for drab curb appeal. If you own older furniture and want to refresh it, spray paint’s probably your best option. I like Krylons Fushion paint for plastics. If youre painting furniture with a brush, follow the steps I wrote about here: painting furniture.
Of course, neutral color, black, or white furniture is timeless, so dont think you need to go crazy with neon spray paint. Your color choices can align with the style of your home and the likely demographics of your typical buyer.
View or No View
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| A shade like this creates some privacy. Coastal Living. |
Position seats so they face the view, because it is not uncommon for Realtors and clients to take a seat and look around, even to linger and discuss the home.
If the view from your porch is the battered work van in your neighbor’s driveway, or the brick wall of the building next door, find a way to block it or distract.
You can install shutters, blinds, draperies, or add large potted palms. Even if the entire view isn’t totally obscured, you can still make it easy to forget what’s there.
You can install shutters, blinds, draperies, or add large potted palms. Even if the entire view isn’t totally obscured, you can still make it easy to forget what’s there.
Flowers and Plants
This one’s a must. From early spring until late autumn, and year round in some parts of the country, flowering plants on a porch are a classic. They are the finishing, colorful touches that say a home is loved. You don’t need a horticultural degree to keep most container plants looking good.
If the home you are selling is vacant, you get a pass to substitute good quality silk ferns or artificial flowers as long as they don’t look like something from the cemetery.
Seating’s Essential
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| Porch seating takes many forms -- chaise lounges, rockers, stools, benches, or an old fashioned, cushioned swing like this. Photo: BHG. |
Make sure there is room to maneuver around them.
Face them towards each other or clustered around a table, not in a line as though on display in a furniture store.
Cushions and pillows are the easy way to add comfort and color to your porch. If your porch is protected, or you live where it doesn’t rain all summer, you have all kinds of fabric choices. The rest of us need quick-dry, outdoor fabrics that lessen the likelihood that a buyer will sit down and then leave with a wet bottom and sour mood.
Porch Stand-Ins
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| A tiny balcony is a staging opportunity. Simply use small furniture. |
In fact, even the steps of an inner city brownstone or the small entranceway to a suburban townhouse is an opportunity to add the kinds of touches that make a buyer optimistic about your home’s interior.
Because potted plants, all-weather carpeting, paint, fabric, and outdoor furniture are available economically everywhere, you’ve no excuse to not maximize your porch’s potential.
Because potted plants, all-weather carpeting, paint, fabric, and outdoor furniture are available economically everywhere, you’ve no excuse to not maximize your porch’s potential.
Now is the time of year to make your porch a statement area of your home. Make your porch tell a story. Stage it to capture the imagination and hearts of buyers, and you’ll be that much closer to a purchase offer.
For more help staging your home, order my $4.99 eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar. I know youll be pleased. I guarantee it. Ill give you your money back if youre not totally satisfied with what you learn about staging your own home.
Top photo: BH&G
Balcony photo: Decorating Your Small Space
Top photo: BH&G
Balcony photo: Decorating Your Small Space
Best Tips for Staging Your Porch
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Ten Tips to Improve Your Autumn Curb Appeal
Ten Tips to Improve Your Autumn Curb Appeal
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| A home on the market needs to look good all year long. This home looks friendly, despite bare branches and dormant grass. |
Instead of calling it “curb appeal,” I’m going to call it “front yard glamour.” Sound sexier?
Whatever you call it, the front of your home is the king pin of home staging.Its usually your MLS profile shot and how buyers judge your home when they spy it for the first time.
Summers over and the real estate market might slow down, but thats all the more reason to have your home looking more attractive than ever from the outside. Here’s how:
Tidy Up the Grounds
If you do nothing else, and before you do anything else, remove debris from around your home. Get rid of what’s accumulated from previous seasons. There might be things like plants past their summer prime, tree limbs left from summer storms, and leaves that have blown into the yard.
Already, you’ve made a huge difference!
Salvage What You Want
If you’re a gardener, selling a home and moving gets complicated, because you’ll want to take some plants with you to your next home. Fall is the time to divide those perennials like hostas, ferns, irises, and daylilies, to pot them up or store them in peat moss to make the move with you. You can also collect seeds from plants you love, and dig up tender bulbs and tubers from cannas, gladiolas, lilies, dahlias, caladiums, and elephant ears.
Put Away Signs of Summer
Give your yard an up-to-the-minute look by putting into storage empty flower pots, fountains, summer sports equipment, cushions, hoses, pool toys, and umbrellas. I like to leave out some outdoor furniture so buyers are reminded of outdoor features like a patio, porch, or deck.
If you have a bare spot in the lawn where a kiddie pool was all summer, can you convert it to a fire pit? If your flower boxes are empty, can you fill them with evergreen boughs?
If you have a bare spot in the lawn where a kiddie pool was all summer, can you convert it to a fire pit? If your flower boxes are empty, can you fill them with evergreen boughs?
If you live where winters are severe, you’ll winterize your pool. If you live where winters are warm, leaving a pool uncovered provides an outdoor focal point that’s a selling feature to most buyers, but only if you are willing to maintain it through the winter.
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| Most pools are situated behind a house, but sometimes they are still visible from the street. This home in Florida is located on the Intracoastal Waterway, so the pool is part of a different kind of curb appeal, or "canal appeal." |
Prune and Prune Some More
While there’s still some foliage on shrubbery and trees is a good time to prune. You’ll be able to spot any dead or diseased branches, making sensible pruning easier. Dont prune shrubs that flower in early spring, including azaleas and hydrangeas, because youll remove the flower buds that set over the summer.
Keep shrubs from crowding walkways. Keep them from blocking views from inside the house. Prune them back hard if they are getting leggy. Prune them so they’re wider at the bottom than at the top, so that sunlight can reach lower branches.
Plug in Some Bulbs
Autumn’s the time to purchase and plant bulbs that will bloom in the spring. You can buy them locally at nurseries, garden centers and big box stores, but I like to get mine from a long-established company like Terra Ceia or Brecks where I know I’ll get my money’s worth in large and healthy bulbs.
Plan right, and there will be something blooming every month, possibly beginning even as early as February with plants such as snowdrops and narcissi. And squirrels dont like either of these bulbs. You will thank me for this advice, and you are welcome!
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| They dont call them Snow Crocus for nothing! These small but welcome beauties will bloom through snow-covered ground. Photo: White Flower Farm. |
Top Dress Your Beds
Mulch is to your landscape what paint is to your home’s interior – the quickest and cheapest way to make everything else look better!
Whatever you use for mulch -- wood chips or bark, compost, or pine straw -- get out there and refresh it. If your mulch is stone, gravel, or rocks, make sure it’s free of weeds and other junk. I don’t recommend cocoa hulls because they are toxic to pets, and I don’t recommend cypress because harvesting it can deplete cypress swamps.
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| Stone works well as a mulch when there are enough plantings to keep the yard interesting. |
Plant and Transplant Shrubs
Any plant requires frequent watering when it’s just settling in. That’s why planting shrubs in the fall makes more sense than in springtime, when the warmer weather makes more demands on a plant.
Planting now gives any new small trees or shrubs a chance to establish their root systems before the ground cools during the winter. And you might get better deals on prices in the fall than in the spring.
Test Your Soil
I know it sounds geeky, but a soil test will let you know how to fertilize your lawn and ornamental areas, and what plants will thrive where you live.
Did you know that we homeowners typically over-use chemicals on our yards and gardens? Save money and save the environment by using only what your soil needs. Start by testing your soil.
Most US states offers this service for a small fee, as a function of your local county extension service. Here’s more information on soil testing:
Aerate Your Lawn
One thing the serious turf aficionados talk about is aeration. What it amounts to is putting lots of holes in the lawn -- holes that are not easily visible but allow the lawn to perk better. Aerating a lawn lets water, fertilizers, and air to move into the soil to encourage healthier grass. The opposite of an aerated lawn is a compacted lawn and we all know how that looks – bare! If you have compacted areas due to foot traffic, create a path of stepping stones to protect the lawn.
If your lawn is a warm season grass, aeration should be done in the spring. Cool season grass? Do it now. Here is more information on aeration.
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| Taking care of business now, in the fall, will pay off in the spring with an enviable, lush lawn that buyers are bound to notice. |
Fertilize the Soil
This one is a little trickier than the others, because when you fertilize depends on where you live, what kind of grass you have, and what else you are growing.
Best bet: check with dependable sources of information for your area, not people with vested interests such as chemical salesmen and lawn services. State universities and colleges, especially agricultural colleges, will give you impartial and current advice, so go to the websites for the these institutions in your state.
Best bet: check with dependable sources of information for your area, not people with vested interests such as chemical salesmen and lawn services. State universities and colleges, especially agricultural colleges, will give you impartial and current advice, so go to the websites for the these institutions in your state.
The Wrap
Now that your front yard is uncluttered and clean (just like your home’s interior) you can bring out a little winter decor. Maybe a solar-heated birdbath would enliven the front yard. If you live where winters arent severe, you may be able to introduce winter color with annuals like pansies and flowering kale. And for the ultimate touch of front yard glamour, don’t forget to give a nod to the season with a front door winter wreath, maybe one youve made yourself from rags, or pine cones.
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| This autumn grapevine wreath can quickly re-invent itself as a Christmas wreath once I replace the orange berry garland with some seasonal picks, greenery, or a big red bow. |
My $4.99 eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and For Top Dollar, includes one entire chapter on exterior home staging. If you have a home on the market, you cant afford to be without it. I guarantee it will help you sell your home!
Ten Tips to Improve Your Autumn Curb Appeal
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Quick and Dirty Tips for Plant Containers
Quick and Dirty Tips for Plant Containers
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| Its not a rule that plants have to go in traditional planters. I found this basket for my zinnias at Salvation Army for 59 cents. |
Let’s bust up some myths about container planting. Let’s make the containers themselves interesting and fun.
I know I’m forever telling you home sellers to stifle your decorating personality when you’re staging your home.
But I’m loosening the rules for outside decor. Outside, the colors can be brighter, the mood a little quirkier, the message more personal.
I’m not suggesting you plant a toilet with petunias for the front yard, but containers for summer plants and flowers can be attention-getting in a good way – the way that helps sell your home. Here are some examples.
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| The basket above will be good for a season or two, but these metal planters will give you years of service. If they arent originally designed for plants, youll need to punch holes for drainage, or insert plastic pots and then make sure the pots dont sit in water. These plants sit near my front door under the eves, where they wont get waterlogged. |
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| Here is another of my favorite metal planters -- an old copper tea pot. If you use metal containers for plants, its best to keep them out of direct sun so the roots dont overheat and cook your plants. |
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| An old wheelbarrow with a leaky tub makes a perfect planter. I keep mine in the middle of my Scent Garden, where I can move it when the man comes to fill the propane tank that I dont like looking at. Do you have an eyesore that a planter can disguise? |
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| Upcycled boots are roomy enough for different plants. Succulents are a good choice because they have shallow roots and are not demanding. Drainage is usually sufficient, and just look at all the personality they can give a small garden space! Photo: Lushome. |
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| If the boot you are planting is rubber like this one, add holes to the sole. Details like this in the garden are like your accessories indoors. They can cause people to slow down and appreciate your home. |
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| Although technically not a container, this hanging basket stuffed with Spanish moss is as good as a container of flowers for all the interest it adds to my friends garden . Yes, she lives in an old church. |
 You dont need an old, rusty, clunker bike to stage it as a planter.Any bike, any size, any style will do as long as it has a roomy basket, which you can line with landscape fabric or cocoa fiber matting. Make sure the bike is secured so no one pedals it away. because it will be irresistible. Photo: David Spencer. Container plants offer so many advantages to the home seller that they cant be ignored or omitted if you want to get smart about selling your home. I hope I have sparked some ideas that will have you hunting for original planters for your summer flowers. If you look around you will see other possibilities suitable for your locale and your home -- shells, wooden buckets, watering cans, or chairs with missing seats. Please pass on the bed frames, old tires, bath tubs, and Volkswagons. Im not kidding. Volkswagons. For more ideas on how to stage your home, download my $4.99 eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar. |
Quick and Dirty Tips for Plant Containers
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