Staging furniture

We have heard a million times that when you are putting your house on the market to stage it!

In other words make your home look like noone actually lives in it...while living in it.

I have to say it totally works considering we sold our house in 19 days and had 18 showings in the worst housing market a year and a half ago.

Although I would be totally lying if I didn't say there were not a few tears shed and a threat or two of living in a hotel until it was sold. I was after all potty training Wild Man and had a 18 month old that loved to pull every toy out and did I mention that Mr. Genius was out of town Monday-Friday? Yeah, not the fondest memory of my life.

Despite the bad memories, I am using the same mentality to sell my furniture.

Today I thought I would show you through today's process of selling a coffee table.


I guess I should first mention that after a winter break I am slowing starting to paint and redo furniture again!

Yes I am still working on my settees and going to finish my dining room.

But you see I ran into a problem...I ran out of money. :(

Until I find that money tree I pack away in the move I will be redoing furniture in order to get some more money.

Now back to staging.

First you of course need to pick your piece...

Here is the table before.

This was another craigslist find.

I immediately fell in love her legs... I have a thing for thick chucky legs.

Unfortunately I do not feel that same about my own legs. But I digress.

Yes, I sanded, painted, distressed, and glazed in my kitchen.

Why? You ask....cuz I am a gluten for punishment, that is why. But thanks for asking.

Then the night before I plan on taking picture I cleaned up the den...

And just 2 hours after the boys were up this morning, it looked like this.

Seriously, why do I bother.

So I enlisted in the boys to divide and conquer the two decks of cards all over the floor.

One picked up the Superhero cards.

And the other picked up the bug cards.

while being a pirate, I think it helps in the picking up process

Once the cards are all up, we compaired our muscle to move the current coffee table.

Then find all the treasures under the table that was just moved.

So that is where batman's cave door went!

Once that is all cleaned up, move over the newly painted coffee table.

And since you haven't polyed it yet...NO TOUCHING!

Decorated it a little and Shazam! You have a staged photo.

Now I have to ignore the open cabinets in the back and balloon string just sitting to the left of the lights and the random blue chair that I forgot to move on the left of the couch. But other then that it shows the table well!

You also should show some details shots to get the people thinking they can not live another day without this table in front of their couch.

So there you have it folks...the Katie way of staging your selling items.

If you were blessed with non messy kids it would be a much easier process for you.

But one thing is for sure it makes things sell faster if it is staged!

Now if anyone is in the Chicago area I am selling this for $150. You can email me at impatientlypraying (at) gmail (dot) com.