Eleven Expert Tips To Make Small Rooms Feel Larger
March 8, 2010
As a professional home stager in Pasadena and Los Angeles, one of my primary jobs is to make smaller homes feel larger, or at least, feel as large as they really are.
Here’s a list of my tips for making a small home feel larger. You can use these tips whether you are staging your home to sell or if you are planning to stay, but just need some help dealing with smaller rooms. These tips will work with either vacant or occupied homes:
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Pare down what you need to have in a smaller room to the essentials. Do you really need a chair in your bedroom, or can you sit on the bed to put your shoes on?
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Clutter makes a room feel smaller. Lots of smaller items, like your Hummel collection or your bowling trophies displayed on every horizontal surface, eat up visual space. Only display 3-5 items at a time. Store the rest and rotate them out of storage throughout the year. Not only will the room feel larger, but each item displayed will stand out more.
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Use fewer pieces of furniture. Its better to have one larger dresser than 2 smaller ones.
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Use appropriately sized furniture. Having a large sectional in a small family room will highlight how small the room is.
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Cooler colors recede, so painting a room a pale blue, green or gray will make it feel larger.
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Show more hardwood. The larger the expanse of hardwood, the larger the room will look. See how the room looks without an area rug.
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Try using one larger area rug instead of several smaller rugs.
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Use fewer patterns on upholstery and bedding. For instance, use a solid color blanket or bedspread on a bed in a small bedroom to make the room feel larger.
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Strategically placed mirrors make a room feel larger.
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A well lit room feels larger.
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Minimize window treatments. The simpler the better. Shutters, blinds or simple drapes (no flounces, ruffles, strong patterns or complicated valences) take up less “visual space”.
These home staging tips work if you are staging to sell or just want to make the home you are living in feel larger.
If you need some help figuring out how to make your home feel larger, consider hiring us for a home staging consultation. You’ll get some expert home staging and interior design tips from the Real Estate Staging Association 2010 Professional Stager of the Year. Prices start at $250 for a verbal consultation or $350 for a comprehensive written consultation. Its the best “bang for your buck” and it’s a great investment in preparing your home for sale, or making your home more livable if you are planning to stay.
A Real Estate Agent Gets Real About Home Staging
February 26, 2010
Here’s another animated video about home staging. In this video the real estate agent talks to her client about the necessity of hiring a professional home stager. The homeowner is a do-it-yourself home stager, and the results are, well, interesting.
©Copyright 2010 Michelle Minch & Moving Mountains Design. All rights reserved. Copyright includes video, script and contents. Be original, don’t copy!
Pasadena Based Home Staging Business Gets Results!
February 21, 2010
This article recently appeared in the Pasadena Star News, on February 9, 2010. Very exciting!
Just click on the article to be taken to a PDF of the article.
Altadena Home Staging An Occupied Home
February 18, 2010
I was hired to stage a beautiful Altadena home this week.
The homeowners are moving to a larger home to accommodate their growing family. I was called in by the real estate agent to help the homeowners prepare the home for sale, to maximize the size of the rooms, accentuate the beautiful architectural features and give each room a clearly defined purpose.
The formal living room was being used as the master bedroom, which worked fine for them, but might have caused some confusion for potential buyers.
I suggested they move the master bedroom to one of the large, airy bedrooms, and gain a living room in the process.
The piano was moved from the dining room to the living room. It made the dining room feel larger and there was plenty of space in the living room to accommodate a piano.
Here’s a few shots of the bedrooms after staging:
And a lovely vignette shot:
For more information about this beautiful Altadena pool home, contact the listing agent Bettina Rosenfeld, Coldwell Banker, at (626)827-6114.
Los Angeles Home Staging – San Dimas Home Is Staged to Sell & Sells Quickly!
February 2, 2010
Two weeks ago, we were asked to do a home staging consultation on a San Dimas home by the listing agent, Lorelle Kitzmiller, Dickson Podley Real Estate.
The homeowners were very willing to follow all the recommendations included in the home staging consultation. We staged the home using the homeowners’ own furniture, plus a small amount of rental furniture. Also included in the staging package was a van load of artwork, accessories, silk plants and premium linens.
I was just informed by Lorelle that the home has received multiple offers with more coming in. This is really exciting news for us! This San Dimas home went into escrow exactly 2 weeks after we staged and 12 days after the first open house!
Here’s some before and after photos:
San Dimas living room before home staging
San Dimas Living Room After Home Staging by Moving Mountains Design
Family Room Before Home Staging
We repurposed a love seat, chair and ottoman from the living room to replace the oversized leather sofa and loveseat that resided in the family room. The leather furniture was donated. The homeowner’s reaction? “Why didn’t we do this years ago?”
San Dimas Family Room After Staging by Moving Mountains Design
For more information about this beautiful San Dimas home, contact the listing agent Lorelle Kitzmiller at (626)408-1429 (MLS#A10007964)
Staging Your Closets With Feng Shui
January 20, 2010
If you’re like me, the thought of tackling a major job like cleaning out your closets makes your head spin, whether you’re doing it to stage your house to sell or for better Feng Shui energy.
In Feng Shui, having orderly closets and dressers is a very good thing. Having closets and dressers that incorporate some empty space is desirable because it allows room for new energy (and Jimmy Choos 
) Holding on to old, damaged or unused items creates clutter, which slows down the flow of energy (Chi).
In order to get started organizing your closets, many professional organizers advise you break the project down into small chunks, so its not so overwhelming.
Only have a half hour to spare? Clean out a drawer. 15 minutes? Get rid of all the wire hangers and dry cleaner bags cluttering up the closet.
- Remove everything from your closets. Assess everything and determine if it is really useful. With the exception of some seasonal items, if you haven’t used it in the past year, you should get rid of it (donate, give away to a friend, recycle or throw it away). If your closet is full of outdated, ill fitting items, there is no room for anything new to come into your life and it is a drag on your energy. The goal is to get rid of clutter and make space.
- Vacuum out the closet once it is empty. You will be amazed (and grossed out by all the accumulated dust and dust bunnies you’ll find).
- If you have the time, energy & money ($20-$50 depending on the brand of paint and what supplies you already have on hand) repaint your closet. It will look soooo much better when you’re done.
- Put the items you are keeping back in the closet in an orderly fashion, and in a manner that allows the item to be useful and of service to you. No matter what anyone tells you, if the organizational system is not organic to your way of doing things, you won’t be able to maintain it and it will devolve into chaos quickly. I invested in Elfa type closet organizing systems for all our closets, and I consider it one of the best investments of time and money I have made. I can see everything I own and can choose what I want to wear quickly and easily. Stores like the Container Store will help you design your closets for maximum efficiency and you can install the elements yourself to save money. Need something even less expensive? Check out the closet organizing systems at IKEA or Target.
- If possible use all the same hangers (you can buy nice wooden hangers from IKEA and they are inexpensive)
- Have the hangers facing the same way (most people prefer hooking hangers over the top of the bar from front to back as opposed to under the bar back to front)
- Separate the types of clothes – group shirts with shirts, pants with pants, dresses with dresses
- Organize by style – group all short sleeve shirts with short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts with long sleeve shirts, etc. Go one step further and organize by color (all white shirts together, blue shirts together, etc.)
- Organize by color – after you’ve separated the clothes by type and style, the gold standard is to organize by color – all white short sleeve shirts together, all blue slacks togehter, etc.
- Put all shoes on shoe racks, hanging shoe organizers, or clear plastic shoe boxes.
- Whenever possible don’t keep anything on the floor of your closet except shoes and those should be neatly organized on shoe racks.
Home Staging Tip:
If you are staging your closets because you are planning on selling your home, then the closets should be no more than half full. Pre-pack any clothes that you want to keep but won’t need for the next few months. Put the unneeded items in storage. Label every box well so that you can grab a particular item in the event you need it. Follow the tips above regarding what to keep and how to organize the remaining items.
Charitable Clothing Donations:
If you have women’s business clothing you no longer wear, please consider donating the clothing to an organization like Dress For Success - The mission of Dress for Success is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. Another great Los Angeles area orgnization is Clothes The Deal. They provide business training and appropriate business attire to men, women and at risk youth job seekers in need.
We’re here to help. Contact us if you need help organizing your closets or for more Los Angeles home staging or practical Feng Shui information.
8 Tips to Stage your Bedroom with Feng Shui
December 16, 2009
Los Angeles Home Stager tips to Stage your Bedroom with Feng Shui – Start 2010 Right!
Here are 8 tips for staging your bedroom with Feng Shui. Invite better sleep, better health and positive changes in the bedroom by staging it with Feng Shui. With the New Year approaching, now is the perfect time to invite positive change into your life.
Recommendations about Feng Shui remedies will vary from school to school and practitioner to practitioner.
Despite the fact that different schools have differing “cures”, following are some basic changes you can make that apply to all bedrooms. We can affect many positive changes in our lives just by applying intention – putting the energy into making a change and welcoming that change into our lives.
In Feng Shui and in life, the condition of the bedroom can influence your health and your relationship with your significant other.
If you don’t have a significant other, but would like one, the condition of your bedroom will effect your ability to “call in” love. Our goal is creating a calming environment that welcomes intimacy and affection. Of course getting rid of clutter to make room for whatever this new energy will bring is always high up on the list.
Follow these steps to increase the quality of your sleep, health, love and general well being:
1. Your bedroom should be used for sleeping, romantic interludes and getting dressed. NO TELEVISION! NO COMPUTER! NO DESK! NO TREADMILL (AKA place to drape your clothes). Read a book in bed if you must, but only when you are alone. Don’t read self-help books or business books in bed. Electronic devices like TV’s and Computers are greedy for your time. They are constantly calling your name… “Watch me, Bill”, “Just one more comment, Janet”. Don’t make your spouse or partner compete for your attention. TVs and computers are very stimulating and they activate your brain. Watching or using them just before bed will prevent you from falling asleep quickly or sleeping soundly. Give your brain a chance to shut off and relax before bedtime.
2. Make sure you have a comfortable mattress….not too firm and not too soft, and definitely not saggy. This is one of the best investments you can make for your health and well-being. If you cannot afford a new mattress, then purchase a high quality mattress pad. Some of the new ones have a layer of memory foam that will turn your bed into a pillow top mattress. If you can afford a new mattress, now is an ideal time to purchase one. There are some amazing sales going on right now.
3. If you recently ended a long relationship with someone who shared your bed, you should replace the mattress so you are not absorbing their energy every night. Send them, the bad memories and the shared mattress on down the road. If you cannot replace the mattress, then strip the bed, open the windows and beat the mattress with a baseball bat, broom stick or your fists, if necessary. This will raise a lot of dust. Wear a dust mask. When you are finished (and feel better) vacuum the mattress (both sides) and box spring and then re-make the bed with fresh new bedding and blankets. Again, there are some amazing sales right now on sheets and comforters. Under any circumstance, dispose of the other person’s pillows – donate, give away or throw away.
4. Purchase the highest quality sheets you can afford – high thread count sheets, preferably Pima, Supima or Egyptian cotton Sateen. Good quality sheets are not inexpensive but they will last a long time. We just got rid of sheets we got as a wedding present 10 years ago, and only because we upgraded to a king size bed. They just got softer and better with age. The more luxurious your bedroom the more you will feel relaxed and comforted by being there.
- Sheets and bedding in the red/yellow family represent warmth, passion and excitement. The stronger the color the more energizing. They are fire colors. This would include the full spectrum of reds, oranges, yellows and some purples hues that are more red than blue. It also includes pinks, pale oranges, pale yellows and pale lavenders.
- Sheets and bedding in the blue/green family represent calm, cool and relaxation. They are water colors. Think of a bubbling brook or the Mediterranean Sea. This would include the full spectrum of blues, greens and purples with a blue cast. It includes the palest blues, pales greens and palest purples. This is my personal favorite and my bedding and drapes are done in pale Mediterranean blues, which is balanced by pale yellow walls.
- White sheets are clean and pure. White is a metal color, although whites can run the gamut from warm white (influenced by fire) or the palest blue (influenced by water) among other elements. White denotes ever expanding possibilities.
- Animal print sheets are very energizing and ‘active’. You probably won’t get a lot of restful sleep on animal print sheets, (and you may not be able to find someone who is willing to share them with you in the long term) but you may have a lot of ‘fun’ of the animal kind! Animal prints are best confined to accents so they don’t overwhelm the restful energy of your bedroom.
5. Position your bed so that you have a clear view of the door (entry to the bedroom). Do not have your feet pointing toward the door (this is the way they will carry you out if you die in bed, according to old Chinese superstition). Ideally, your bed will be positioned against a solid wall and not in front of a window. The head of your bed should be touching a wall. Solid headboards are preferred over open headboards (they give the feeling of greater security)
6. Clean your bedroom from top to bottom. If you have drapes wash them or clean them according to the manufacturers instructions. If they are clean, but just a little dusty, take them outside and give them a good shake. Wipe down the walls. Vacuum under the bed and get rid of all those dust bunnies.
7. Make sure your have two night stands and two working lamps, one on each side of the bed. If you don’t have a partner, but would like one, this creates a space for them in your life. If you have a partner, and want to keep them, this lets them know you value them and are concerned for their comfort.
8. Remove family photos from your bedroom (do you really want them to ’see’ and participate in everything you do?) Photos of people should be limited to you and your significant other. Artwork should be calming not energizing.
The new year is just around the corner. Welcome the new year with a clean, relaxing, uncluttered bedroom. In Feng Shui, the condition of the bedroom will influence your relationships, sense of well-being and good health. Follow the above steps and welcome more restful sleep, more fulfilling relationships, better health and greater well-being in 2010.
For more information about home staging using Feng Shui read Stage Your Kitchen With Feng Shui – Start 2010 Right!
Los Angeles Home Staging Tips To Stage Your Kitchen With Feng Shui
December 13, 2009
Stage Your Kitchen With Feng Shui
Welcome prosperity and good health into your home with sound Feng Shui practices. With the New Year 2010 approaching, now is the perfect time to invite positive change into your life.
Whether you are staging your home to sell or staging your home to live you can use the principals of home staging and Feng Shui to prepare your home for more comfortable, pleasing and prosperous living for you or your potential buyers.
There are many schools of Feng Shui.
Recommendations will vary from Feng Shui school to school and practitioner to practitioner. Here are some tips to get your kitchen in top Feng Shui shape with little or no cash outlay, just an investment of your time. Despite the fact that different schools have differing “cures”, following are some basic changes you can make that apply to all kitchens. We can affect many positive changes in our lives just by applying intention – putting the energy into making a change and welcoming that change into our lives.
In Feng Shui, the condition of the kitchen can influence your level of prosperity and good health.
The goals of both home staging and Feng Shui are increasing cleanliness,functionality and organization and getting rid of clutter to make room for whatever your new prosperity will bring. Follow these steps to increase your prosperity, good health and general well being:
- Clean out your refrigerator and your pantry.Get rid of any out-of-date food or ’science projects’ (all of which hold negative energy, by the way). This includes any outdated vitamins or medications you keep in your kitchen. Wipe down the shelves, clean up any old spills and crumbs. If you use shelf paper in your pantry, and it is torn damaged or worn, replace it. If you are staging your home to sell, your pantry should be half full and very neatly arranged. If the items are awkwardly shaped, put them in baskets.
- Restock your refrigerator and pantry. A fuller refrigerator and pantry equates to prosperity and generosity. It also allows us to be prepared for whatever may come up, be it unexpected guests or a change in employment status. Don’t overfill the refrigerator and pantry. We don’t want them cluttered, just sufficiently full to meet our nourishment needs plus a little extra. Put a small open box of baking soda in the refrigerator to absorb odors. Opening the refrigerator should be a pleasant experience.
- Restock your refrigerator and pantry with healthy food. Take care of your body and it will take care of you. One of the fastest paths to good health is eating healthy food. If your intention is to improve your health, then walk the walk.
- Display fresh fruit on your counter. Abundant fruit is a symbol of prosperity and generosity (yours and the Universe’s) in Feng Shui. Besides, you are more likely to eat it if it is readily available, which will improve your health and well-being.
- Remove everything from your cabinets. Assess everything and determine if it is really useful. With the exception of some seasonal items, if you haven’t used it in the past 6 months, you should get rid of it (donate, give away to a friend, recycle or throw it away). If it is chipped, broken or otherwise damaged, either fix it or get rid of it. That broken toaster that has been sitting in the cabinet since 2004 may be burning off some of your prosperity – send it on down the road. If the item can be fixed (and you are likely to have it fixed) by all means, do so. If it can be repaired, but you are not inclined to do so, label it with the problem (so the recipient know what they are getting) and then donate it. If it can’t be fixed or recycled, then throw it away. The goal is to get rid of clutter and make space for new and better items that will come into your life in the coming year. If you are staging your home to sell, keep your cabinets half full. It allows potential buyers to imagine their things in the cabinets.
- Put the items you are keeping back in the cabinet in an orderly fashion, and in a manner that allows the item to be useful and of service to you. No matter what anyone tells you, if the organizational system is not organic to your way of doing things, you won’t be able to maintain it and it will devolve into chaos quickly.
- Don’t store large or heavy items overhead or you may feel pushed down or weighed down. Store them in a low cabinet if they need to remain in the kitchen. Besides the Feng Shui implications, it is often difficult and sometimes dangerous to remove and replace bulky or heavy items in a high cabinet.
- Carefully pack seasonal items (Thanksgiving turkey platter, Christmas themed plates, for example) in plastic bins and store them in the basement, a closet or the garage. They don’t need to be taking up space all year in some of the most energetically valuable real estate in your house – your kitchen. If you are staging your home to sell, pre-pack these items and put them in storage. This helps you prepare for your move, and helps potential buyers see how much storage space is available.
- Clean off the kitchen counters of all but the most used items that can’t be stored anyplace else. Kitchen clutter (holding on to too much stuff) often manifests itself as excess weight (holding on to too many calories).
- Don’t display knives on your counter or on the wall. The “cutting Chi” they possess may cut your prosperity and create anxiety. The best place for knives is in a drawer, stored with the blade facing down.
- Take care of any maintenance problems. Fix the leaking faucet (money down the drain, literally and figuratively). Replace burned out lightbulbs or broken light fixtures and switches (a dark kitchen is not only dangerous, but also depressing). Replace broken cabinet pulls (if you can’t get to your food easily you will starve physically and emotionally). Broken appliances = broken energy. While the task may be small, the rewards and sense of accomplishment you will reap from the repairs will be large. If you are staging to sell, this will eliminate haggling points buyers might use to justify offering a lower price.
- Throw away your old sponges, dish rags, mop heads and broom. Start the New Year fresh. Dirt is seen as negative energy in Feng Shui. Don’t drag this year’s negativity into the New Year.
- Clean your kitchen until it sparkles – every square inch of it. Pay special attention to the stove and the stove hood. The stove, where your food is prepared, is of paramount importance to your prosperity and well-being in Feng Shui. Make sure all the burners are in good working order and use them all equally. You will be maximizing your ability to call in prosperity from multiple sources by doing so. An make sure your stove hood or extractor is working properly to remove smoke, excess humidity and odors. If you haven’t done so recently, wash the extractor filters. Get rid of old greasy dirt and cut down on the chance of a fire from grease build up. If you are staging to sell, this is a very important step. No one wants to work in a dirty kitchen, and no one wants to buy someone else’s dirt & grime.
2010 is just around the corner. Welcome the New Year with a clean, functional, uncluttered kitchen. In Feng Shui, the condition of the kitchen can influence your level of prosperity and good health. Follow the above steps and welcome prosperity and greater well-being in 2010.
Arcadia Home Staging – Confucius says “One Must Have A Good Tool In Order To Do A Good Job”
November 30, 2009
What does Confucious have to say about home staging in Arcadia?
What does Confucious have to say about home staging in Arcadia?
What do Confucius and home staging in Arcadia have in common?
There is an old Chinese expression which translates roughly to “One must have a good tool in order to do a good job”. This comes from an ancient text called the Analects of Confucius.
This wisdom can apply to many aspects of our lives, but when selling a home in Arcadia, that “good tool” is Moving Mountains Design Home Staging.
Doing a good job, in real estate and in home staging, means making sure that, from the moment a potential Arcadia home buyer drives up to the front of your house, steps inside the front door and looks around, he or she feels like they have found the perfect home, the home they want to buy. There are many Arcadia homes for sale so you have to make sure your home is in excellent condition and shows beautifully. Home staging by Moving Mountains Design will help your home make a good showing.
Here’s how Moving Mountains Design can be your “good tool” when selling your Arcadia home:
- When you hire us to stage your home, you are hiring an Arcadia home staging company with years of experience in the area and hundreds of homes staged and sold.
- We understand whom the home buyers are in Arcadia and we stage to their taste. Because of our extensive experience staging homes in Arcadia we understand what these home buyers will find appealing.
- Feng Shui is important to many Arcadia home buyers. Michelle Minch is trained as a certified Feng Shui consultant and understands how to “fix” many Feng Shui problems that may slow down the sale of your home.
- Our private home staging furniture and accessory warehouse is located in Arcadia. We are a local business. We eat, shop and work in Arcadia.
- Our furniture and accessories are hand selected for you and our selection is customized to show off your home or listing. We know how to make your home or listing look its best and we have the accessories, artwork, luxury linens, towels and Persian rugs to do just that.
- Our furniture rental partner has a 100,000 sq. ft. warehouse full of hundreds of sofas, chairs, dining tables and beds! When you hire Moving Mountains Design to stage your listing or home, you aren’t stuck with what ever furniture we happen to have left over in our garage or mini-storage like you would be with some lower priced home stagers. You will get a custom staging plan using beautiful furniture in excellent condition that makes your home look like a photo in a magazine.
- We provide professional quality photographs of the rooms we stage. Our photos will make your home look outstanding on the internet and in printed brochures and marketing material. We provide these photos FREE for our complete home staging clients. Since 80-90% of home buyers start their search for a new home on the internet, professional quality photos are very important.
- Even in this market, many of the homes we stage sell in 60 days or less, often in the first 2 weeks and some over asking price.
This Arcadia home closed escrow 29 days after staging by Moving Mountains Design
This Arcadia home sold after the first open house after being staged by Moving Mountains Design
Don’t try to do the job of preparing your home or listing for sale with a dull tool.
For the best home selling tool call Michelle at Moving Mountains Design 626)441-8975 or contact us by email to learn how we can help you prepare your Arcadia real estate to encourage a faster sale at a higher price. We also stage homes in Pasadena, San Marino, San Gabriel, South Pasadena, Altadena, Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
Home Staging Is #2 In Top 12 Home Improvements Survey Results
November 6, 2009
Do-it-yourself Home Improvement Project
Home Gain released their 2009 Top 12 Home Improvements Survey results yesterday.
The Home Gain survey, completed by 1,000 Realtors, listed 12 top do-it-yourself home improvement projects for people getting ready to put their home on the market.
Click here to go to the Home Improvement Survey results
The top 5 recommended home repairs with the greatest return on investment were:
1. Cleaning and decluttering
2. Home staging
3. Lightening and brightening
4. Landscaping
5. Repair plumbing
If you’re unsure where to start with your home improvement projects, hire a professional home stager for a home staging consultation.
When you hire Los Angeles home staging company, Moving Mountains Design, for a home staging consultation, we visually inspect your home, both interior and exterior. Based upon our extensive staging and design experience, we’ll recommend the most important repairs and upgrades you can make to maximize the appeal of your home to potential buyers. We provide you with a written Comprehensive Consultation Report which includes paint colors (if painting is recommended) and carpet color recommendations (if carpet needs to be replaced) as well as pointing out items that need to be repaired, areas to be de-cluttered, furniture placement and improvements to your landscaping. If we feel it would be in your best interest to purchase new bedding, towels or throw pillows, we’ll include some inexpensive places to purchase those items. You can do as much of the work (or as little) as you would like. Our services are a la carte.
We have a Rolodex full of service providers, including moving companies, painters, cleaning services, carpet installers, handyman services, countertop fabricators and landscapers, among others, if you need help completing the preparation of your home.
In the event you need rental furniture, art work or accessories (if the house is vacant or you need a few pieces to augment what you already have) we can provide that as well.
Moving Mountains Design maintains a large warehouse of rental accessories, art work, plants, bedding and towels for use in vacant homes. We can dress up any style of home from Craftsman to Contemporary, be it a condo, a cottage or a castle.
Call Michelle today (626)441-8975 to arrange for your home staging consultation. Moving Mountains Design is among the top home staging companies in Los Angeles and Pasadena, based upon our experience and excellent track record of getting homes sold quickly. We know what makes homes sell!
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