Home Staging Recipe For An Appealing Kitchen

Home Staging Recipe For An Appealing Kitchen

In January I was hired by Pasadena homeowners for a home staging consultation. They knew their home had “good bones”, but they also recognized that a house with “good bones” that doesn’t look super sharp is not going to sell quickly or anywhere near their target price.

Kitchens are one of the most important rooms home buyers consider when evaluating homes to buy.

A kitchen remodel can be expensive, dirty, stressful and time consuming. When buying a home, home buyers want a move in ready home, not one that’s going to cost them more money and stress.

During the home staging consultation, I made several suggestions regarding their kitchen:

• Paint the cabinets white (they had a medium brown wood stain). This would brighten the kitchen and freshen tired cabinets.
• Change the cabinet hardware to better reflect the style of the home. Cabinet hardware is like jewelry for your cabinets.
• Replace tile counters with granite or a solid surface quartz material (the homeowners had already researched the cost of granite counters)
• Replace the old sink and faucet with a new stainless undermount sink and stainless modern faucet.
• Remove 2 cabinets that had been added in an earlier remodel and didn’t match the style of the other cabinets. This also opened up this galley kitchen.
• Clean out cabinets so they were half empty and neatly arranged.
• Clean off kitchen counters of everything except what they needed to use every day (coffee maker, toaster, etc.) while their home was on the market.
• Remove window treatments that made the kitchen feel dark and small.

Here’s what the kitchen looked like before:

And here’s the kitchen after the minimal (and cost effective) remodel and home staging:

The floor tile was not changed and the walls were not repainted, thereby saving money. The kitchen now looks fresh, bright and updated. It looks clean and a pleasant place to prepare meals. And, while the kitchen is updated, it blends well with the architectural style of the home.

To see the curb appeal transformation of this home read Curb Appeal & Home Staging