Seller Discovers There's Work
Required to Stage Her Home

Editor's Note: This is the third installment of "Hitting the Market," a feature by columnist Jane Hodges that details her attempt to sell her Seattle home.

I've always been fascinated with "staging," the art of depersonalizing, decluttering and "merchandising" a home for sale.

Staging a home can boost its price by about 7% and make it sell up to 50% faster than the market average, according to data from Stagedhomes.com, a site for accredited staging professionals.

When I hired my agent, Samantha MacIntosh of Prudential Northwest Realty Associates in Bellevue, Wash., I didn't know that she would fund staging (as well as a major house-cleaning and window-washing) along with her listing services. But I was curious and willing to see how a stager would spin my home's untapped potential.

I'm used to having my words edited. Why not my décor? Like many home buyers, I blew any decorating budget I might have had just buying my house in 2004. Then I wiped it out again on selected home upgrades (electrical work in 2005, new roof in 2006), landscaping and a few pieces of art. Toss in my boyfriend Dave's belongings (he moved in during the summer of 2006) and my work-at-home lifestyle (meaning all free surfaces are heaped with newspapers and magazines), and it's safe to say my place is ripe for an edit.

In February, Dave and I invited Ms. MacIntosh over to dinner to discuss home repairs we'd make in advance of an early summer listing. I was having trouble deciding what work to invest in versus what fixes to leave to the next owner. That's when Ms. MacIntosh suggested bringing in a stager early, since I was already making renovation choices with an eye toward a sale rather than for my own aesthetics.

"She may make you forego some of your colors," Ms. MacIntosh said, casting her eyes on my Dijon mustard-colored living room walls, the cranberry bedroom and the olive-green office. "It'll be a lot to take in."

She was right. On a brisk spring day in late March, Lynne Nierman of Catalyst Interior Design in Bellevue, Wash., arrived like a whirlwind. Ms. Nierman's eyes made a clean sweep of my home. Oh, what I would do with this place...her face seemed to say. Is the coffee still on? I wondered, reflexively clasping my mug.

While we waited for my agent, the stager zipped through the basics, saying I'd need to clean my windows, pressure-wash my home's exterior and front walkway and stow loose garden equipment. Inside, I'd have to scrub light fixtures and replace unsightly energy-efficient light bulbs with the brightest bulbs acceptable for each fixture. The house would need a professional cleaning, too. Ms. Nierman's eyes lit up when I told her we wouldn't live in the house while it sat on the market and that we planned to rent a storage unit but could leave select furniture behind as she saw fit.

"That changes the game," she said, hopping up from her seat. This meant she could hand-pick which pieces of furniture and art stayed and which went into storage.

Once my agent arrived, we began a two and a half-hour tour of my home -- capped off by a dizzying visit to the paint counter of a nearby home-improvement store. The stager wrote her suggestions on a lengthy staging form and my agent took notes. Among the findings:

Outside: Pressure wash and paint the exterior, which former owners had painted a sickly shade of gray. (It seems prior owners primed the home and never painted.)

Inside: Upgrade ceiling lighting fixtures to show "cottage character." Sand, repair and re-paint wood trim and paint-encrusted heat registers, which together make my bungalow look more shabby than chic. Re-paint all trim white.

Living room: Replace a broken window, and for symmetry's sake, the window next to it. Ka-ching. Remove Dave's sofa and chair set and a faux shag rug, but leave behind two decorative benches, a coffee table and an art deco-style book case.

Kitchen: Toss the funky green and tan linoleum countertops. Stain cabinets and add drawer pulls or handles. Paint the walls yellow or tan to coordinate with my living room. Optional: Replace two metal windows, which are immediately visible from the front entry. Ka-ching, ka-ching. Leave behind my 1950s linoleum-topped table and four funky modern kitchen chairs.

Master bedroom: Swap out the cranberry-red paint and its tan trim for a "sea foam" or pale green bedroom color and the requisite white trim. Resurface the ceiling to hide imperfections that may lead buyers to think there's been a leak. Paint the ceiling squeaky-clean white. Leave behind my black wrought-iron bed frame and distressed black dresser, but remove Dave's unfinished wood dresser to create a more uniform, less cluttered look.

Office: The green walls can stay, but the ceilings and trim should be painted white. Remove one or two of my four bookshelves so the stager can arrange the room around my hulking 1950s metal desk -- a yard sale find -- and my tawny leather chairs purchased, ironically, at a deceased real-estate investor's estate sale.

Upstairs bathroom: Retile the floor, add new wall mirrors and lighting, chuck the pink tub (or reface it in white) and replace the plastic tub surround with something nicer. Pull out the vanity/sink unit and put in a new pedestal sink. Ka-ching.

Downstairs: Rip out the bathroom surround and vinyl flooring and whiten up the room, (including getting a new white toilet seat). White-wash the bonus rooms and caulk. The relatively new carpet, drywall and a recently added built-in bookshelf that separates the den from the utility room were all good moves, she says.

There were a few surprises, mostly in the kitchen. I could stain rather than paint the cabinets, I could keep my serviceable (but easily-dirtied) linoleum floors and should go for a patterned countertop instead of a solid one, Ms. Nierman said. Also unexpected: she liked my bright-gold living room and olive-green office. In the bathroom, she suggested exchanging a pedestal sink to create "a bathroom that sells," versus one that stores things.

In the end, it wasn't painful. Ms. Nierman sensed the look I'd sought (cottage eclectic) but never reached. I came away with the sense that exterior painting and bathroom work were the priorities, as were kitchen-countertop replacement and interior painting and trim work. Beyond that, additional fixes would be a bonus.

I decided that maybe we would put the house on the market in late June or early July, to give me time to figure out how to fund all the work. Little did I know that only six weeks after the stager's appointment -- and well before my home hit the market -- that Dave and I would make an offer on a new house. They say ignorance is bliss, and, in retrospect, I agree.

-- Ms. Hodges is a a free-lance writer in Seattle.

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