Three years after the Hatfield Project, Kate Elise Interiors did the Home Staging for the Robin Hood Ave home remodel and sale. What do Homeowners and Home Builders need and expect from a Home Staging team? It turns out they tend to be pretty hands-off by that point in the process.
Are there any challenges to the job that might be surprising to homeowners or anybody interested in getting into home staging?
Yeah, I would say the most common challenge that we come across and by we, my husband and I, is just the challenge of getting everything into the home easily. Not all houses have easy access. If it’s on like a residential street that’s super narrow and there’s already a lot of cars parked on the road. We do have a 17 foot box truck, so, you know, we’re wanting to get that truck close to the door where we’re going to be unloading or some houses in rural areas are up a long, steep gravel driveway.
A lot of the houses in South Eugene, the driveways are super steep. So just getting the truck maneuvered where it needs to be. My husband is an amazing driver, so it has always worked out fantastically. But yeah, and not all front doors are created equally. Some front doors are super narrow, so we will have to find different access points.
We’ll go into the garage or if there’s a sliding glass door, you know, in the back will come in That way we have to disassemble furniture sometimes pretty much all the time. Our dining tables come in disassembled. And then my husband will assemble them when we walk in, we take feet off of sofas. So just getting into the house can sometimes be the most challenging part.
That makes sense. The last place I lived, I had a beautiful queen sized bed with box spring, and I had to omit the box spring because I couldn’t get it up the stairs.
Yeah. Especially if there are, you know, stairs that do a hairpin.
So, Home Staging seems to be a bit tangential to Interior Design or Interior Decorating in that it temporarily brings a home to life and inspires prospective Home Buyers. Do you study or have any interest in interior design or decorating? And how does that inform how you stage a home?
I do have a lot of interest in Interior Design. I think if I could go back in time and do it over, which I know it’s never too late to start something, but I do think if I could go back in time, I would absolutely go to school and get a degree in interior design. I love staging so much and it is so much fun, but I do.
I can’t help but look at architecture, you know, if I’m looking at magazines or blogs.. Well, who looks at magazines really as much anymore? But, if I’m on Instagram or Pinterest and looking at designers and, you know, blogs and I am so into the house itself in a lot of ways, as much as the furniture inside of it.
So, because I love both of those things: the architecture and the furniture and the fluff, I do think interior design would have been something that I would have loved to have done. But I am always looking at photos, seeing what’s currently in style and what creates a cozy environment. So, in that sense, I’m kind of always educating myself through just seeing what what designers are doing. And, different people who aren’t even designers, but who have blogs.
A lot of a lot of people now with social media are able to show off their personal homes and they have no education in it at all, but they’re just incredibly talented. And so you can see their personal you know, their personal homes are are as much inspiration as as some of these, you know, really amazing designers.
Produced & Hosted by Todd Zimmerman