Selling your home? First impressions are everything!

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One of my favorite services is helping clients pull their homes together for a sale!

I take a lot of pleasure in making a home show like a model for the owners to enjoy until the for sale sign flips over to "sold."  I love it when the client tells me that they like what I have done so much that they don't want to sell the home.

Spring is the time of year when (in Florida) lots of part-time residents are thinking about putting their comes and condos on the market.  It is also when homeowners hopefully try to sell their home over the summer and try to get settled before school starts. 

At least that is the way it was before the market took a tumble.  Times are uncertain.  Money is tight.  That home could sit on the market for a while.  But I still receive lots of calls asking me what I can do to help a home sell and to increase the resale value.

We all know that first impression are everything.  Sometimes it is the only chance you have to make the sale.  And sometimes the best ideas are the simplest.

So, with my tools of the trade in hand, ready to share some secrets of how to beat out every other house for sale on the same street, I show up at the front door.  But the appointment actually starts the minute I pull up in front of the house and step out of my car.  Everyone is so concerned with the inside (and rightly so) that they often forget that the first impression begins with the front yard.  So, before I share some guidelines for the interior in a future blog,  let's run through some quick, inexpensive, totally effective ways to get prospective buyers in the front door!

And even if you are not selling your home, try these tips for an easy spring refresher to your home: 

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Take Me to the Movies for Design Inspiration!

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I love movies.

If I am having a stressful day, writer's block or decorating block, I sometimes will close up my officePhoto Courtesy of Universal Pictures. (advantage of being your own boss!) pick up my purse and head to a movie.  The total escape always reshapes my attitude.  Even when I worked in the corporate world, I would often give my staff a mental break in the middle of the afternoon and take them all to a movie.  Of course, I was their favorite boss!

A good friend from LA came for a visit a couple of weeks ago.  She was coincidently one of my "staff" who learned early in her career, the benefits of sneaking out to a movie midday.  Now she is all grown up and is a successful NBC Universal vice president and I am very proud of her accomplishments.  One of her responsibilities is dealing with product placement and sponsorship in the theme parks and movies.  It is a great job and being in LA, she is immersed in all things Hollywood.  So, our conversation always turns to movies.

This time to the talented Nancy Meyers, the wonderful writer/director who gave us It's Complicated (see kitchen above), Something's Gotta Give, Father of the Bride and more.  Her movies are an interior decorator's dream.  She creates rooms that we love.  They make us want to walk right in and sit down.  They are as beautiful as a

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Antique Market Find: Discovering a neglected treasure and bringing it back to life

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It was a very sad, shabby cabinet that had been propped up in the dirt.  Almost an afterthought.  Neglected, it looked like it had all but given up being noticed, much less purchased.   No one even stopped to think of the possibilities.  In all fairness, it had lots of competition in the acres of treasures at Renningers Antique Market in Mt. Dora this past weekend.  But this was its lucky day and mine.

The nice vendor said that it was a very old medicine cabinet that he had taken out of a farmhouse in Alabama that was facing demolition.  He was only asking $30.  We did not try to deal.  We knew we had something special.

My husband, a miracle worker at bringing old pieces back to life, could restore this primitive piece back to its earlier days.  Inside there were marks from medicine bottles. Upon cleaning off the layers and layers of dirt and taking it apart, a label on the back of the mirror revealed that it was over 100 years old.  After some minor repairs and cleaning up the original hardware, careful not to remove any of the remaining paint, it almost beamed with thanks for saving it.

It now hangs proudly on the cottage bathroom wall of a collector of all things shabby and primitive (me). Someone who appreciates its peeling paint, distressed wood and deep nooks for treasures.  It is a treasure itself.  Purchased from the nice vendor who did not recognize the gem that he brought from Alabama to Mt. Dora so we could take it home and give it a new life.

A Sad Week: Then a mermaid appeared

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"Pretty Mermaid" by Sarah Kiser

"Pretty Mermaid" by Sarah Kiser

It was the saddest of weeks.  

Sad.  Heartbreaking.  Gut-wrenching.  We all know that life sometimes is just not fair and can change in a moment. 

So, my week could not have been much worse.  And then a mermaid appeared.

My husband, who has always been good at trying (and almost always succeeding) to make things better, even it if it is just for a moment, gave me my Christmas present early.

It is a mermaid by Sarah Kiser, a wonderful southwest Florida artist who displays her work at the Island Visions Gallery in the quaint little artist colony of Matlacha.  She does whimsical, beautiful mermaids that will capture your heart.  I have wanted one fora long time.  Little did I know that my husband had one hidden away for Christmas.  He decided to make today Christmas.

She is beautiful as you see in the photo.  Her name is "Pretty Mermaid," and that is just what she is with long flowing blond hair, pearls and limey green and blue vines and willowy things floating around her. 

So, Sarah Kiser, if you are listening: thank you for your mermaids and for giving me a happy escape from the sadness of loss.  My mermaid appeared at just the right time.  

Changing seasons and thinking of North Carolina

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Photo of a Louisburg College SignThis is the time of year in southwest Florida when we eagerly await any sign whatsoever of a change in seasons.  Although temperatures are dropping and leaves are turning in other parts of the country, we are still basking in the summer sun.  Instead of picking up beautiful leaves for arrangements, we are happily picking up shells on the beach.  But long for a peek at fall.

This is when I always think of North Carolina.  My first two years of college were spent at Louisburg College near Raleigh.  Fall was beautiful with cool breezes, football games, homecoming, friends and the excitement of the beginning of another college year.  I remember walking to classes and just taking in “fall.”  I felt such a sense of place those fall seasons in North

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Welcome home.

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How do you say it?

There are lots of ways to make someone feel welcome.

Think about how you feel when you walk into a business establishment, social event, restaurant or store.  Does what you see make you want to stay or do you want to run for the nearest exit?

When you open the front door to your home, how do you feel?

Does what you see make you happy?  Or do you wish you could start over with a new decorating scheme?

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