My mother got remarried a few weeks ago and is in the process of getting her house ready to sell so she can move in with her new husband. She has a cute little split level townhouse that she bought after she sold the larger house we grew up in, and while it has a lot of positive things going, it also had a lot of clutter – which is almost inevitable when you’ve lived somewhere for 20 years.

This is the downstairs den BEFORE:

It was mostly neutral, but had tons of family photographs and some unnecessary furniture:

My sister is taking the entire room for her new basement den once the house sells, so we took the extra stuff over there right away. The entertainment center and this chair were taken out:

Much better and more open…all the family pictures are gone and we kept only the bare minimum of furniture:

My mom’s style is uber-feminine…she has always lived here by herself. It wasn’t really possible to totally neutralize that, but we got rid of her collection of depression glass and a lot of the other tchotchkis and removed excess furniture where we could.

This is the dining area side of the living room/dining room combo:

We took the curio and the glass collection to her new house and removed the non-working vintage chandelier (it had candles in it):

On the living room side we got rid of the bookcase, the fake ficus tree and some of the artwork:

We moved the end table to the other side of the couch to open up the entrance to the room. I tried to talk her out of the plant stand she replaced it with, but she dug her heels in.

It’s a very funny process….even when people have one foot out of the door and are ready to move on, they still have difficulty distancing themselves from their old home. You have to pick your battles.

This is the spare bedroom. It was done with vintage furniture and a very particular style:

Again, I couldn’t totally neutralize it but we de-cluttered, removed the nightstand and moved the dresser and mirror to the other side of the room:

The room appears much more spacious and open – and when you’re selling a house, you are selling square footage.

This bedroom was the smallest of the three and was being used as a combination guest room/home office:

Since it was so tiny we decided to make it strictly an office. I would have liked to get rid of the shelving on the wall but it was bolted in – so we ended up leaving it. We replaced the daybed with a wicker chair:

The room had a pretty coastal theme going on, but had gotten a little cluttery:

I removed the extra accessories and centered the desk on the wall:

When I initially started this project, my mom was freaking out…she kept asking why we had to take all the furniture out and make it look so empty – I think she was near tears once or twice.

I found it easier to do the work in stages and let her get used to things rather than coming in and doing everything in one day. By the end of it, she was wondering aloud how on earth she had managed to fill her house with so much extra stuff.

The house goes on the market next week – we’re in the home stretch!

I’m linking up to these parties:

Tags: Home Staging, home staging in Syracuse
Filed under: Frugal & Fab - The Business, Home Staging