Cottage Blue Designs

New Decorating Blog

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:18:43 +0000

Come and visit my new decorating blog:

http://cottagebluedesigns.blogspot.com/

Happy decorating and living-

Megan

The Fun Continues

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:41:58 +0000

Here are some family room photos. This is the room that will definitely get the most use in our house. It’s opened up to the kitchen and the eat in kitchen area. The screened in porch is right off of the family room too. There’s a fireplace that I imagine will be awesome in the winter. I am envisioning that our Christmas tree will go in the corner of this large family room. The wall color is a warm coffee latte color that works right now but I am thinking in the future that we might consider blue in here (but that would mean a lot of painting- ceiling is painted the coffee color and many shared walls so for now it’s fine). One area that I am not sure about are the 3 white floating shelves. Not sure how to arrange items on it now- it’s not quite working with what I’ve done but I’ll continue working on it.

Luckily all we had to purchase for this room was the gray corduroy storage ottoman from the Crate and Barrell Outlet- a great find (it was a floor model so we got a great price! and it looks awesome) and one of the large white slipcovered sofas (all washable of course!) from Crate and Barrell (they were having a slipcovered furniture sale in March). Everything else is reused. I already like the simplicity of the room. We still need to consider wall art but that’s for later.

My favorite part of this room is the great light from all of the windows- I’d rather have windows that wall space for art work anyday (you can’t beat looking out at mother nature).

Check it out….

Family Room “before”:

Family Room “In Progress”:

More work to come later…..

Email me your thoughts/ideas or if you want to work on a project together:

megan@cottagebluedesigns.com

The Fun Begins

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:06:06 +0000

Steve and I spent three days in our new home in Raleigh, NC last week without the kids madly unpacking the 200+ plus boxes that it tooks us 6 weeks in Northern Virginia to pack up. I am happy to report that just about all of the boxes have been unpacked (minus the ones in the garage and the attic) and the rooms are at least functionally set up. I want to share some “before” photos of our blank slate and some “in progress” photos. There’s obviously still a lot of work to be done: pictures to be hung, furniture arrangement to be played around with, paint colors to consider, curtains to be made or purchased and more. But the fun has definitely begun……

Living Room “before”:

Living Room “In Progress”:

Stacks of white frames that I plan on using for a wall project:

My favorite room of all!!!! My ‘before” Office:

My “In Progress” Office:

Thanks for looking! I need to get back to supervising my 3 and 4 year olds who are dying Easter eggs on the porch now. More photos to come later…….

Email me if you’d like to work with me on decorating your house:

megan@cottagebluedesigns.com

I’d love to consult with you.

Staging Secret #3: Lists

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 12:31:58 +0000

Here’s where my Type A organizationally focused friends will be in their zone! List making is essential to successfully staging your home. Remember from my last blog on staging, you will want to allow for some time for this. The list making step should happen in the beginning.

Remember our goal is for you to put your best foot forward when staging your house and to get your house sold quickly and for a great price!

You are going to get your most traffic and attention when you first put your house on the market so you want to have it staged beautifully with awesome pictures posted on the internet. Remember over 90% of today’s potential home buyers are searching online before checking out a new home in person.

What should we put on your lists? Start with categories for your “To Do” list:

Outside:

-Does the exterior of your home need some work?

-How does your yard look? Do you need to clean up the yard? Trim hedges? Do you need fresh mulch? Do you need to clean up fallen branches? Do you need to weed?

-Do you need to put away kids’ outside toys/bicycles?

-Do you need fresh pillows for an outside seating area? Do you need a fresh umbrella for an outside table? You want potential buyers “to see” how they can best use your backyard- don’t make them use their imagination, SHOW THEM!

-Flowers make a huge impact on curb appeal.

-Do you need a clean, new door mat?

Inside:

-Remember Staging Secret #1: Remove all family photos

-Remember Staging Secret #2: Remove at least 1/2 of the furniture, things, etc. in each room (LESS is more!)

-Clean, clean, clean: Nothing turns off a potential buyer more than dirt/dust/grime.

-Clean out every room/every nook and cranny: Buyers DO look in closets, laundry room (notice I even staged our laundry room in the pictures below), and every corner of your house.

-What needs to be fixed? Painted? (you don’t want buyers to make a list of what they need to fix if they buy your house)

-Be purposeful in highlighting the strengths of each room and downplaying the weaknesses

You can see from these lists that successful staging takes a good amount of time. This isn’t something you can do well in a weekend. When we were staging our Annandale, Virginia home we started making our staging “to do” lists a good six months before putting our house on the market. But our hard work paid off. We only had our house on the market for 6 days and got 4 offers in those 6 days!!!!

Our staged home:

This is your goal: to get a lot of interest in your home and get many great offers in a short amount of time. You can do this by successfully staing your home!

Let me know if you need help. I would love to help you stage your home! Be well everyone. Hope you’re enjoying these tips.

Megan

megan@cottagebluedesigns.com

www.cottagebluedesigns.com

Staging Secret #2: Remove stuff

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 12:18:59 +0000

It happens to all of us over time when we live in the same house for many years…..stuff starts to collect and pile up. Not only that but we add things to rooms, new pillows, artwork, knick knacks, and we don’t always take things out of a room. So our rooms get fuller and fuller with things we love. Of course, we love this! We love living with things that make us happy. This isn’t good news when trying to sell a home. Potential buyers do NOT have the love that we have for our things- they just see packed, full rooms and that makes it harder to them to envision our rooms as their rooms with their things.

This is a very important tip for home staging: REMOVE AT LEAST HALF OF WHAT IS IN EVERY ROOM (this is usally a good rule of thumb).

I know first hand how especially challenging this can be when living in a small house. We didn’t have a place to put all of our stuff we wanted to hide. We didn’t want to spend the money to rent a storage unit to house all of our “extra stuff”. So we had to get creative and organize our attic. Thank goodness we have an attic (it’s has pull down stairs so potential buyers wouldn’t be likely to be venturing up there). I went through every room in our house over about a month and I took things out (furniture, toys, knick knacks, etc) which I CRAMMED into the attic. Then I walked through each of the rooms in our house and re-evaluated how each room looked through the eyes of a buyer. I wanted buyers to see the strengths of each room, I didn’t want them to see all of our stuff. I took photos of the rooms and looked at them on my computer- sometimes looking at a picture helps you to really see what others would see (I found this very useful!).

Caution: This process of decluttering your stuff and removing at least half of what is in every room takes time. Don’t expect yourself to do this in a day, give yourself some time to get this done. This is where lists really helped me (hint: this will be my next tip!).

Good luck! Happy staging!!!!

Be well-

Megan

P.S. Potential buyers DO open up and look inside each and every closet so don’t think you can hide your things in there. You want your closets to be decluttered too. If closets are packed full, buyers think that there must not be enough space in the house and you don’t want them to think that, even if it’s true. Take clothes and items out of each closet to make it look larger.

Staging Secret #1: Remove Photos

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:01:53 +0000

Depersonalize Your Home by Removing Family Photos

Here is a collection of three frames with inexpensive scrapbook paper inside to replace family photos

Remove personal photos, artifacts, and displays. This really makes a huge difference and a lot of home sellers forget this fact or don’t think it makes a big difference. But removing all personal things really makes a big difference. Believe me!

I experienced this first hand when we were looking for a new home recently in Raleigh, NC. Most of the homes we looked at were “staged” and therefore personal photos were removed. We were able to walk into these homes and immediately start thinking about where our furniture could go. We could start envisioning the home as our own. The few homes that I walked into that had personal photos around, I found myself stopping and thinking about the family that lived there. I wasn’t able to freely envision living in the home. I didn’t want to linger in homes with lots of family photos.

There really is an emotional disconnect that happens to potential buyers when sellers leave photos around or other personal mementos. The potential buyer has to work harder to imagine themself living in the home. You don’t want the buyer to have “to work” to envision themself living in your home. You want it to be easy for them. Plus today, sellers are seeing the benefit of staging their homes and removing photos of themselves so you’re going to have some competition.

This is a postcard replacing a family photo- instant art work!

Sometimes, clients tell me that if they take down their photos then they won’t have any wall art. Well, I have a great decorating tip for you! Go to your local craft store, like Michaels or AC Moore and purchase sheets of pretty scrapbook paper that compliments the colors and tones in your home. Place the pretty scrapbook paper (or even nice graphic wrapping paper will do) inside the frames where you had family photos. Instant artwork!

Here we used cheap pink and purple wrapping paper to replace family baby photos in our little girl’s room.

Staging Success!

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 11:58:33 +0000

Well, we did it! We sold our house (almost sold, settlement is this week, fingers and toes crossed, I am sure everything will be fine). The really cool part is that I staged our house and we had four offers in six days. That’s pretty darn good! I am going to be honest, the staging was a lot of work, but it was also fun and sooooo worth it! It was very rewarding to see my hard work and efforts pay off….literally!

Why stage a house for selling? If you’ve put your house on the market before you KNOW how hard it is to live through the selling process. While selling, your house needs to be spotless clean all the time, at any given moment a potential buyer might stop by to see it. Due to the fact that we priced our house right (which brought in serious buyers) and that our house was staged beautifully we only had to live with our house on the market for a week. I am so grateful for that fact!

I believe that two things sell a house:

1. Priced right

2. Staging

Back to number 1: Priced right, first off a big thank you and shout out to our awesome real estate agent and best friend, Cristina Dougherty with Long and Foster in Fairfax, Va. Cristina looked at comparables around our neighborhood in Annandale, Va and suggested a fair and reasonable price. That brought in serious potential buyers.

On to my favorite number 2: Staging

Staging is so important to selling a house! It starts before the potential buyer even stepped into our home. It started with photos of our house, inside and out, on the internet. An overwhelming percentage of buyers search on the internet for their new home before getting in their cars to look at homes. If you have beautifully stagged photos of your home you are pulling in buyers to come to your home to see it in person. I know this first hand after we recently spent time in Raleigh, North Carolina searching for our next home.

I am going to share some of the secrets of staging in the next couple of weeks. If you are planning on putting your house on the market in the year or so, or if you have family or friends planning on selling, you will definitely want to use some of my staging secrets. Good luck to you!

If you need staging help, contact me: megan@cottagebluedesigns.com.

I’d love to help! Be well everyone.

Megan

Inspiring Projects

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 02:45:46 +0000

Are you like me and you get excited about a new craft project? I get giddy like a 7 year old dreaming up my next project that I want to do. Okay, here’s my latest dream design project, crafting an Oyster Shell mirror like this one:

What do you think? I saw one in a Cottage store at the beach in NC that really got me thinking. I can’t stop thinking about it. Now to find the oyster shells. I shared this latest idea with a friend and she told me about www.etsy.com where they had oyster shells for sale. Now to find a round mirror base to attach the shells to.

What inspiring project do you hope to tackle soon?

Valentine Reversible Ribbon Headbands

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:51:17 +0000

Valentine Headbands fit little girls and mommies alike. The one on the right has sweet candy heart sayings on one side and pretty pink ribbon on the other side. The one on the left says Happy Valentine and has a pink and red design on the other side. Valentine special, only $5 each!!!!

Email me your order at megan@cottagebluedesigns.com

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!!!

What is a Decorating Coach?

meganatcottagebluedesigns — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:22:44 +0000

What does a Decorating Coach do?

That’s a great question that I get asked! A decorating coach listens to her client’s needs and wants. She helps her clients realize their decorating style(s) and makes suggestions and recommendations based on her client’s desires, possibly in these areas:

-furniture arrangement & placement

-re-use of furniture from other rooms

-paint color suggestions

-fabric suggestions

-lighting options

-accessory suggestions

-picture hanging tips

-and more!

The main goal of a decorating coach is to inspire her clients to create a beautiful home that is relaxing and rejuvenating.

It’s very rewarding to consult with a client, see their home, give them the client questionnaire, anaylze the questionnaire, and present a room make-over plan to them. It really fills my bucket to truly listen to a client, design a plan for them, and help them carry the plan through.

Listen to how I coached these clients:

Megan is a gifted redesigner. Her natural ability to really listen to me enabled her to tap into my design style. Her ideas and recommended resources truly reflect my taste and things I love. Megan has a relaxed, fun, yet professional approach. Working with Megan is like sitting down with your best friend or sister to redesign your home. Megan is more than a redesigner. She inspires.

-Brynn Pacitti Vienna, VA

Megan was spectacular to work with in redesigning our screened-in porch. All of the rooms in our home are pretty well set but with 3 young kids I was lacking a place to call my own and feel at peace in. I had an idea of what I wanted to create but no idea of how to put it into action. Megan listened to my hopes, desires and needs for a place to entertain, play family games, and reflect our favorite place…the beach! She asked that I fill out a comprehensive questionnaire -asking me some pretty interesting questions in order to help me put my thoughts into a workable plan for the space. Through this questionnaire she learned more about my style, interests, and the reality of what I saw the room used for. She delivered to me a vast packet which included fabrics options for curtains, lighting options, furniture and outdoor rug samples, and 3 different price points. I had her list in hand as I visited fabric stores, furniture stores and stores where I purchased accessories. My family and friends have thoroughly enjoyed this repurposed living space this summer and I know we’ll create amazing memories in the years to come. It’s our favorite family spot for game night! Thank you Megan for your insights and inspiration to create a lovely space to call my own (and share when I desire!) It has stayed (so far) a no toy zone too! Cross your fingers!

-Cristina Dougherty Fairfax, VA

We moved from a townhouse to a larger single-family home last summer and I was faced with the exciting yet daunting prospect of having a living room and a family room for which I had very little decor or furniture. We’d been operating largely with family hand-me-downs and I finally felt ready to develop my own style and have my own things, but had no idea where to start. Megan’s process really helped me to understand my own design style and what I wanted out of each space. Her furniture, decorating, and layout recommendations were phenomenal, but even beyond the fabric samples and catalog pages, it was the ability to think through what I really wanted and needed, and understand my own sense of style that I’ll always be grateful to Megan for. We’ve already begun implementing many of her suggestions and the rooms are really starting to take shape. Thanks, Megan!

-Heather Leonard, Fairfax, VA

Working with Megan is one of the best things I have ever done for my home and for my peace of mind. There were several decorating projects that I had been putting off. Megan came in and listened to what I wanted to accomplish and then offered some excellent suggestions! She is so talented and I love her sense of style, color, and composition. Plus, she is action oriented…we accomplished so much in just a few hours. I cannot thank Megan enough for her help and ideas…it was really fun working with her. I look forward to the next project!

-Sarah Jane Schonour, Fairfax, VA

Click on my website’s portfolio to see some of the work I’ve helped my clients create:

http://cottagebluedesigns.com/portfolio.aspx

I would love to coach you with a room(s) in your home. Contact me:

megan@cottagebluedesigns.com