I’m about to put my house on the market, which is a pain in the neck in any case. But these days, you have to Stage it.
This is an experience I’d wish only on the most disagreeable of human beings. It’s the most gobsmacking, insulting and humiliating thing outside of a frat house.
The whole object seems to be to make your house look like you moved some things in, but never actually, you know, lived there.
First, my realtor told me to clear everything off horizontal surfaces. Well, fair enough. Then she made me remove a photo of the Children of Lir statue in the Garden of Remembrance (Dublin) because “it looks prehistoric”.
Whatever.
But then The Stager got involved. My agent and The Stager were here for two hours on Friday and I’ve been clenching my jaw ever since.
She really wanted me to pack pretty much all my books, but when I told her there’d still be the bookcases around, she backed off. Instead, I’ve had to remove about half of the ones in the living room, “arrange [the remainder] by size” and lay a bunch of them on their sides. That way you can add “objects” to the shelves. Evidently so it won’t look like you actually have the books for the purpose of reading them.
(Same with my night stand: have to remove the night-time reading stack. Although they’re creating a “nook” by the window, with a chair and table, and there’ll be a couple of “colorful” books on the table.)
I’m allowed to have my coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, but that’s it. As for the kitchen island—that has to have stools and two “place settings” set up, regardless of the fact that the dining table is four feet away. Oh, and the place settings have to be “colorful”.
I now have plastic plants in my house. This is a first, and I can’t imagine what it would be about fake shrubbery that would make prospects proclaim, “Hey, honey—plastic! This is definitely the place for us!”
This is an experience I’d wish only on the most disagreeable of human beings. It’s the most gobsmacking, insulting and humiliating thing outside of a frat house.
The whole object seems to be to make your house look like you moved some things in, but never actually, you know, lived there.
First, my realtor told me to clear everything off horizontal surfaces. Well, fair enough. Then she made me remove a photo of the Children of Lir statue in the Garden of Remembrance (Dublin) because “it looks prehistoric”.
Whatever.
But then The Stager got involved. My agent and The Stager were here for two hours on Friday and I’ve been clenching my jaw ever since.
She really wanted me to pack pretty much all my books, but when I told her there’d still be the bookcases around, she backed off. Instead, I’ve had to remove about half of the ones in the living room, “arrange [the remainder] by size” and lay a bunch of them on their sides. That way you can add “objects” to the shelves. Evidently so it won’t look like you actually have the books for the purpose of reading them.
(Same with my night stand: have to remove the night-time reading stack. Although they’re creating a “nook” by the window, with a chair and table, and there’ll be a couple of “colorful” books on the table.)
I’m allowed to have my coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, but that’s it. As for the kitchen island—that has to have stools and two “place settings” set up, regardless of the fact that the dining table is four feet away. Oh, and the place settings have to be “colorful”.
I now have plastic plants in my house. This is a first, and I can’t imagine what it would be about fake shrubbery that would make prospects proclaim, “Hey, honey—plastic! This is definitely the place for us!”
Turns out that “colorful” means “gaudy”. They’ve brought in orange towels and some sort of puce knobby bath mat. The dishes are to come on Monday when they reconvene. Evidently buyers have the color sense of teenagers and I have to pander to that.
(The Stager declared that there must be A Picture over my bed. I shudder to think what that’s going to look like, but I’m sure they’ll be borrowing whatever it is from a down market motel chain.)
I believe they considered having me ship out the two cats for the duration: there was some discussion that ended with a reluctant mutual assurance that “well, people have pets—they’ll understand…”
But I suppose the low-class coup de grâce is a fat plaster chef-like creature in an anatomically-improbable position. I’m guessing it’s meant to hold a bottle of (cheap-ass) wine. Whatever, it’s going to scream “cheesiness” from my kitchen counter to all who enter the house.
The realtor and staging artiste are returning to finish up their transformation of my house to something Al and Peggy Bundy would snap up. I hope to God the place sells quickly because I’m not sure how long I can live in a chiropractor’s waiting room.
