[Disclaimer - "House for Sell" is being used as an experiment.  According to keyword research, that phrase get 3x the traffic that House for Sale does.  No idea why, but thought I'd try it for this challenge.]

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This post is the 3rd in my 7 part series illustrating Home Staging in NJ with Before and After Staging photos. (The first post was on Living Rooms.) Today's topic is ~

Here, in New Jersey, most houses have a Dining Room. Some are large and impressive. Others are smaller and utilitarian, asked to play several roles in family life: from hosting committee meetings for volunteer activities, homework, crafts, a place to put the sewing machine, a wrapping station and of course, the most often I see – a plonkery. i.e. storage, or a place you just plonk this down while you figure out what to do with them. (Plonk is British slang for mindlessly dumping an article in the most irratating place for your spouse, partner, parent, etc.!)

My series on luxury NJ Real Estate started with the Living Room, and then we moved on to the Foyer. As we begin to take a look at today’s Dining Rooms, let’s recall some key elements:-

• Formal Entertaining (whether folks do that stuff anymore of not, though in the higher end homes they still do it a lot)

• Festive but not jam-packed with furniture or decorative items.

• Flow – you don’t need to have all 12 chairs to show people that the room is big enough to fit them. However, if you’ve got a HUGE room and you’re selling “Massive”, then by all means use as many chairs as customarily sit there.

• Do not use fresh flowers or live plant material if you don’t plan on going back in and dealing with them! There’s nothing worse than foul-smelling, fur-growing water holding up dead flowers in a beautiful crystal mausoleum! For some reason the homeowner has a blind spot on this. If you ain’t there, it ain’t getting done.

Owner Occupied Home ~ Using Their Own Furniture

BEFORE	AFTER
Owned by a travelling executive single mom,this charming Victorian had no eat-in kitchen.  In fact, the Dining Room had the only large horizontal surface on the first floor.  As you can imagine, it was used for everything!  Clearly visible through the sheers were a washing machine and dryer. Kinda messy, kinda junky, the room was blah and awkward, with a diagonal fireplace off to one side as well!	We doubled up the layers of curtains so as to mask the laundry, and then kept the color palette as simple and clean as possible.  Setting the tone, was an exquisite charcoal drawing from a Kenyan Safari of a leopard bending down for a cool, soothing drink.  That then gave us the opportunity to marry all the other "eclectic" (read: disparate) elements together - from drooping crystal chandeliers to wooden farmhouse table, from pampas grass in an earthernware pot to a crisp white-on-white hand embroidered Edwardian table cloth with African eggs sitting in a wooden olive tray on it. Jute rug, wicker chairs... I know! Still, it worked!  The thing flew off the market for well over asking.  It really was a one-of-a-kind for our area of NJ.

Owner Occupied Home ~ Using Rental Furniture

BEFORE	AFTER
This mural went all around the room.  Columns, flowing fountains, long-tailed birds... the thing didn't quit.  How to show a young family relocating from the City with their "transitional" dining room that they could comfortably co-exist with this thing. Yeah, no question of painting over it!	So what to do?  We installed The largest "transitional" dining room set the budget could take Mercury glass table decorations to keep it light and airy. A wide silver-framed mirror No rug.  Enough going here.  Really. Did we help?  Not sure.  We did well in the rest of the house.   The home sold in just over 3 months after being on the market for over a year before I got in to give it a shot.

Vacant House ~ Using Rental Furniture

BEFORE	AFTER
How to contend with doorways on 3 sides and windows on the 4th?  this space is essentially a pass-through. All that panelling? How to handle something so period-specific?	By keeping the accessories few, simple and in keeping with the period, we were able to show how the space would work with pretty much anything. Buers could see that the room is large enough for 8 though we've only shown 6 chairs, and there is still ample room for a buffet/sideboard.  (Very sad to have sold those urns ~ I did love them.  They reminded me of Kate's.... ) Result ~ the home sold handsomely in 53 days for over $2 million.

Here are some other New Jersey dining rooms that I'm real proud of but don't have "befores" of ~

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~ Juliet Johnson ~ has been home staging NJ in the luxury real estate niche (with the predominant home value of $1 - 3 million) for the last 7 years. Juliet is taking the month of August to brush up her internet marketing skills by participating in Ed Dale's 30 Day Challenge with a blog on Property Marketing.