A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of helping a family in Montgomery County, Haverford PA prepare their home for sale. The home is a stunning historic Tudor in a coveted zip code. The sellers had recently moved and the Realtor felt it should be staged to allow buyers to better envision how they could live in the home. Typically when I do a proposal for a vacant home I only provide the client with a proposal for our services and rental items, however, in this case I could not resist giving them a free bit of advice about the decor of the space because no amount of staging could hide what I saw.
The home seller had spent TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars having a local artist paint a mural in their dining room, a mural in their daughter's bedroom and faux finishing the ceilings and walls in the foyer. In the family room they had also done a lot of creative painting and had decked out the powder room in a lovely gold and red polka dot pattern. My problem was not that the murals were ugly- they were actually beautifully done-by a skilled artist but they were a perfect example of how a home can be so overly personal that it makes it difficult for buyers to imagine how they can make this space their own.
Instead of seeing the mill-work, the high ceilings, the large windows and open floor plan, all you could notice when you entered the space was the mural- the one in the dining room even depicted the owner and his dogs making it hard for one to imagine himself dining there. Imagine the conversation during a dinner party: The guest would ask, "Wow what a great mural! Is that you riding through the English countryside on the wall with your yorkies?" The host would reply, "No, it is the previous owner. Nice hat though!"
Fortunately, however, murals are an easy and inexpensive fix for sellers looking to put their home on the market. Paint got it there and paint can remove it. I have had many heart wrenching conversations with young mothers about how the hand painted scene of Winnie the Pooh in the nursery had to go because the new owners may have teenage sons or may be a young professional couple with no plans for children.
My client did take a lot of my advice- he replaced carpet, installed new countertops in the kitchen, repainted some rooms, but DID NOT PAINT OVER THE MURALS! So in the end I had to rely on staging to make these areas feel less personal by diverting attention from the walls to the furnishings. You can take a look at my pictures below to see the results. The good news is they have had mutiple repeat showings and hopefully they will get an offer..... and hopefully they will have a little girl with the same name...
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