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Don't let this rookie mistake happen to your before and afters!

By
Home Stager with Round Rock Home Stager Austin Home Staging

Just finished a long day at The Concord Project house.  Plugged my digital camera in to look at the photos I took while there.  And what a disappointment!

Here's my work - the family dog had chewed up on corner of the sill.  And both of their dogs like to stand in the window and bark.  So, before replacing the entire sill, I recommended we just try to make do.   I sanded.  Vacuumed.  Sanded again.  Vacuumed.  And sanded again.  Then wiped with a damp cloth.  Did my Kilz Primer coat.  Then attacked it with the Semi-gloss trim paint.

Here's how it looked after

After painting

It still needs a second coat to be finished.  But you will have to believe it is 1000x's better.

Most frustrating - when I arrived home to put it together with the Before picture I tool on a previous visit:

Window

I did not catch the sill in the before!  The owners had put these items here to keep them mutts from doing any further damage. I took a photo of the mess for my Before.  I should have been keeping better track of the pictures.

Moral of the story - keep taking photos!  Digital memory does not cost any thing!  You can always delete, but you can not necessarily recreate the ones you missed!

Cathy Lee
CL Design Services Home Staging - Danville, CA
ASP, IAHSP, RESA Danville, CA

You are such a hoot!  Thanks for the great blog!

Mar 02, 2009 08:28 AM
Elaine Manes Gage
Home Staging Online Services - Denver, CO
Staging done ONLINE!

Don't beat yourself up too bad, Michael! We all do it! I NEVER take as many shots as I'd like, and I always come home with less than I thought I took! It's a weird phenomenon! Sounds like your hard work on ithe sill paid off, and that's the important thing.

Mar 02, 2009 02:13 PM
Cindy Bryant
Redesign Etc. Home Staging - Houston, TX
"Houston Home Staging Pros"

I agree, I never take enough photos or the right angles. 

Mar 02, 2009 04:01 PM
Michele Hess
Simply Staged Inc. - Rockford, IL
Home Stager Rockford - Simply Staged Inc

Seems like whenever I only take a few before photos it turns out to be one of my favorite transformations or vacant home stage and no great shots from the same angle.  Thanks for the reminder. . .take more photos, take more photos, take more photos. 

Mar 02, 2009 08:45 PM
Melissa Marro
Keller Williams First Coast Realty - The Marro Team - Orange Park, FL
Jacksonville Real Estate and Home Staging

Oh how true... far too often I've taken far too few photos!  Keep reminding us and maybe one day we'll learn!

Mar 03, 2009 09:53 AM
Michael Fontana
Round Rock Home Stager Austin Home Staging - Round Rock, TX
@ The Stage Coach

thanks for the comments, all! 

It regularly happens that I did not get the right angle or same angle.  It was so frustrating for me, as I was really excited for the owners.  And for myself.  It would have been a great example of my services to have the B&A shots.  Saved the owners the money and trouble of bringing in a professional to remove and replace it, which is what they thought they would do.

Oh, well.  On to the next one!  Right?

The Stage Coach Austin Home Stager

Mar 03, 2009 09:58 AM
Todd McAllister
On Stage home staging and redesign co. Portland, OR. - Portland, OR

So here is a story about photos and saving them.  We had over 650 photos of jobs on one of our hard drives (so you can already see where I am going with this) and all photos backed- up on a disk.  The hard drive crashed.  Not a problem, we have them backed up.  Get out the back-up and load them.  Make sure that the back-up diak is not corrupt!  Know you know about the pain we have been enduring over the past 6 months.  We are now re-building our archives of photos and it has been a much slower now that the market has tanked.  The market in our area is starting to pick-up a little.  To all you photo takers, be careful....

Mar 26, 2009 12:44 PM