• Move furniture closer to the wall.
  • Furniture that isn’t against, or near, a wall can block walkways and interfere with your view of a space, making it feel smaller.
• Light it up!
  • Brighter rooms look bigger! Let in as much natural light as possible; light is the only thing you can fill a room with that doesn’t take up space.
  • If that doesn’t work, replace any light bulbs in the room with a good quality, high output compact florescent bulbs. This will not only make the room brighter, it will lower your lighting bill!
  • If there is only one source of light in a room, consider adding a lamp.
• Keep it clean!
  • If you don’t need it in the room, get it out of the room! If it must be there, keep it neatly tucked out of the way. The more open space in the room, the bigger the room will feel.
• Use a simple color scheme.
  • Use colors from the same color family.
  • Cool and light warm colors on most surfaces will make the room feel more open, dark colors will make it feel more cramped.
  • If you have to paint any walls, we recommend Freshaire Choice paint for its environmentally friendly properties and premium durability.
• Soften up!
  • Again, dark colors make a space feel cozy and intimate; in a small room, this translates to cramped.
  • Lighter, cooler colors can make the same room feel more open and airy.
  • Soft blue and green tones give the best effect.
• Check your coordination!
  • Your furniture will appear to take up less space if it blends in with the rest of your decor.
  • Contrasting colors break up a room, making it look and feel smaller.

Take these ides and run with them. Apply them to your smallest room first, then try them in your biggest room. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that your house is bigger than it looked!

For more on this Henry and Vicker’s successful staging and sale, read the full story from Trans World News.

Figures from K+BB January 2008 issue

Side note: Liebherr also is a manufacturer of concrete mixers, aerospace products, cargo handling machines, earthmoving and mining equipment, all sorts of cranes, and other large machines and tools!

When doing research for this blog I found the ReadyMade Magazine website which has a million projects that anyone can search through with complete instructions – magazine subscription free! So if you like the mid-century post-war modern (Design Within Reach style) and IKEA or - better yet - Salvation Army prices, then this magazine might be for you!

• Recycling one aluminum can save the energy equivalent to six ounces of gasoline.
• The energy saved by recycling steel each year is enough to meet the annual electric need of 20% of American households.
• Recycling one ton of plastic saves the energy equivalent to 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of gasoline.
• Making new glass from recycled glass reduces air pollution by 20% and water pollution by 50%.
• Recycling creates almost 5 times as many jobs as waste disposal – in fact, recycling supports 1.1 million jobs in the U.S.

Gas prices are high here in Ohio and they have everyone grumbling. The economy isn’t looking too good either. So if we can make an impact on gas prices, create jobs, and make our skies a little bluer, then what are Summit County homeowners waiting for?

According to a recent article on the Washington Times website, “This year’s housing bust is shaping up to be one of historic proportions. Sales and construction have sunk to levels not seen since the 1990 savings and loan crisis, while foreclosures and price drops are the largest since the Great Depression — and expected to get worse next year.” The article predicts millions more foreclosures and over one trillion dollars (yes trillion) in mortgages reset within the next two years. So what caused this dilemma? “John Stumpf, president of Wells Fargo & Co., the second-largest U.S. mortgage lender and a survivor of the housing busts of the 20th century, blames today’s crisis on unscrupulous lending practices, which joined in a toxic mix with outright greed and extraordinarily low interest rates to send house prices soaring 90 percent between 2000 and 2006. When the bubble burst, house prices collapsed by 5 percent to 20 percent in cities nationwide.”

Greed definitely played a huge role in the extreme number of foreclosures. Rachel saw this first hand when she worked for years at a mortgage company and knew of other offices whose brokers would intentionally sell adjustable rate mortgages so that borrowers would have to refinance a few years down the road. That way the broker could charge them more fees. Can we say predatory lending? Her office did the right thing and locked homeowners into fixed rates at historic lows that they could afford. If only more lenders did the right thing.

Lenders are now giving their lending practices a makeover by re-popularizing the 30 year fixed loan. You can read more about the crooked lending process and the governments role in this economic decline in this article, part one of the Washington Time’s series.

WallMarkers are reusable and come in a pack of two, a blue for light walls and a yellow for darker walls. The price is right at just $2.99 plus a small amount of shipping and handling. Order them here, I did!

Time to vent! I refuse to throw away plastic bags and I just won’t use paper grocery bags. Now I have bags of bags of bags, especially during this shopping season. The collection is getting out of control but there is an answer! No, I am not going to break down and throw them in the trash. (Speaking of break down, it takes plastic bags as much as 1,000 years to break down in landfill and 450 in water.) I plan on taking my bags to a local recycling bin (as seen in many Medina, OH parking lots) or to the local Giant Eagle grocery store which also has a bag-recycling bin. I will also stash a folded-up fabric shopping bag in my purse. Maybe this will relieve me from the funny looks I get when I reuse or refuse a bag at the store! 

Furthermore, I will now give preference to retailers that sell reusable shopping bags, like Giant Eagle. When I am not at a green store, I tend to apologize to clerks about my proactiveness, but why should I? I think I am hip and ahead of the crowd, kind of like the city of San Francisco who recently banned plastic grocery bags. You can read more about that in this past post by Sharon.

My friend’s think I’m crazy, but I know I am just more educated and aware about the issue. Now you are too.

More facts on plastic bags and their unfriendly impact on the earth:

• Plastic bags don’t biodegrade because their components do not biodegrade (especially oil). They actually break down into smaller toxic bits which become consumable contaminants for animals, even humans.
• Other than oil, plastic bags contain metals like chromium and copper. Exposure leads to diseases.
• Oil is expensive! Can avoiding plastic bags lower gas prices? Yes, if more people change their ways! 12 million barrels of oil, remember?
• My fave environmentally friendly, earth-loving, life-changing website ever - IdealBite – is chock full of facts like the one at the beginning of this article. 

SIGHT is the primary sense when it comes to interior design. Curb appeal draws the buyer into the home. Sight is constant and obvious when it comes to showing your home. It is easy for a homeowner to overlook things that they live with everyday, but a stager will see your home and its contents objectively through the eyes of a buyer. 

SMELL The most impactful ones are actually negative smells that deter a sale. Animal, garbage, smoke, basement, and food smells should be eliminated. Don’t simply try to mask them, because that raises a red flag and a buyer will wonder what is being covered up. Positive smells are natural like fresh flowers or fruit. 

TOUCH may be the most overlooked of the senses, but keep in mind what a buyer will touch.  They will open doors and cabinets. They will check light switches. They will turn on water. A stager will check all these things first to let you know what needs fixed.

SOUND is important. A buyer looking for a peaceful retreat will not be at ease with a home on a noisy street. Playing soft classical music is a positive way to entice buyers, show off built in home audio systems, or cover minor sounds. It is also important to eliminate the sounds that people associate with maintenance.

TASTE can be seen in a staged home or a magazine advertisement. We’re not talking about decorating with good taste, but the sense of taste. We stage items that appeal to the tastebuds and a lifestyle any buyer would enjoy.

The best weapon to combat this home sales slump?  Staging.  Staging increases the home’s value, gets more traffic from MLS pictures on the web, and will beat the competition in appearance and move-in readiness.

Bottom line:  when the competition is tough, serious sellers call stagers to get the home sold.  In the Crain’s article a homeowner whose home has been on the market for a year said “he’s tired of waiting for a buyer, so he’s toying with hiring a home stager – a specialist in preening homes for sale . . .”  My response to him:  There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain by hiring a stager; go for it.”

- 10 ways to increase the value of your home anytime

- 10 ways to get the most money for your home when you sell

- advice on finding and buying the home of your dreams

- making your kitchen ready for homebuyers

- beautiful curb appeal

- and much, much more,

Find HGTV’s real estate tips and tricks here.

What would you be? Tell us!