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Make Your Porch Pop |Home Staging| Rochester, MN

I don’t know about you, but this cooler-than-normal Minnesota spring has me yearning for the long summer days with sun so warm it burns my skin. If summer could come sooner, I would even willingly accept the “h” word… humidity! It’s this longing for warmth that drove my initiative to revamp our three season porch. To be honest, I thought I might as well try to will summer upon us by getting my porch ready, because mother nature is not holding up her end of the bargain.

Here are humble pictures of the porch before the upgrade. The porch is a decent size, rich in warm browns and right off the recently updated kitchen. Honestly, it was a slight eye sore next to the updated kitchen with it’s beige-on-beige motif. This truly hurt my heart having such a beautiful kitchen with large glass windows looking out onto a drab space. The space has loads of potential that is used religiously by our family as an extended outdoor dining room and central gathering place for friends and family. The space was already designed for functionality, but desperately called for some increased tranquility and personality.

Armed with a nearly non-existent budget and less than an hour to shop, I hit the closest store to home, Walmart. I had been dreaming of buying a blue rug for this space for nearly two years. Briskly walking through the Home & Garden section, I found a rug that was the perfect shade of blue. However the space called for a 9 by 13 foot rug and Wallyworld only had 6 by 9 foot rugs. If you know about rug sizes, 9 by 13 feet is not a common rug size to find at a box store. The stars aligned for this rug though. Pairing two rugs side by side we were able to replicate a 9 by 13 foot rug. We coupled the rugs with some beautiful throw pillows to pull out the blue tones from the rug and brought in some greenery for accent decor. We don’t always get lucky, but on this dreary cold Sunday we were able to transform this space into a peaceful and inviting oasis in the matter of hours.

Taking Good Staging to Great Using Creativity| Home Staging | Rochester, MN

How do you grab a buyer’s attention when they’ve already looked at numerous properties that day? How do you stand out among all the other homes with granite counters, stainless steel appliances and hardwood floors? The answer might surprise you. Staging!

Anyone can put artwork and furniture in a room and call it staged. What sets apart an average home stager from a great home stager? Creativity!

“Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.” Human Motivations, 3rd ed., by Robert E. Franken (page 336).

Creativity is not something that can be learned; it’s an innate quality. The best home stagers use their craft to visually communicate to potential home buyers the use of the home. This is done through creating a corner, a vignette, or a niche with something that transcends the buyers senses letting them dream of a new life. It could be one item, a grouping, a particular accent color, or something special and unexpected and yet familiar, all at the same time.

Creativity solves problems. Staging helps to create maximum impact through careful deliberation and strategic intention. Often furniture is analyzed to see if fits aesthetically and spatially in certain rooms, art is strategically placed to draw the eye in certain directions, and decor is delicately placed in precise locations to keep the eye focused on the best qualities of the home.

At the end of the day, home stagers are in the business of selling homes. Stagers with creativity in their toolbox is crucial to getting the job done. Let Nesst Companies be the key tool in your toolbox to achieving a sold sign on your property today.

Is Staging Necessary in a Sellers Market? | Home Staging | Rochester, MN

All signs point to spring of 2019 as a sellers market again. Thus, I was recently asked, “In a sellers market, do I really need to stage my home?” My honest answer… yes!

Staging is necessary for two reasons. First, a staged home results in better photos. Photos are your home’s currency online, and the more appealing they are the more views your listing will receive. A new listing gets three times more views in its first week on the market than at any time after that. First impressions matter.

Tip: Launch your home’s debut listing fully staged, rather than waiting to “see how it goes” and investing in staging if the home doesn’t sell.

Second, staging allows buyers to understand how they would actually live in the home. The typical person shopping for a home isn’t a trained designer and won’t naturally envision how an empty space could function.

Staging can also help overcome challenges such as odd angles or demonstrate how creating “zones” within a small space make it more functional than it may appear when vacant.

Transforming Your Kitchen for $251 | Home Staging | Rochester, MN

They say kitchens are the heart of the home, core of the castle, and the rock of the residence. This is the first room you notice when you walk into someone else’s house. It’s where egg beaters are licked by small kids while cooking with parents, where laughs and conversations flow over drinks with friends and family, and where parents and kids attempt homework. If a majority of your time is spent in the kitchen, why not make this space your very own oasis?

Meet Dan. This jack of all trades, handyman, father, pharmacy technician, and golf enthusiast took our kitchen from boring beige-on-beige-on-beige to the ultimate gray retreat. With a strategic plan in design and concept, a next to nothing budget, and some amazing black Friday deals, Dan transformed this space in a few short weeks for $251.00!

$100 – Glass Tiled Backsplash (Menards)

$10 – Grout (Menards)

$0 – Morter

$90 – GFI Outlet Upgrades, Switches, & Covers (Menards)

$35 – Paint (Sherwin Williams)

$16 – Cabinet Puck Lights (Amazon)

Project Total: $251

Running Out of Womb | Home Staging | Rochester, MN

Meet Melissa. Melissa will soon be a mother of two with a six year old and a little one on the way. Entering the home stretch of her pregnancy, Melissa needed an easy and manageable plan to make existing furniture from a previous home work in a smaller space. She also wanted to incorporate an adorable rocking chair gifted from a friend. Nesst Companies worked with Melissa to determine a neutral color pallet that would complement her existing decor and furniture, showed her how to strategically place furniture to maximize the space and function of the room, and suggested local retailers to find missing pieces she was looking for.

“Sarah incorporated my vision and must haves for the room. I was impressed with how easy and fun the process was.” –Melissa, Rochester, MN