I’ve been addicted to decorating since I was a kid. I remember insisting that my room be painted a deep turquoise, and my rattan headboard white, because I could totally picture how one would stand out against the other and compliment the pale creamy-yellow duvet. At the risk of revealing my age, I’ll admit it was the 1960s. Even now I can see that decorating scheme in my mind’s eye, and it still looks cool.
As a teen, I painted murals on my bedroom wall and also the high school cafeteria. In my first marketing coup and “payment” for my creative talent, I managed to convince the vice principal of the high school to exempt me from swimming as reward for decorating the cafeteria. Hey if you don’t ask, you never know!
Then came adulthood and a series of rental apartments.
Finding the perfect bedding, shower curtain and towels were always highest on my list of priorities since I had almost no budget for furniture and painting the actual walls was against my rental agreements.
When I finally became a homeowner with my first real estate purchase at the age of 29, I was in heaven! There was still no real decorating budget for my tiny condo, especially since I had just quit my 6-figure job as a Marketing Director to become an entrepreneur. No matter; with a few cans of paint and the right accessories, I could create magic. I even managed to get about 12 years of use out of the ugliest sofa you’ve ever seen by putting a piece of plywood under the sagging cushions and covering it with a huge canvas painter’s drop cloth. Sounds like something a home stager would do, right? I hadn’t even heard the term at that point.
About 7 years later, I had created as many different looks as I could think of for my condo and it was time to move so I could get my next decorating fix.
Condos and houses seem to speak to me and I knew I had reinvented the same space as many times as I could. Within the next 4 years, I bought, decorated, and sold 5 more real estate properties, living in them all along the way! It was not until the last one that I realized I was born to be a home stager, and launched my home staging and redesign company Six Elements Inc. with no more information than:
- Knowing I was talented at quick makeovers and decorating on a shoestring
- Knowing I could decorate a home to appeal to buyers
- Wanting to keep decorating without having to keep moving all the time
- Believing I could use my marketing talents to market myself and my home staging services
- Believing I could make relatively easy money selling my knowledge and expertise to home sellers who wanted to sell their homes fast and for top dollar
Many Staging Diva Students and Graduates have told me similar stories of knowing they were born to decorate. Some rarely played with dolls because they were too busy decorating and redecorating their doll houses. When I heard that, visions of cut up Kleenex boxes and creative uses of empty toilet paper rolls came flooding back to me as I remembered the complex floor plans and “furniture” arrangements I’d lay out on our basement floor! Even then I recall thinking real Barbie® houses and furniture were kind of lame because there was no creativity to it (or at least that’s what I told myself because there was no way I was getting the real thing!).
The funny thing is, ever since I started my home staging business in 2002, I haven’t had the constant urge to move anymore! I’m convinced it’s because I can get my decorating fix working on my clients’ homes. And it’s actually quite creative having to make something beautiful out of furniture I might never have picked on my own.
Did you start decorating when you were a kid? What’s your first memory of decorating or realizing it was something you just “had” to do? How do you get your decorating fix now; are you a home stager? Please share your story by commenting below!
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business. Her Home Staging Business Training Program has over 4,000 students in 21 countries.
My parents knew I was the child destined for something in the realm of architecture. While my brother and older cousins built rocket ships or weird imaginary things/creatures out of Legos, I was the one who would built small single story bungalows complete with windows and doors and a nicely pitched roof.
I was also the child who wanted a “wall” built in the middle of her room to divide my “pretty” area (which had to be kept neat and it’s what everyone saw) from my “play” area (where the toys could be strung about with the books on the floor and I didn’t have to pick it up daily). Hence, my father built a floor to ceiling partition with a six foot wide center section with two foot “wings” on each side which looked like a bracket “]” The main part of my bedroom- with my white canopy bed and white painted dresser was part of the pretty section while behind the “wall” lay the piles of naked Barbies looking akin to the mass wounded soldiers scene in Gone With the Wind.
Enter the teenage years and the definitive taste I had for my Japanese inspired bedroom of grey and white with smatterings of red and black as accents. I will admit that my determination to have things flow a certain way would have me awake at 2am and shifting furniture and accessories around… until a rather sleep deprived yet beloved father would open the door at 2:30am and insist in his snore ravaged voice “Is this *really* necessary?!!” (For the record, I would plead yes and although I swore I would be even more quiet, my sentence would be “Bed. NOW.”)
Fast forward as an adult- yes, decorating and design is in my blood and genetic code. Combine that with the dogged determination to find the quality I want at a reasonable price and my mother’s Scottish ancestry is quite proud
My husband knows that I often have a vision of how I want a room to flow, how I want the color to work or inspire, and I will not rest until I find that artwork (or until I get pre-stretched canvas and create it myself).
This is my third “new” house but my fourth residence overall. I love choosing and creating from a blank canvas as I’ve done in my new homes but I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of updating a 25 year old townhouse (Pepto pink bedroom walls… really?! Oh thank goodness for primer). I love touring open houses, imagining what I could accomplish and then wondering why someone thought the creepy porcelain dolls in the corner of the living room were a good idea…
Melissa, thanks so much for sharing your story! I really appreciate it.
As a kid, home decorating have always been fascinating to me, “while my sister is excited going for sunday mass, im excited not for the sunday mass but for the fact that i have the whole morning to redesign our living room while they are out.”
At that time my mom just wont give in to me, she just wont believe that i have better understanding of arranging furniture at a very young age of 11. It is when we moved to a new house, when my mom finally gave in and trusted me to choose all the furniture, wall color, accessories and all. My moms friends were so impressed with our house that i started doing her friends house as well , my uncles house, cousins and so on. I did not stop since then, I didnt know i was doing home staging all this years and never thought that i can do it proffesionaly , its only when i read one of Debra’s article that i came across home staging. After taking the course, its just non stop for me, in one year ive already staged 4 homes, i have two big redesigning projects scheduled before the end of the year and recently i was invited to Alberta to do another redesigning project for a newly renovated house all expenses paid! Now i realized that when you start doing what you truly love, it will translate and the feeling of happiness is unbelievable. Being a stock trader and a home stager is not easy but i am having the best time! Opening my own company redesign4more is probably one of the best decision ever.. The best years of my life has finally begun! Thanks Debra!! I just cant thank you enough!
Red, thanks for sharing your early childhood memories of those staging and decorating projects! And congratulations on all your success since completing the Staging Diva Courses. Don’t forget to post info of your success on my Facebook wall for your chance to win $25 in Staging Diva cash. You just need a sentence or two posted at:
http://www.facebook.com/TheStagingDiva
Debra, I recall at a very early age going with my Mother to visit her friends. When we would leave, she was always amazed at how much I absorbed during the visit. I could tell her where every piece of furniture was placed, wall colors and how each picture had been hung. I even pointed out and asked, ” Why do they hang their pictures so high? ” Guess even back then I understood eye level.
Years later, I now in my 20′s convinced my Mother to sell our family home. Although she was not really sold on the idea, decided what the heck, it won’t sell anyway. I quickly began to prepare for the sale. We cleaned, painted and fine tuned every space inside and out. Our house was listed and SOLD first showing and a few days on the market. Needless to say, Mother was in shock. Keep in mind this was the 80′s before staging was a big deal or I even understood the concept. Perhaps then I should have realized my talents. Hmmm, I could have been The Staging Dude! It has been fun going down memory lane. Debra, Thanks for the post.
Gary, what an awesome story! Thanks for sharing!
Debra,
Your article brought back a flood of memories for me. Growing up, we didn’t have much money but I remember my mom taking a round potato chip box and making Cinderella’s coach out of it for a box supper. I won first place! This attitude inspired me to look at the mundane and make something beautiful out of it.
Vaccuuming in our house was always an opportunity to rearrange the furniture! You never knew what it was going to look llike. I would even push the big piano around to suit my “taste of the week”!
Later, in married life I enrolled in decorating classes at the local vo-tech. I still use some of the things I learned there today. One idea was to remember to use furniture in different ways. After my last child was born, I bought a hoosier cabinet, and used it as a dresser/changing table for the baby!
Thanks for the memories!
Peggy, I’m glad I could help trigger those decorating memories! Thanks for sharing them with us.
Susan, your comment about drawing room plans on graph paper just brought up a memory for me. Recently I was going through my grammar school diary and found in the back of it floor plans for our bedrooms (we had 3 in our house growing up). It was very neatly drawn and clearly labeled with dresser, bed, etc. I know these plans were more about documenting our house than about space planning, but I must have had some knack for and interest in this, even back then.
Donna, now that you share that, I recall I did that too! When my teen was younger and interested in playing Sims, I noticed that most of her attention went towards building and decorating their homes rather than focusing on the people.
As a teenager I was extremely dramatic with my concepts of lighting and color and so aware of impressions others would have when visiting our home. I convinced my Mother that our living room would be so beautifuf if she would have it painted dark blue. The painter thought her teenager was a bit off….but he painted the room….then I placed an end table with an interesting lamp on it next to French doors, turned off the overhead light and went outside, leaving the front door open to see the effect if someone was to look in from the street. I repeatedly created little scenes of drama all over our home with paint and lighting, sometimes ending in trouble ..The midnight blue color lasted for only a few months…but now I am painting a bedroom the beautiful intense midnight blue and using mirror furniture in it. I will always need glamour in my life..it brightens up the world.
Danielle, I know what you mean about going outside at night to see what it’s like when you look in. My last house was a very modest semi-detached house. I bought it just as I was moving to a new city and starting my home staging business.I didn’t have any real budget for decorating it, but I used to smile whenever I drove up at night. Peering in from the street it was so clear that an artist lived there as there were bright colors and (my own) art on all the walls. Like you describe, it was very dramatic and brightened my world
I am addicted to decorating AND born to be a home stager. My mom worked full time when I was growing up in the 60′s and I think her MIA at home gave me lots of opportunities to arrange the inside of our home and work in the yard making it look beautiful. I don’t remember too many 5th graders who sat around and looked at hardbound books about trees and flowers! I still spend hours outside landscapping – I have a creative need and energy to rearrange the earth, too! I was the oldest for four children in our family and I convinced my mom to let me have my own bedroom so I could “study.” But what I really wanted to do was decorate my own space and sorround myself with the energy that suited me. I chose hot pink and lime green for bedding and curtains. I wanted white walls because the room was south facing and lite up so amazing like when the sun poured in through the windows. I talked my mom into ordering me “french provencial” furnishings from the Sears catalog and I got a canopy bed. I felt like a goddess in my own space! I kept my room neat and liked everything in just the right place – a detail oriented kid and a blooming home stager!
Stacy, your story SO makes me smile! The room you describe and color scheme would be totally in style today too!
I love beautiful landscaping too, but I don’t think I have any talent for creating it. When I walk into a room I can instantly see what to move around, outside, this just doesn’t happen for me. Especially since I have zero knowledge about what plants work in sun or shade, how much water they need, or how they’ll spread out when they grow. This is a special talent. Glad you have it!
I guess I was always space planning and organizing things. I just loved thinking about my personal spaces like my bedroom, school locker, and dorm rooms.
As I got older I actually used to draw floor plans on graph paper. My parents liked to drive around on the weekends and look at model homes and that is how I would get my ideas.
My biggest memory with regard to my bedroom, is rearranging the furniture. I was always trying to make the room feel as big as it could. My mom loved decorating, so we did a lot of that together. She also sewed and I remember making quilts for my bed. Window treatments, bedspread, skirt, pillows were all made by us. My dad was extremely handy too. He was a great painter and even built a few pieces of furniture for me – to my specifications. Even then, I knew the value of using vertical space!
As I got older I planned my college dorm rooms all summer, and they always felt like home. Looking back now, I realize that I’ve been decorating, space planning, and organizing as far back as I can remember.
Susan, thanks so much for this window into the past and the influences that helped shape the wonderful talent you have today!
Your article on this topic sure brought back a floodgate of memories for me.
I was constantly rearranging my bedroom. The barbie thing? It’s like you were describing my own childhood.
I’m not sure I can pinpoint my first concrete memory of when I knew I just had to do it, but my mother was the same way. I’d help her re-configure rooms in our house. Of course, she didn’t realize back then (in the 1970′s) exactly what it was. She just couldn’t stand looking at a room the same way all the time and frankly, even as a child, neither could I.
I feel the same way about staging people’s homes to “get that fix”. It’s a feeling of accomplishment and it makes me feel good to know I helped someone with their own decorating/redesign issues.
I am on my third time around my own house. Right now I’m repainting and re-staging my home office. I love it and can’t imagine doing anything else. In fact, the only regret I have is not recognizing this was my career path a long time ago instead of wasting time in a soul sucking office job.
Kathi, I love what you’ve shared here! So perfect. I’m hoping others share similar memories, I just KNOW we all have them!
As to your final comment about your only regret being not recognizing this was your “career path a long time ago instead of wasting time in a soul sucking office job,” to that I’ll say, the good news is you found your dream and took action before it was too late! This reminds me of a great proverb, “the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is today.”