I loved this house well and I had so much fun making it ours, adding my personal style everywhere. The following pictures don’t fully reflect my personal style, because these were the listing photos for the house just prior to us buying it (sight unseen!) and after my friend Ky and I pulled up our bootstraps and prepared the house for showings.

If you haven’t sold a home before, you probably don’t know: you don’t just take pictures of how you’re living in it. You’re going to want to do quite a few things before you put it up.

Prepping a House for the Market

1. Take down personal items. Photography especially–you want the potential buyer to picture themselves there, not you.
2. Remove all clutter. Your kitchen counters should be devoid of appliances, your fireplace mantle shouldn’t have any tchochkes.
3. Take a LOT of furniture out. Open up the space as much as you can.
4. Take the books out of the shelves and style them instead. Creating space even on your furniture opens up the room to the eye. It’s like magic.
5. The more you move out of site, the better. Use the garage or the basement, if you have one, to put these items away. If not, rent a short-term storage unit.

As mentioned in our moving announcement, our house sold in three days! We had an offer and a back up offer quicker than we could have imagined.

The Home Tour, Before and After

These are photos that we had listed online of our house when it was on the market in 2015 when we bought it, and months ago when we listed it.

Front Exterior, Before:

Front Exterior, After:

Mudroom Before (from my move-in post, this wasn’t online)

Mudroom after:

Living/Dining Room Before:

Living/Dining Room After:

Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After:

First Floor Bath Before:

First Floor Bath After:

This was actually my next project. I had already made a inspiration board and everything! Oh well, on to the next one!

First Floor Bedroom Before:

First Floor Bedroom After:

Second Floor Bedroom 1 Before:

Second Floor Bedroom 1 After:

Second Floor Bath Before:

….There wasn’t a before picture of this listed. But you Can check out my Jungalow Bathroom posts to see all of the things I did for this room & the One Room Challenge.

Second Floor Bath After:

Second Floor Bedroom 2 Before:

Second Floor Bedroom 2 After:

Backyard Before:

Backyard After:

This isn’t all!

This isn’t how we lived in the home. There were a lot of personal touches that buyers might not have appreciated that were out of the pictures, a lot of stylized items that would be misconstrued as clutter, and more furniture for when we had guests. I’ll make a few posts about those and then we’ll move on to the projects at the new house!