STAGING to SELL!!!

Never has a project lived up to my vision... a common sadness for the artistically inclined. I'm a proficient stager, so it's pretty disappointing when I don't have the time or energy to properly stage my own house. However, it's all with a clear goal in mind.

Move the sucker.

Note to home stagers:

Below, you'll find the first round of photos to go on the MLS website. The goal is to show off value-adding features and make every room look big and bright.

My photographer friend, George Retelas, advised me and it made a HUGE difference in the impression potential walk-throughs will get when they see the pics on the MLS website. To learn about George as a photographer, cinematographer, and filmmaker, you can go to www.georgeretelas.com He's basically amazing, and I get free photography advise. Lucky me. I also had him do my dance promotional shots, which can be found on my dance website: www.stephaniebatista.com

If you CANNOT get your hands on George, do the following when taking photos:

Get your hands on a wide angle lens.

Take shots from the corner of the room, from the ceiling-down or the ground-up. That room will look MASSIVE, in a really open, inviting, "BUY ME" way.


Here is the first round of photos, for your viewing pleasure. Happy staging!

Homemaker Remodeled 3D: A Divorce Response

I chose the name "Homemaker Remodeled" because I liked the pun on the standard stay-at-home mom and redefining, or "remodeling", what that role in the home entails (ie: diy projects in addition to spit-up clean up and daily chores). I have recently discovered a third level to this pun.

Divorce.

Yup.

Sparing everyone the details of why, I'll only briefly note that this is for the best and everyone is better off for this decision. We all deserve to be happy, and this decision will best lead us all there. I see that now.

However, myself, my life - the roles I play, my time, my mental/emotional/physical investments - are already undergoing a drastic remodeling gut job. Some areas will keep the same blue print, while others won't.

My plan:

1. Give my sweet Hazel the availability, continuity, and emotional security she's accustomed to and depends on.

2. Become super strong and self-sufficient by going back to school and getting an MBA in marketing.

3. Master all selves.

With regards to item 2, I'm excited to develop my talents in the area that is least developed, despite the entrepreneurial skills developed through owning and promoting my dance business the better part of the last decade. A Marketing focused MBA should marry my verbal/written skills, social acuity, and creativity with some sharpened business savvy and financial know-how. I will develop and expand all my most prevalent talents in doing this and aid my goal to grow exponentially through these recent choices and circumstances. Which leads me to item 3.

You may laugh, but I've been feeling restless. Big surprise. I blog about it. It's in my personality to be restless, especially when sensing stagnation. I value growth immensely. This moment allows me a rare opportunity to grow at a highly accelerated rate, and I don't want to miss it. The pain from the cause of these sudden changes - namely the divorce - is there. I can see it and recognize it as mourning something that has died. But it feels more like the death of a relative long anticipated, and so most of the mourning is done before the final death, and despite the pain and shock of the final moment, there is mostly relief. What I mostly feel is joy.

An aside: Joy and sorrow are inseparably connected. Just as one's capacity to embody pain expands with the confrontation of it, so too does one's capacity to embody joy expand. The heart broadens to hold it all. Any deep emotion, bright or dark, deepens our ability to feel. Period. And so, the lesson is not "I'll be happy later." The lesson, instead, is "I am happy now, even as I am in pain."

So with this joy, mixed with the addiction to growth, I am excited for these new paths because it brings me the chance to master all my selves. This means that I am being tempered by the intensity of these experiences, and because of that, I can better harness, channel, and strengthen my mind, heart, spirit, and body.

Just how am I doing that? How am I remodeling myself?

First, an analogy.

I recently hosted a bookgroup and we read "Housekeeping" by Marylin Robinson. They all hated it, which is always fun. What I love about it at this moment in my life is the redefinition of oneself as compared to a house. How do you keep your House? Is it orderly or chaotic? Do you welcome guests? Who? how far into the house do they get? The living room? The bedroom? What food and life and color is in your house? When do the lights go out for sleep? etc

I want a house of mastery, order, and whimsy.

So I joined a gym. Seems simple enough, but the daily habit of disciplining my body has had ripple effects into my study habits, organization, punctuality, ambition, etc.

Instead of lounging on the couch, depressed, shoveling Ben and Jerry's (ooh...Fish Food...argh! focus), I am learning algebra for the GMAT required for MBA admissions. I can remember staying after school everyday in Mrs. Adam's Freshmen algebra class, not trusting myself to complete my homework alone at home, let alone find the right answer. 3 hours, everyday, all semester. My dad would bring my lunch and dinner while I sat there, teacher by my side, plugging away at it. Now, 15 years later, I'm learning the same algebra again, only this time my ability to provide for my daughter depends on my ability to find "x". But I'll tell you, the satisfaction of discovering that I am, in fact, good at math, and that I can take my least favorite subject - during this moment in my life - and conquer it, it's no small thrill.

I'm journaling and reading a lot. I'm finding that keeps the emotions clean, unmuddled, and maintain a solid grip on reality, history. How did I get here? Why am I doing this? What are my goals? I think there is a clinical condition call DADD: Divorce Attention Defecit Disorder. I started forgetting stuff - big stuff - everywhere: wallet, passport, purse, luggage, kid in security line, etc etc etc. I got them all back, but still. I have to stay clear and paced. And it's working, I'm already almost all the way out of the fog.

And most importantly, I'm busting my butt to give Hazel the same present, whimsical, attuned Mommy she's always had.

I'm feeding my body the exercise, my mind Algebra, my spirit words and meditation. But my heart...my heart is on it's own abstract but driven trajectory towards expansion, an infinite capacity to embody my emotions, and become basically indestructible because of it. My love or self-image will never waiver again. I won't allow that anymore.

And so, my last point.

Whimsy, and all that this blog has espoused to until now, MUST live on. And it must live on now, not when the divorce is final, or I'm done with my MBA, or when Hazel starts Kindergarten, or when I remarry fifty bazillion years from now. Whimsy is required today, just like love is on the menu for me, Hazel, husband, and everyone in my vicinity.

And I love home remodeling/decorating. That means that part of my divorce therapy is window treatments. My counselor: my favorite cookbook. My aroma therapy: the smell of thin set and paint. etc

I may be rewriting the book on divorce, taking over corporate, and so on, but I still need to be me. And that means being fiercely loyal to a child-like joy in all things, even the seemingly superficial or frilly. Just cuz my brain is a no-frill zone right now, doesn't mean I can't wear them.

And so, I will revamp this blog to fit this third dimension of remodeling - remodeling the house of Self. Perhaps I'll blog about staging my house for resale, or being a single mom in our own Hazel-Stephanie cottage at some point. Who knows.

In the meantime, I'm happy.

Fav new designer: Mary Bairstow

http://www.marybairstowdesigns.com/interior+homeaccents/home_1.html

I married into quite the hoity-toity family. So hoity-toity, and so different from me, I don't even know how to correctly spell hoity-toity. My father-in-law owns a house in the Hamptons, Sag Harbor specifically. Growing up middle class in California, one could joke about being rich in the Hamptons, but I always imagined it was a cluster of huge white mansions somewhere in the East Coast. To my surprise, it's a tiny series of beach towns, undiscovered by the Manhatten upper class for many years, then swarmed by those wanting to vacation away for east side ambition. The down side, it's now a rich beach town, with really expensive grocery stores.

The appeal, however, is clear, and as long as we live off of pancakes and frozen pizzas, we can have a pretty fancy vacation there every summer.

This year was year 4 or 5, going out for a week in the Summer. While there, my mother-in-law, Nancy, is there building her own house (father and mother in-law divorced), so she came out to play with us. She found a fantastic antique fair, complete with all the stuff I only see in magazines and could never afford myself. While at this fair, I encounter Mary Bairstow.

It was industrial, farmhouse chic...presicely my personal style (though my house doesn't lend itself to this style, so I veer from it in my own home decor, opting for what works with the house instead of my own inclinations).

I was so in love with the antique rice sack pillows, the vintage center islands with patina metal tops, the wire basket and bulb light fixtures, vintage corbels, etc.

Enjoy.

Update and survey: "Why haven't you finished doing that project yet?"

The busy Summer travel season is coming to a close, but not before I spend most of October in California with my family. I always do a 2 week trip around a dance event called Boogie by the Bay in SF. While there, I inevitably eat my way through the bay area, completely abandoning my nutritional regimine in exchange for a nostalgic tour of the tastebuds.

Update: In response to a previous post, I did decide to partner up and dance a routine, putting baby #2 and design energies on hold, or at least in remission (yes, my design obsession is like a cancer, like a benign tumor that doesn't leave room for much else in life). And while I thought this would mean doing less decorating/remodeling, for some reason I'm doing to same amount, only for my house instead of others'.

I took all of Hazel's toys and organized them in the basement, installing new shelving to get them up off the floor and visible. I'm so tired of having volumes of stuff for Hazel to play with, and she's only inspired to grab what she can find on the surface, just the tinker toys that litter the ocean surface.

I also took all of my tools and began organizing them in the other half of our 2-car garage (we are a 1 car family anyway). I found an antique workbench, complete with old vise. I then hung peg board that I am determined to paint pink or purple at some point, simply to assert that a chick does the handy work around here - a joke between myself and I to laugh at together in animated congratulatory guffaws.

Now, I'm in the process of both 1) Setting up a design studio in the spare room on the 3rd floor, and 2) finishing the guest bathroom - finally. I'm tired of asking Aaron where I put something and having him respond with, "It's on the dining room sink." We don't have a sink in the dining room. That vanity I bought on clearance has been stored in there so long, we have come to refer to it as such. I've removed the old vanity in the guest bathroom, and now I need to paint the new one and install.

Meanwhile, my body is so fatigued from dancing, teaching, judging, emceeing, and traveling in general that I find my chemically driven, supernatural motivation for remodeling is waining slightly.

I've also taken over as housekeeper to save money. So when Hazel's at school, I'm scrubbing toilets instead of installing better ones. Why do I clean that which I hate? That which I will only replace as soon as I am able? At some undetermined point in time...

Photos to come. But in the meantime, I thought it might be fun to share unfinished projects together, and laugh as one collectively busy, fatigued group. What are your unfinished projects? How long have they remained undone? What holds you back from completing that task at hand?

Wendy's Attic

A Butter yellow from the living room and a cobalt blue from the Dining room...do not a pretty attic make.

To establish this as continued living space, like the living room, we continued the same color scheme. Repairing the window casing and painting it a fresh, semi-gloos "Greek Villa" white link it to the new trim color all over the house (trim was the most time consuming part of the project). "Softer Tan" covered the walls, and "Dapper Tan" with "Greek Villa" made a new runner for some really beat-up, chalky white stairs.

I don't have before pictures, but imagine a yellow room with blue surrounding the architerural nooks, giving it a highly segmented look that emphasied the funky angles rather than blending them into one large bonus room.

AFTER:

Wendy's Entry way and Living Room

Neutral tones and floor plan were the focus here. The butter yellow was too saturated for the buyers' market. And we needed to distinguish the entry way from the living room, while making the fireplace the focal point for the room.

We chose "Softer Tan" from Sherwin Williams, a pale taupe gray that I now want in my house. So sophisticated and refreshing. We replaced the minty green with "Dapper Tan" for the built-ins flanking the fireplace because it pulled a rich dark tone out of the stone work and expanded it onto the shelving. Some mirrors, neutral b/w photographs, and some "I have oodles of taste" orchids, and poof!

I also positioned the couch in the way I did for two reasons:

1. It faces the fireplace - the star of the room.

2. It establishes to start of the living room and end of the entry way.

The Entry got a console and mirror - a last-minute "check your make-up" moment next to the front door, not to mention a place to drop shooes, keys, and loose change, in a house with no first floor coat closet.

Enjoy.

Before:






After:

Wendy's Breakfast Nook

A lot of molding repair: scraping, sanding, caulking, painting, etc. We still need to add the curtains, so will add curtain pictures later. I wanted to off-dining room to be a special breakfast area where one could read the paper and sip coffee, while draped in clean fresh fabric that brought the "breakfast in bed" luxary to the first floor. Crispt, white linen on the table, seat cushions, and later curtains...ooh la la.

But those tablecloths, table, and chairs had to go to San Diego. What's left are the soft cool glow of curtains wrapping the breakfast nook with purpose. Like a Genie in a bottle, but with light and pastries... kinda feel.

Enjoy!


BEFORE:





AFTER: