Tag: Real Estate

Yes, you can have nice things and kids too!

Posted on Posted in Furniture, Home DesignTagged , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Part One, The Sofa.

I have worked long and hard at selecting furniture that is beautiful but will absolutely stand up to my two boys (and three LARGE dogs). I’ve put together personal favourites that I have found to be really durable yet functional and still stylistic. Momma can absolutely have nice things and messy boys at the same time.

Leather 
My top recommendation is to go with a thick and distressed leather. We had a Restoration Hardware Lancaster sofa for years and it held up to anything. Scratches happened (and are easily buffed out with leather conditioner available from RH), spills, many moves … you name it. We only eventually had to sell it as it was too large for our current house. We did buy this sofa second hand which saved as a ton of money and it was already well worked in for us.

KidFriendlySofa

Urban Barn sells a more reasonably priced sofa that has a similar thick distressed option that we did have at one point (again bought used) called the Preston. I don’t have a lot of great photos as I was mostly in the daze of parenting very young kids at that time we owned it.

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Any leathers that are higher end (think soft and buttery) are a nightmare to maintain and best left for those single folks without kids or pets who have dinner parties and spend Sunday mornings sleeping in sipping coffee until noon. We are not those people.

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We are these people.
Fabric
Alternatively you can go the fabric route but you want to pick durable fabric (high rub count), and patterns that will conceal spills and stains because it’s not IF it’s WHEN bad things happen. I will often take a sample of the fabric home and spill juice, crunch goldfish crackers and coffee into it to see how well the fabric stands up. It’s not pretty but it really helps determine if this fabric is going to hold up to my real life. I’d rather find out on the front end that crunched in goldfish crackers turns the sofa orange than after I have spent a bunch of money. We have had a lot of success with fabric sofas from GUS Modern as their fabric seems quite commercial grade it in it’s ability to stand-up to children and exhausted parents with unsteady coffee mugs.

GusSofa

We have recently purchased a Montauk sofa for our smaller open concept living room. It’s is gorgeous and we customized the pillows so there were more solid larger pillows and not a lot of throw pillows as they tend to become projectiles in my house. The fabric on this one went through my strict Goldfish Cracker test and passed; however, it is linen. We have only had it a few months now so the jury is out on how well it will hold up to our full life.

living room-12 copy

I have a sneaking suspicion living as close to the sea as we do, a leather sofa will be in our future with wet dogs constantly sneaking on the couch for their post-swim snoozing.

SofaPup

He’s too adorable to be mad at for long.

Next up: Dining Room table and chair options that will stand up to mass forking and other disasters at the hands of toddlers!

Managing the House Selling Process with Kids, Pets and Other Chaos.

Posted on Posted in House Selling, MovingTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

I get asked this a lot.

How do you manage house showings with three dogs, two kids, a job, a husband? It’s not easy, but with some planning and foresight you can survive it with WINE.

WINE is the answer … okay well maybe AFTER you’ve sold your home. Clean first, wine later.

Serial Mover Pro Tips – Showings.

  1. Realize you currently don’t live in your home, you live in a show home version of your home. Take a weekend before you list your house and visit some show homes or open houses in higher end areas. No one really lives there, and it won’t really seem like you do either. Once you have that firmly planted in your mind you can set your expectations accordingly.
  2. If you can leave town for a few weeks with kids and pets (and husbands) it’s not a horrible idea. This will save you countless hours of cleaning and re-staging your home after your children have ravaged it.
  3. If you can’t leave then you will have to be in ‘constantly ready for a showing mode’ which means: dishes always put away, laundry caught up, toy room tidy. If you spend an hour every night before bed just putting daily items away it will really help your morning.
  4. Floors, bathrooms, kitchen will need to be wiped down, moped, vacuumed everyday – I’m sorry. Especially if you have kids/pets these are the areas that will need the most attention.
  5. I have three adorable (HUGE) dogs. They smell less adorable. I use Sydney Hale Room Spray’s as a secret weapon of dog smell masking. Even if you don’t have dogs they are amazing.
    IMG_0111
  6. Don’t forget the yard. Recently a huge wind storm knocked an old wasp nest on to our front porch – not something you’d want a would-be home buyer to encounter as their first impression.
  7. Meals. While you’re showing you will want to avoid cooking with smelly items as food smells linger. No curry, garlic or even (gasp) bacon. For now, not forever – promise!
  8. Understand the selling process will take time. You could be at this cleaning routine for a few months (not usually everyday). The most showings I personally had was around 32, in 30-days – which was A LOT for us. The home was historical so I believe we had a lot of people just wanting to see the home – not necessarily buy the home. IMG_7194HDR- copy
    I actually still really miss this house!

I would love to hear other tips on managing this stressful phase of moving, so if you have some – send them over to me as you know I’m a serial mover so I’m bound to be back here in the near future.

Confessions of a Serial Mover.

Posted on Posted in MovingTagged , , , , , 3 Comments

ConfessionsImage

I have moved 11 times in 10 years.

To be fair not all to houses I have purchased and sold. Some were rentals to try a new neighbourhood. Some for work, a few for my son’s school needs and maybe a few flights of fancy. All this packing and unpacking, selling and buying have taught me a few things about real estate I’ll be writing about here. Perhaps some of my stories can save you a few headaches and maybe even a few dollars.

Now back to the 11 moves.

I did once Google “people who move all the time” and did come up with a few personal anecdotes from others that echoed some of my motivations. One particular blog talked about the newness of a new city, a new job, new home – that feeling of starting over. The plight of home renting and having little control over your landlords decisions regarding where you living came up quite a bit. Some said they just liked the work of renovation and styling different types of homes.

For me it’s always more been about the project. The task of finding a house that needs a bit of love (not too much love because thats a whole other blog post), something that allows me to impart my love of design, decor and furniture on a new space and leave it better off than I found it. Once that work is complete, my eye tends to wander back over to those MLS listings in search of that new project and challenge.

Yes, all that moving can get expensive and it’s sometimes exhausting.

I’ve worked hard with most (I’d say 80%) of my house sales to bring in profit that gets moved into the next acquisition allowing a bigger budget for purchase or renovation. It doesn’t always work that way but by enlarge if you work the market you can end up on the plus side of the equation. This constant rotation of packing boxes has become much less practical now that my kids are in grade school of course, but I would be lying to say I’m not already looking for the next house that needs some of my kind of style.