Backyard Staging

Backyard Staging

First things, first: the cleaning. Chances are if a house has been vacant for a while, things in the backyard landscaping probably need some TLC.  Trim the hedges, make sure it's getting mowed regularly, and of course clean out any grass or weeds in the flower beds.  Some properties may have been REALLY neglected, but in my experience, CLEANING was all it needed.

Example: the backyard where my daughter was renting was horrendous. But it was so big, it was too overwhelming for her to do anything about it. That's where I stepped in. Out of all the work we did to that back yard, 80% of it was cleaning.

Here's a before pic of the concrete patio in the very back of the yard. Totally unusable:

Not sure if you can tell from this photo but there were two giant rolls of metal fencing material on the concrete, along with several inches of dirt and weeds covering most of the patio.  I had the fencing hauled off (Freecycle! So it was put to good use) and took a weed eater to the concrete to get all the dirt and weeds off the surface. After it was edged, I cleaned it off with the garden hose sprayer.

I had two outdoor chairs and an outdoor table (Freecycle again!) and this was the end result:

Price of this project: $0.00!

Now if I owned this house, this would be the perfect spot for a Pergola! I would repair and do a decorative concrete treatment, stone edging and more landscaping. String white lights and maybe even add a fire pit, wouldn't that be cool?

Here is another perfect example of a patio just teeming with potential. First: cleaning. Always. Suggested staging ideas:

• planters on each side of the back door
• a 5'x7' indoor/outdoor rug ($35-$200 depending on where you shop)
• ask if you can paint the door (optional, but would add so much)
• a small bistro table set (Freecycle, thrift store, or buy new.)

Here's an idea for the painted door. It even looks cute from the inside!

This wicker outdoor bistro set sells at www.target.com for $170:

And here's a cute idea for the 2 planters. If you know someone handy with building boxes, this could totally be a DIY project:

Expenses

Now you might be cringing at the thought of buying things for your staging needs. Keep in mind, these things belong to you and will be returned to you after the sale. You can use these things over and over, house to house and they will more than pay for themselves. 

Tip:  When not being used for staging, bring this stuff home with you. If it's furniture, use it! If it's containers of plants, decorate your own porch or interior of your house.  I have been known to take things out of my own home to stage a property!  As long as it's in good shape, make use of it. Just remind the agent to mention to potential buyers that the furniture and landscaping containers don't come with the house. Anything you put in the ground stays, obviously. ;)

Next: Windows

Tips for Landscaping on a Budget

Money Doesn't Grow on Trees... Or does it?

I've talked a lot about how important it is to have great curb appeal, and that empty flower beds are sooo ugly and depressing. The solution is to put something in those beds, but that costs money. And we're just in the staging process, the house hasn't even been seen much less been sold yet! So I have a few tricks up my sleeve to help with that expense that would otherwise be out of your pocket.

Propagation

To propagate a plant means to grow one from another one. Some plants are propagated very easily; others take professional horticulturists and since I'm assuming there are few horticulturists in my audience, I'll just stick to the easy ones. :)

If you have a flower bed at home that you can sacrifice for this, or a sunny window sill in your garage, you can propagate a variety of plants yourself for your staging projects. It takes a little space where you can work with potting soil and fertilizer, so if you don't have a work bench in the garage or a garden shed, then just do it on the back porch.

Suggested Starter Plants

One of my favorite kind of plant is the succulents. They come in a variety of shapes and colors, and look great in potted arrangements in window boxes, pots on the porch, and also in the ground. Here is an arrangement I have and love:

Don't ask me to name all the varieties... there are too many to remember. But the reason I bring them up is that no matter what kind it is, it propagates the same!  To propagate a succulent, you start by snapping off a leaf. It has to be a clean break from the stem:

Succulents usually grow tall and leggy, it's just what they do and it's not as pretty. When this happens, I snap the leaves off the lower part of the stem and lay them out so they can callous over. It's important to let the leaves callous over where they once were attached to the stem. They won't root properly if you skip this step. Let them "dry" for about a week. I do the same things with the tops:

I just snip the tops off with a pair of scissors or garden snippers and let them callous over as well. Tops are the easiest to regrow. You just stick them in some nice nutrient rich topsoil and water them with a spray bottle 2-3 times per week. Once they are strong enough you can move them outside. That's when they will really take off!  Here's a top that I restarted this week:

This start lost a leaf already. Chances are, if I just leave it alone it will sprout a baby on its own. This is what the babies look like after a few weeks in indirect light, being watered only with a spray bottle:

Aren't they cute!  Notice how the "Mother" leaf is withering. It is best to let it wither and fall off on its own. That way you won't damage the baby when you transfer it and its new little roots to a pot.

After you have stripped off the leaves and decapitated the stem, leave the original stem in its pot and keep on watering it. New babies will grow where the original leaves once were and you'll have a nicely shaped succulent once again!

 

Spider Plants!

Spider plants are one of my favorite staging plants. They are a beautiful shade of green, they require little to no maintenance other than watering a few times per week, and they look fantastic without any pruning whatsoever. You can put them in pots on the front porch or in the kitchen window (if they're small) and they are SO EASY to propagate!  Spider plants when they mature grow offshoots. These are stem-like growths that come out from among the leaves and attached to the stem are usually several baby spider plants.  I use my snippers to cut the whole baby plus a bit of the stem right off and put them in fertilized water until I see white roots. White roots mean they're ready for the dirt!

Now, I said fertilized water. It can just be tap water, but fertilized water makes the roots come out in just one or two days whereas regular water it can take up to a week or more. My daughter has a planted fish tank that has the BEST WATER oh my goodness, it is FULL of growth enhancing fertilizers so when she changes the tank water once a week I save it and use it to water all my plants! Smart? Mhmm. :D Regular fish tank water is good for plants also, as the nitrate content of the water is very high. I used it for a long time before she got the planted tank. It's like fish water on steroids!
Here is a spider plant I just started (there's a succulent start there, too but the light washed it out):

It was nice and healthy so I moved it outside. I will water it with fish water 2-3 times per week until it needs a bigger pot. Here is one that I put a spider plant and some rose moss together in a small pot:

The rose moss will bloom with small colorful flowers in a few days. Here is what a full grown rose moss looks like (this one is in my garden):

I think it will look good with the spider plant next to it. Now here's a spider plant I started three weeks ago and it has absolutely exploded!  It already needs a bigger pot AND it has offshoots!  I couldn't believe my eyes! (It's that fish tank water, I'm telling you!)

Rose moss also propagates very easily. You can take a stem right off the plant and stick it in dirt, water it and it will grow. Seriously, it's that easy. You'll never have to pay for rose moss again! It makes a nice ground cover, or border, or in a potted arrangement with other plants.

Ok, so I haven't done the math, but I know that one small to medium succulent arrangement costs about $10-$15 depending on your florist. Think of all the plants you could have with a little propagation!  And the spider plants!  I see them at the Home and Garden store and laugh at how many people still buy a cart load of them, when really all you need is one to start with and they will be coming out your ears!

So now you have some tips on how to get plants on the cheap for your house staging projects, or just for use in your own home. I will do another post with more propagating tips because there are a ton of them!  Did you know you can stick a long stem rose in a potato, plant it, and grow a whole new rose bush??  I haven't done it myself yet but I sure am going to try!  I will definitely post about that! If you have other plants that are easily propagated that I haven't mentioned here, leave them for me in the comments and I'll include them in a future post!

Ps. If you stage a lot of houses, more than you can keep up with by planting what you propagate, use nice planters that you can put the plants in, improve your curb appeal and then take the planter with you for another staging. Here is a beautiful plan for a container garden I found at www.bhg.com:

And here is another one you could stage and then take away for your next staging project:

I keep my nice containers on my own front porch when they're not in use at one of my project houses. Sometimes my porch gets quite crowded, but people always say it looks nice! Some days the mail lady can hardly get to the door! lol

If you're going the container route, be sure you still mulch the beds tho, at the very least! Ok, bye for now!

Next: The Painted Door

Landscaping vs. Blandscaping: What Sells

Blandscaping

Blandscaping is when you see a house and it has nothing, I mean zero landscaping. Basically, in the spots where landscaping is supposed to be?  Is nothing but dirt, or overgrown with grass and weeds. If there is one thing I hate to see, it's a listing that shows pictures of blandscaping. That is not going to attract anyone!

Landscaping

Landscaping a property that you own and are going to be in for a long time takes time, lots of effort, planning and maintenance. That's not what I am talking about in this article. The focus of this article is to talk about the very simple and inexpensive ways to improve your property with easy, DIY landscaping tricks.

When the property has flower beds, but nothing but dirt in them, invest in a couple of pots of monkey grass and some mulch.  Clean out any debris in and around the bed, including grass and/or weeds, using round up if you need to. Plant the monkey grass strategically so that it looks neat and symmetrical. Then mulch. We are only talking about a couple of dollars here and we're not putting any high maintenance plants in for the new tenants to stress over. You can even put gravel or landscaping stone instead of mulch if it is a really dry climate.

Take this house, for instance. To the right is a raised bed that runs the length of the porch. There is nothing but dirt in it. That's a real shame because it is a focal point when looking at the house from the street. Imagine a row of monkey grass and mulch. So simple, yet it makes the property look less "abandoned."  Speaking of the porch, there are so many cool treatments for cement, I don't even know where to begin. At least a coat of neutral colored paint, like grey. It would look cleaner, and better kept.  Now if this was MY house, I would break out the colors and paint a mandala or a Persian rug onto the concrete, like this:

or like THIS:

Do you see why I am just dying to learn how to flip houses?  I see so much potential in these poor little properties that are just begging to be bought and fixed up!  And the work to me isn't hard. I actually enjoy it.  One day, when I have the capital, I will buy a house and rescue it from a life of misery, bringing it to its full potential and let it bask in its own glorified spectacularness. Ok, that's not a word. But I think you know what I mean. :)

Here is my own back yard before and after. Blandscaping to Landscaping 101:

and my favorite corner:

See how much it adds?  Look at the before pics. So blank and lonely looking. Like no one cares. Then you see the after pics and it's totally happy and inviting! This took more elbow grease than anything. Many of the plants used we already had in other locations, we just moved them around after we extended the flower bed to follow the length of the back fence. We did spend some money on plants for this: 6 rose bushes, 2 hydrangeas, 2 flats of ivy, 4 hostas, 2 elephant ears, a crepe myrtle, some brown eye susans, rose moss and monkey grass, my favorite border plant. And MULCH so much mulch. But it was completely worth it. I actually enjoy going out into my back yard now, whereas before I avoided it. Our next project for the backyard is installing a pergola over the back porch and adding outdoor furniture for entertaining. I will, of course be posting that when we do it!

Next Post: Room Makeovers!

It All Started With a Little Cleaning...

Midwest City: 1809 Sandra Drive

My oldest daughter grew up in Midwest City, Oklahoma, not far from Tinker Air Force Base. The neighborhoods there are former military housing: small, usually one bath but with vintage tiling, hardwood floors, good sized yards but hardly ever updated and very few have any curb appeal at all. It is a house-flipper's DREAM. 

I am dedicating my first blog post to Midwest City, and to the rent house we did so much work on in 2013, inside and out. 

The top photo is how we found the house after an irresponsible renter left it. It was full of trash, full of junk, and full of **POTENTIAL!**  The second photo is after we cleaned and re-staged it. Hard to believe it's even the same room.

Then we tackled the outside. The backyard was a wonderful size, but had been neglected for years. Embedded in the weeds we found all kinds of debris: silverware, bits of plastic, broken glass, old wiring, rusted tools, the list goes on. After disposing of the huge rolls of fence wire, I took a weed eater to the concrete patio to remove years of built up dirt and weeds. After treating the whole thing with round up and trimming the shrub beside it, I staged it with two outdoor chairs and an outdoor table, both of which were free (I am addicted to Freecycle.org. I will do another blog post on Freecycle... if you are not familiar with it, you should be!)  Total cost of this makeover: $0.00!

My youngest daughter agreed to help me create this flower bed. It runs the length of the back of the house. There's a story behind this garden. My oldest, Kelley, was diagnosed at age 19 with ovarian cancer. She was living in this house at the time. For her birthday, I asked all my friends and family to donate one plant to put in Kelley's new garden. Everyone pitched in, and we named it "The Giving Garden."  It was a lot of labor, but labor of love! Alex and I removed the old grass, trash and weeds, laid landscaping fabric, cut timbers for the edges, planted all the donated plants and mulched.  Donated plants included: monkey grass, bougainvillea, rose moss, some succulents, a crepe myrtle, black eye susans, a rosemary bush, another flowering bush, ivy, salvia and three agave plants. Cost for this project: timbers, fabric and mulch, about $50.

Kelley said the hardest part about leaving this house on Sandra Drive was leaving the garden behind. Personally, I loved that house. It had its problems, but with a handful of repairs it could be an awesome investment for a flip. 

Next Blog: Freecycle!