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Staging Your Home
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Written by Joanne Cleaver
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Bathroom atmosphere is all about what you can’t see. Light – well placed and plenty of it – and fresh air – thanks to well-functioning ventilation systems – put the ‘pow’ in powder rooms and make master baths rule.
Guests and home buyers may not be thinking in those terms, but they certainly know light, bright, fresh baths when they encounter them. A third of 1,025 recent visitors to the ForSaleByOwner.com website agreed that a ‘good design for daily function’ was the single most important characteristic. ‘A clean, fresh environment’ was preferred by 21%; and luxury finishes by 16%.
Guests and househunters are looking for one thing when they enter a bathroom: their own reflection in the mirror, says Randall Whitehead, a lighting designer who owns Randall Whitehead Lighting Solutions, based in San Francisco. “Save the dramatic accent lighting for entertaining,” he says. “Light people
Whether you are preparing your house for guests or for sale, these easy-to-apply tips will enable you to better use light and fresh air so that your baths give a good first impression.
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Staging Your Home
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Written by Joanne Cleaver
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What you can’t see can sell your house. But how do you stage the invisible?
Scent or odor?
The difference is in the nose of the beholder.
Bright or glaring?
It’s all in what someone sees.
That’s what makes staging bathrooms so difficult: Much of what makes these small rooms appealing just can’t be fixed with traditional staging techniques.
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Staging Your Home
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Written by Joanne Cleaver
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Hidden in the ceiling, bathroom ventilation systems do what candles, air fresheners and open doors can’t: they replace steamy, smelly air with cool, clear air.
That’s just as good for the bathroom as it is for its occupants, because bathroom finishes and function can be compromised in a chronically dank environment.
“I think of the fan as the insurance policy for the bathroom. If you don’t get that moisture out of there, all that nice stuff you put in there won’t stay nice,” says Jim Shelton, national sales manager for Panasonic Home & Environment Co., which makes several sizes and styles of bathroom ventilation systems. In a closed bathroom that never quite drys out, wallpaper peels, cabinetry warps, towels mildew, mirrors corrode, and wooden frames swell. On top of all that, mold can settle into seams, grout and tiny fissures and cracks. Once it starts, it spreads.
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Staging Your Home
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Written by Andrea Markowitz, Special to the Tribune
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Some people joke that they're allergic to house cleaning. But in all seriousness, allowing dust and mold to accumulate in your home can be harmful to your health. Endotoxins shed by household dust and mold spores can cause serious allergic responses, including asthma.
Here are some helpful hints for reducing allergens around your home:
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Staging Your Home
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Written by Mike McClintock, Special to the Tribune
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The relative part of humidity, technically, is the percentage of moisture in the air relative to the maximum amount the air can hold at that temperature. It's not an intuitive concept. But it's clear what happens as the percentage climbs: hot weather that was bad enough feels worse.
Indoors, the natural response is to dial up more AC. It makes the air cooler and drier— in a range of 30 to 50 percent relative humidity that works for most households, with 40 percent being the target to control mold growth. But many variables can increase dampness that causes condensation on cold surfaces, fosters mold and musty odors, and swells wood; doors and drawers that used to work smoothly barely budge.
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