Stage Your Home with Mary Fasnacht

There are many home makeover shows on television these days. From HGTV to major networks, it seems like every station is jumping on the home improvement bandwagon, and many people are following their lead by working on their own homes.

If you’re looking to improve your home, whether it’s prior to listing it on the market or just to make it more functional or attractive for your family, you don’t have to wait for Vern Yip to miraculously appear at your door. There’s a local lady who can help you out.

Her name is Mary Fasnacht.

Fasnacht is a Venetia resident with an extensive background in home staging and design. As a stay-at-home mother of two daughters, she dabbled around in the industry for nearly 15 years before receiving formal training and certification as a Home Staging Expert and starting her own business, Feels Like Home Interiors.

What is home staging? Fasnacht explains it as “a way of maximizing a home’s potential,” which she accomplishes in one of two ways, depending on her client’s specific goals.

Her stage to sell services aim to help a homeowner sell his home as quickly as possible and for as much money as possible.

The first step in Fasnacht’s stage to sell services is to conduct a strategy session with the homeowner, where she examines the interior of the house and the exterior property to come up with specific recommendations for improvements and changes to be made to promote the sale of the home.

These recommendations are included in a detailed written report that the homeowner can then use as a roadmap to prepare his home for listing on the market. Do-it-yourself homeowners may want to execute the tasks entirely on their own, while other homeowners might want Fasnacht to do most of the work or recommend a professional such as a plumber, floorer, electrician or landscaper.

While many of Fasnacht’s recommendations typically include home improvements, such as changing out light fixtures, painting, deodorizing and updating fixtures, a vital aspect of her strategy is redesigning the living spaces in an occupied home.

“Homebuyers are looking for a lifestyle,” Fasnacht said. “They pick a house based on picturing their family living there.”

Fasnacht went on to say that, for this reason, a home must look like a comfortable place where a family would want to live. To this end, Fasnacht often recommends things to make the rooms in a home more aesthetically pleasing, such as rearranging furniture or dressing it with slipcovers, placing or changing accessories, and removing clutter.

One thing that many homeowners are reluctant to do, Fasnacht said, is remove family photos from walls and mantles. This, however, is something Fasnacht considers crucial, “It’s hard for potential buyers to imagine their family living there if all they see are pictures of your family.

According to Fasnacht, another instance where it is hard for potential buyers to envision their family living in a home is where the home is vacant and rooms are empty or unfurnished. In such a case, Fasnacht’s stage to sell services involve highlighting the home’s key features by renting furniture and providing minimal decorations that appeal to the broadest audience and help buyers make an emotional connection.

Fasnacht noted that the ideal time to stage your home is prior to listing it on the market, since a home only has one shot at being a new listing. Staging at this stage usually allows the house to sell quicker and for a higher price, with less price dropping and less homeowner stress.

Another aspect of Fasnacht’s business is her stage to stay services, which are akin to traditional interior design services. Examples of stage to stay clients include families who want to repurpose a room to accommodate lifestyle changes and persons moving into a new or temporary home.

For the most part, Fasnacht said she typically works with what a client already has, rearranging and redesigning a home’s accessories to freshen up its look in a very green and inexpensive way. Of course, Fasnacht noted, shopping for new items is sometimes necessary or requested by the client.

Stage to stay projects vary from client to client, and can be accomplished in anywhere from one day to six months and can involve anything from small adjustments to total makeovers.

Fasnacht takes particular pride in one stage to stay project she worked on. Though it ended up involving more time, work and money than she expected, she said it was one of the most rewarding projects she ever took part in.

In 2009, Fasnacht teamed up with another home staging professional, Diane Beck of Vibrant Interiors, to make over the Washington Women’s Shelter (a safe shelter of the Domestic Violence Services of Southwestern PA).

This project, called the “Time to Shine Makeover Project,” was funded by moneys Fasnacht and Beck raised through obtaining corporate sponsors and conducting a fundraiser luncheon that collected over $50,000 in support.

Improvements to the shelter included new flooring, painting, mulching and a renovated children’s playroom.

Whether she’s helping homeowners get ready to list their homes, repurposing a room in a client’s house, or giving back to the community, Fasnacht quipped, “My job is never boring.”