Renovated Belle Meade Links home spruced up, then put on market
Submitted by JULIE SCHOERKE
Wednesday, 07/11/07
Green Hills and Forest Hills sisters Kathy Gaston and Susan Akers have set the stage for a recently renovated Belle Meade Links home. The duo recently staged a 1927 stone, brick and stucco home at 254 Harding Place in Belle Meade Links that has undergone a 14-month renovation.
“When sellers have to move out of their house before it’s sold, the advantage to staging an empty house is that buyers can see themselves living in the home more easily,” Akers said. “A number of our clients hire us before they put their house on the market to fluff up the home in which they currently live. We also rearrange their furniture, take away the extra pieces that clutter a room and make recommendations of how to make their house more attractive to potential buyers.” The house had not been renovated for about 40 years when the original owner died, and the new owners who renovated the home meticulously restored it to its original integrity while adding the custom updates, including granite and custom cabinetry.
72-hour transformation
The owners hired Akers and Gaston, who together run Interior Motives, to add an additional spark to the home, and in 72 hours the house was transformed.”We don’t just put furniture and decorative pieces in empty houses,” Gaston said. “We often work with people living in their current homes. We’ll bring in one or more pieces of furniture, antiques, artwork, whatever. Sometimes a client needs that ‘wow’ piece to showcase a specific room or rooms.”
For nearly a decade, Gaston, Oak Hill School development director, has worked with her sister, decorating and staging homes for sellers and agents all over the country from the affluent enclaves in Minneapolis, Chicago and San Antonio. The sisters started their business more than a decade ago when friends and neighbors began to ask Akers who “did” her house. She decorated her house each time she moved to a new city (eight moves in 10 years).
Akers and Gaston use a combination of furnishings from their resources in the furniture industry and pieces from their private collections.
In one home, the pair had the furniture selected and delivered, then added big accessories such as mirrors, paintings and sculptures. The sisters added the wine glasses to the hutch in the dining room, the coffee table books featuring Nashville and golf in the living room, magazines in wrought iron holders and fancy soaps, antique dispensers and colorful towels in the bathroom. A laptop and flat screen TV were added in the study and living areas for tech-savvy prospective buyers.
Elizabeth Colton Walls, a Nashville native and Realtor with Fridrich & Clark Realty, recently moved from New York City where she staged her own Manhattan apartment, which garnered multiple offers as well as bids for the furniture.”A properly staged house sells faster and for more money than a house that has not been staged,” Walls said. “Savvy staging may involve a little time and elbow grease, but it is not necessarily expensive. In fact, you can achieve big results from a good cleaning and judicious editing. Properly pricing a property is also key to selling it quickly.”