Three years after the Hatfield Project, Kate Elise Interiors did the Home Staging for the Robin Hood Ave home. We take a few minutes to catch up and better understand exactly how home staging works. What do Homeowners/Developers expect? And, how do prospective home buyers benefit from the choices she makes?
So my name is Katie Cullen, and I am the owner of Kate Elise Interiors Home Staging. I started the business in I guess it was the tail end of 2019, so I’ve been doing it about three and a half years now. It’s my husband and I that run the business and we have a lot of time together.
So I’ve been wondering this since we first interviewed you. So the name difference, your name is Katie Cullen.
So my name is Katie. Well, my name is Katherine. Okay, My last name is Cullen, and then Elise is my middle name. So Kate Elise is, you know is just like my nickname and a middle name. I did it just to confuse people. Actually, I that’s when I get asked that question more than anything else. So is your name Katie or Kate? So real name Katherine Cullen. And but yeah, I go by Katie mostly. But business name, Kate Elise.
So when you have a potential client that wants a home staged, how do you go about determining what it will need?
Yes. Well, so you can imagine most homes do require the same amount of or the same things, you know, whether it’s a thousand square foot home or a 3000 square foot home. You want to bring in a living room, set, dining room and stage the, you know, primary bedroom. So all those things. But as much as I want a house to look cute and cozy and stylish, I really want a home to look functional. I do believe that form follows function. And what that kind of means is that you are, you’re marrying your design and functionality.
And so kind of an example of that would be if a house has room for it, I love to bring in a console table for the entry space. So as far as my own personal life, you know, I walk inside the front door, I have my keys in my hand and, you know, a purse on my shoulder and maybe I grab the mail. So I want a place to just set everything down when I walk in the door.
So that’s sort of your functionality. And so to have that, you know, to incorporate that into my staging I’m bringing in that functionality. But then it gives you an opportunity to also add design to it. So put a lamp on it that warms up the space and, you know, artwork behind it or a mirror, you know, greenery, decor.
And then you are creating a little design moment. And so you’re kind of marrying those two things together. And I do feel like when buyers see that there’s not only design, but there’s a function in the house, that’s when they fall in love. Not only with the home, but they fall in love with the home and that lifestyle that the home is portraying to them.
Very nice. No, that makes complete sense. So do Homeowners/Developers usually have a clear idea as to what they want when they come to you? Or, do your clients pretty much have a hands off approach?
Yeah, I do find most homeowners/clients do have a very hands-off approach. I think when it once the house is finally ready for staging, it seems like most homeowners and clients have put in so much work to get the house ready that they are really excited to kind of like pass that off to me and be like: “Okay, we’re done. We’ve done our part. You know, the house is painted and cleaned and landscaping is done, all those things are done and they can kind of hand over the reins and be like: All right, take it from here. You know, do your thing.”
And people are I think, for the most part people are so trusting. It would be hard to not know what the House is going to look like because they don’t see it until I’m done. That’s the only way that they will. But people are trusting and always really happy, and it’s an exciting moment to see that before and after. So I think people, you know, like being able to just hand it over to me. I will occasionally have people ask if I can send them photos of the furniture that I’ll be bringing in. And I’m always more than happy to do that. But for the most part, people are hands off. And I just come in and do my thing and people are always excited by the outcome.
Yeah. You know that makes sense. I imagine when you think about it, a lot of the Homeowners and Contractors or Developers, anybody, they don’t really once they get to that point, they don’t really have the bandwidth or the imagination. They might go into, you know, conveying these ideas. You know what they might imagine. They just trust you to deliver on that. So are there any challenges to the job that might be surprising to homeowners or anybody interested in getting into home staging?
Yeah, I would say the most common challenge that we come across and by we, my husband and I, is just the challenge of getting everything into the home easily. Not all houses have easy access. If it’s on like a residential street that’s super narrow and there’s already a lot of cars parked on the road. We do have a 17 foot box truck, so, you know, we’re wanting to get that truck close to the door where we’re going to be unloading or some houses in rural areas are up a long, steep gravel driveway.
A lot of the houses in South Eugene, the driveways are super steep. So just getting the truck maneuvered where it needs to be. My husband is an amazing driver, so it has always worked out fantastically. But yeah, and not all front doors are created equally. Some front doors are super narrow, so we will have to find different access points.
We’ll go into the garage or if there’s a sliding glass door, you know, in the back will come in That way we have to disassemble furniture sometimes pretty much all the time. Our dining tables come in disassembled. And then my husband will assemble them when we walk in, we take feet off of sofas. So just getting into the house can sometimes be the most challenging part.
Yeah. That makes sense. The last place I lived, I had a beautiful queen sized bed with box spring, and I had to omit the box spring because I couldn’t get it up the stairs.
Yeah. Especially if there are, you know, stairs that do a hairpin.
So, Home Staging seems to be a bit tangential to Interior Design or Interior Decorating in that it temporarily brings a home to life and inspires prospective Home Buyers. Do you study or have any interest in interior design or decorating? And how does that inform how you stage a home?
I do have a lot of interest in Interior Design. I think if I could go back in time and do it over, which I know it’s never too late to start something, but I do think if I could go back in time, I would absolutely go to school and get a degree in interior design. I love staging so much and it is so much fun, but I do.
I can’t help but look at architecture, you know, if I’m looking at magazines or blogs.. Well, who looks at magazines really as much anymore? But, if I’m on Instagram or Pinterest and looking at designers and, you know, blogs and I am so into the house itself in a lot of ways, as much as the furniture inside of it.
So, because I love both of those things: the architecture and the furniture and the fluff, I do think interior design would have been something that I would have loved to have done. But I am always looking at photos, seeing what’s currently in style and what creates a cozy environment. So, in that sense, I’m kind of always educating myself through just seeing what what designers are doing. And, different people who aren’t even designers, but who have blogs.
A lot of a lot of people now with social media are able to show off their personal homes and they have no education in it at all, but they’re just incredibly talented. And so you can see their personal you know, their personal homes are are as much inspiration as as some of these, you know, really amazing designers.
Produced & Hosted by Todd Zimmerman
Kate Elise Interiors: https://kateeliseinteriors.com/
Kate Elise Interiors on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kate.elise.interior