Cheap Ways to get Open House Ready

We are coming down the home stretch with our apartment and the preparations to sell. We just have a few more chores to do before we'll be ready for our first Open House! {I feel like I'm not old enough to use those words}. This past week, I focused on adding some life into the now depersonalized space. 

One of the main things I've noticed when looking at houses {only online so far} is how much more appealing a home will look if it has neutral paint colors, is clutter free, and has flowers or plants on display. Just for reference, here are two homes with very different color schemes {both are well out of our price range, but this is just to make a point}. 

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While both rooms are beautiful and appear very spacious, it's easier to see myself moving into the 2nd room and envision my belongings in that space, which is exactly what you want a potential buyer to be doing. And notice, each room is decorated with flowers on the coffee table. 

Our walls have been painted. Our clutter has been cleared. Now it's time for flowers and vegetation. Our real estate agent said to purchase artificial flowers that look real. While real flowers would look and smell much better than fake ones, it would cost us an unfortunate amount of money to have fresh flowers in our apartment everyday, especially because the life expectancy for any plant in our home is about two days. 

We took a trip to Michael's to buy some real looking fake flowers. When we walked over to the flower section, I kind of just stood there and stared. I think I said "I have no idea what I'm doing" about 15 times in our 30 minute trip. Michael's does sell floral arrangements that I could have easily just picked up and been done in about 2 minutes, however they're a little bit more expensive than what I was willing to spend. So instead, I used them as inspiration and started digging. 

I loved this one, which was of course $60 on sale 

I ended up spending about $50 to put together three arrangements. It took me 15 minutes to put together all three arrangements, and while I still had no idea what I was doing, I'm pretty impressed with the outcome. 

 

 

I'm sure people who know what they're doing when it comes to real or fake flowers are rolling their eyes, laughing, or just cringing at these arrangements, but for me, a first timer, I'm pretty satisfied with how they all turned out. 

However, do you notice the glaring commonality between all three? They're ALL white flowers! Oops. Apparently, I have a type. I needed to add a bit of color into the mix. I took the vase from the flower arrangement a friend had recently sent me {seen here}, and went to work. 

I have numerous glass vases so I was pretty excited to make this one a little different. 

I had a small stash of 3D fabric paint left over from some old project I can't even remember. I used yellow because I knew I wanted to paint this vase yellow, but any color would work. I added small dots all over the vase. I started in an organized fashion, but then just started throwing them down wherever there was a gap. 

I let it dry overnight then added two coats of spray paint in the morning. 

I picked up the most vibrant flower I could find at Home Depot and plopped it in {yes, my green thumb involves "plopping"}. 

Other than the fact that it slightly resembles a pineapple, I love it! I chuckle a little every time I look at it actually. It would probably look much better with different flowers in it, but I couldn't risk adding more white to the mix. 

I have no clue where I'll place this one yet, so for now it's bringing in a little color to our kitchen counter. 

Another little addition/subtraction to our kitchen counter, do you remember seeing the pictures of our nieces that were on display in the kitchen here? Well, had to take those down, so in their place I added a these guys. 

We sprayed the pots white to brighten them up a bit. Annnd these bad boys are actually from my wedding bouquet! So I guess things can live for a while in our apartment. Lucky for me, they require very little maintenance. 

Overall, I spent $55 to create all of these bits of life in our home. It took me 30 minutes of total work time to create them. Really can't complain about the ease of this one. I also read that adding flowers to your home makes it appear more expensive. Hey-o! Let's hope buyers think the same thing!

What would you do to your home to make it Open House ready? 

Thanks for visiting!