And so it begins...

Moving: Stage 1

We have had the mission this month of getting our home "show" ready so we can find renters for it.  We met with our property manager last month and she gave us a run down of the things we would need to do to get our house ready.  In my head I knew it was time to face the music.  There was no way we were going to be able to continue to live our lives if we had to spend hours cleaning, stashing, decluttering, and staging every time someone wanted to see the house.

So I began gutting the house.  I started in our bathroom (which took an ENTIRE day).  Moved on to the laundry closet... and continued on from there.  We got rid of so. much. stuff... but the more we got rid of, the better it felt.  The nice people at the Salvation Army know us by name and we were able to bless several different families with some hand me downs.  The boys now can keep their rooms clean, because everything has a place.  My bathroom stays nice and sparkly and I actually make my bed now. My kitchen is gleaming and I find I want to spend time baking cookies with my kids.  I can finally breathe...

I wanted to share some of the photos we took of our house.  This was a bit of a challenge for me since I have not done any type of real estate photography.  I just looked at it from my point of view and how I would want to see photos of houses.  For 99% of the photos I used my wide angle lens.  If you are selling/renting your home ~ I highly recommend you borrow or rent one if you do not own a wide angle.  The images and lines do become a bit distorted, but there is really no other way to showcase the size and fullness of your rooms otherwise.

This first photograph is my pride and joy because I FINALLY was able to get some of my photos up on the wall!  This has been a hard road for me to choose which photographs to display.  I am so happy with how it came out!

ISO 200 ~ 10mm ~ f/8.0 ~ 1/5 sec

© Corrie M Avila

When taking photos of your home for the purpose of real estate showing/renting, you want to remember three things.  

1. Use as much natural light as possible, but make sure it is diffused and not direct or the shadows will be harsh.
2. Use a tripod and turn OFF that flash!  You will want to have a small aperture (if unsure of what your aperture is, click here) so that your room has a lot of crisp clarity.  To do that, your shutter speed will be slower and you will need to have your camera on a tripod.  You can pick up a cheap tripod from Amazon for $20 or $30.
3. Make sure everything is staged and clutter free.  Try to hide wires, straighten blankets, and make sure pillows are straight (I had to redo an entire set of photos because it looked like there was a war that broke out with the couch pillows).  These are not things you can photoshop out easily.  Make sure everything is clean, especially mirrors and windows.  I've gotten so many comments already about how "clean" the photos look.  This is your first impression, make it count!

Here are just a few photos from our stockpile that we will be giving to the realtor.  Remember, you can always let the realtor take the photos him/herself, but no one cares more about your home than you and that will show in the photographs.

ISO 200 ~ 10mm ~ f/8.0 ~ 1/8 sec

© Corrie M Avila

ISO 100 ~ 10mm ~ f/9.0 ~ 0.5 sec

© Corrie M Avila

ISO 100 ~ 10mm ~ f/9.0 ~ 1/4 sec

© Corrie M Avila

ISO 200 ~ 10mm ~ f/5.6 ~ 1/6 sec

© Corrie M Avila

ISO 100 ~ 11mm ~ f/7.1 ~ 0.6 sec

© Corrie M Avila

Our home has now been "completed" and is "show ready."  Tomorrow we have a showing and rather than running around the house trying to shove things in random places, I made chocolate chip coconut cookies with my boys.  A much better use of my time I think :)  Here's the recipe in case anyone is interested, they came out exceptionally yummy!

Capturing the Moment,

Corrie <3