Welcome!
January 21, 2020
Welcome to my very first blog post for Seattle House & Home! I hope you find a great deal of inspiration, ideas, and tips for your design projects on this blog as well as my Instagram account. If you visited my website’s About Me page, I gave you a little background on how I got started in the business of design. It’s been an evolving process over many years and I’m fortunate to be considered to help you with your design project. If you want to know more, keep reading!
My story of how I became a stager is pretty simple. It started several years ago when 2 friends said “let’s start a home staging company”. Long story short, we did! It was called HomeWorks Residential Staging. I don’t want to date myself too much but there weren’t very many staging companies in Seattle at that time. It wasn’t a mainstream service yet. We had a great run for several years, but ultimately we moved on to other things. The recession didn’t help matters. We’re still great friends and we sometimes get together and work on staging projects from time to time. I took a break from staging during the recession (since there wasn’t anything to stage!) but I got back into it once the market started picking up. This lead me to where I am today. I call myself a “boutique” stager. It’s just me and I hire an assistant for each project– a friend, another stager, or someone who wants to learn about staging. I even sometimes have my family help me!
How did I get into the business of interior design? First, I’m not an interior designer. What? Although I work on interior design projects, I don’t call myself an Interior Designer. Why? Because it’s a designation that many interior designers have achieved through an accredited program, school or college and I want to respect this. I graduated from college with a business degree. Not very creative, I know! My husband Luke is an architect and builder. Out of necessity, I started helping him by selecting all the finishes for the homes he was building. We extensively remodeled our first home, we designed and built our second home and we’ve completely remodeled our current home in Seattle. I started getting asked by friends, family, neighbors, to help with their projects and found myself in the business of design. I’m self-taught, and I’m always learning new things, trying to keep up on trends, improving as I go.
Over the years, the definition of my ideal client was becoming more clear to me and this started a chain of referrals–thank you to those who have referred me! My ideal client is someone who needs help with a small to medium size design project. They may have some of their own ideas, but need help getting started. They may have recently become an empty-nester and have a space they want to turn into a guest room or an Airbnb. Perhaps they recently went through a life transition and want to update, repaint, and refresh everything. Maybe their kids have grown out of the toddler years and they need a new sofa to replace their well-loved one. Or their family is growing and they need to add more square footage to their home. Since I also became a real estate broker, I often help home owners get their house ready to list. If you fall into any of these categories, please reach out!
Thank you for taking the time to read my first blog post! Please check back for future posts!
Warmly,
~judy
