The Wiseman Home: How We Staged A Whole House With Only Pre-Loved Pieces
The black and wood accents seen here in the entry help to streamline the design in this home.
The Wiseman Home Limited Collection is a cumulation of my two passions in life: vintage and design. As we gear up to the launch our sale (and new sales format), I thought it would be fun to take a look at the home that brought this collection together.
“Decorating with vintage is one of the most challenging and rewarding things I have ever done. ”
Design
Having lived in this home for a number of years as I transitioned from condo owner to homeowner, I understood the flow of this home well.
The bones of the house were relatively good and the only major change was opening up the kitchen. The homeowner had previously planned the kitchen renovation so there wasn’t a lot of room to play with the cabinetry layout. The design decisions were mostly made around generating wow factor (to sell the home), and streamlining the design across the whole home to make it feel thoughtful and finished.
We carefully selected original elements of the home to preserve while adding some feature accents walls in black to help modernize the space. Throughout the home, the colour black is used as an accent making the space feel less 1960s. The repetition of colour makes it feel like the whole home was thoughtfully designed.
The wood panel wall was original to the home. The vintage pieces worked beautifully together with the original elements of the home.
One thing we added to help pull the kitchen into the rest of the space was the fluted black panel on the front side of the island.
A fluted black panel connects the otherwise simple kitchen to the rest of the house.
For wow factor, I wanted to create an unforgettable visual from the living room into the sunroom. This idea started with the amazing tile pattern I saw in a Dwell article. You can read more about the tile selection process here.
The sunroom gets a lot of light and is a beautiful room to sit in so I wanted to showcase this area as a selling feature.
The sunroom as seen from the living and dining area. The bold tile pattern draws you in.
Vintage
In all my years staging and decorating homes, I have never taken up the challenge to stage a home with only vintage pieces.
I had ventured into the business of home staging early in my career but at the time of staging this home - that business had been long forgotten. All of the pieces I had to work with were inventory from the vintage shop. We didn’t really have a budget to buy a lot of new items so the only new pieces are decorative pieces.
An unforgettable vintage marble table was sold with the house.
I knew the vintage pieces would work because of the age of the home, the house was built in the 1950s and all of our vintage furniture came from houses just like this. In fact, I named my business based on the cross streets where this house is located because of the abundance of mid century modern homes and the furniture that I’ve picked from the streets!
That being said, decorating with vintage is one of the most challenging and rewarding things I have ever done. I love the idea of not always sourcing things new because of the extraordinary waste newly manufactured items generates.
A vintage Danish teak desk and tension pole lamp help buyers visualize an office space in the sunroom.
A lot of our clients are eager to get to the finish line which is fair, but in order to develop a lived-in, vintage vibe - you either have to put your full trust in our process OR you have to slowly collect the right pieces over a number of years. Even then, it takes a long time to source the right vintage pieces in the Ottawa area. There isn’t as much abundance of good vintage in Ottawa as there is in other cities and that makes it really difficult. You have to be okay with buying the “not-so-perfect” piece and making it work or be prepared to fight all the other “pickers” for the good stuff. For the average shopper who is willing to pay for the right piece, a resurgence in vintage shops and diy refurbishers makes it easier (but pricier) to find those “perfect” pieces.
There were three main spaces to style and I chose the pieces we would used in each space based on colour palette. The theme of black, white, and wood was strong throughout the house so for the main living spaces I stuck with white, black, and natural materials. Even though not all of the wood tones match perfectly, the simple colour palette and clean lines of the furniture keep the space calm so the different wood colours just feel natural.
This all vintage living room is definitely a showcase for our vintage pieces. The only items sourced new are the cushions and rug.
In the sunroom, I wanted to make the space feel more casual so I opted for a bit more colour here. The warm wood tones of the teak sideboard and desk help to balance the cool grey and white tile. The blue on the sofa and pink in the rug make the space feel more approachable and fun.
Warm wood tones and fun colours help to make this space feel approachable and inviting.
The Ottawa housing market is booming right now and this house sold for over asking, within a week of being listed. I’d like to think the staging had something to do with that, but I’m pretty sure just about anything can sell in this climate. Now that the house has been sold we are gearing up for our limited collection sale which will feature the furniture and décor used to stage this home.
Here is a preview of what we’ll be selling April 15-30th!