By Lance McCarthy

Designing spaces is a lot like cooking a gourmet meal.  It seems pretty easy and intuitive, especially when you see it on TV.  All the ingredients are familiar, how hard can it be?  But the harder you work, sometimes the further you get from what you wanted, and often your finished product looks nothing like what you had imagined.  Happened to me just this morning with my “autumn pumpkin oatmeal”.  Thanks a lot Rachael Ray!

In my line of work, I get to go into a lot of houses (by my count, almost 200 so far this year), and one of the things that I notice is how often the space in houses just isn’t working very well.  These are normal, everyday houses, probably a lot like yours, but something about them is not functioning as well as it should.  We end up spending a lot of time helping people that are having to work around their houses to live their lives.

I think one of the reasons for this is that often, homeowners, contractors and designers/architects are ignoring the Secret Rules of Design.  Now what, you may ask, are the Secret Rules Of Design? and why do I keep capitalizing the words “Secret”, “Rules”, “Of”, and “Design”?  I’m glad you asked.  I’m capitalizing mostly because it is Fun.  And I have asked my good friend Joel (with a capital J) the Architect to share some of the Secret Rules Of Design.

Rules of Design are a lot like our culture’s rules about who it’s ok to kiss.  You can obey the rules or break the rules, but just don’t act like there aren’t rules or you might end up somewhere you didn’t want to be.  Exhibit A.  That’s me treating you to a super awkward video.  You’re welcome.

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By Lance McCarthy

Do you find your house mysterious and perplexing?

I have decided to bravely serve as tour guide to the home.  Each month I will dedicate one of my columns to illuminating some part of the house that most people might not know much about.

This week’s topic: Sewer lines

This may be the most underappreciated part of a house.  In honor of our clients Stephen and Melissa, who went without a working sewer line in their house for part of the day yesterday, I am here to shed light on something that rarely sees the light (thank goodness!)

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By Lance McCarthy

What if I told you I would give you $10,000 if you changed your mind about something wrong you believed?  The trick is, you don’t think it is wrong.

I’m reading a great book right now by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Slow.  The book talks about how the brain is exceptionally good at quite a few things–it can make lightning fast decisions with incredible accuracy and sort through millions of points of data with dizzying efficiency.  And yet, sometimes it gets it wrong.  And when it does, it tends to protect its wrong decision instead of correcting it.

This happens a lot when people sell their homes.  It is probably one of their largest lifetime investments, and there is incredible potential to realize financial gains.  And yet, because it isn’t an asset (it is their home) it is easy to overlook strategies that may greatly impact how much their home will ultimately sell for.

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By Lance McCarthy

It’s hard to imagine a time before shows about selling a house.  Remember when “flipping” was something people did to pancakes, “move that bus” was something you said to get out of the school’s circle drive, and “staging” was…uh…something you did…on a…stage?.   About that time I had a brilliant idea: someone should start a company that prepares peoples’ homes for sale.  Brilliant idea, really poor timing.  A little like selling life jackets on the Titanic–before the iceberg.

As poor as the timing was, the techniques worked amazingly well.  Clients were able to sell their houses faster for more profit by applying some very simple principles.  We evolved over time to serve a broader client base, but I still get to help people prepare their homes for sale occasionally.  I still enjoy helping clients take a home they have lived in for years and enhancing it for a more profitable sale.

This week I want to share three of the mistakes many people make during this enhancement process.

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By Lance McCarthy

It’s hard to imagine a time before shows about selling a house.  Remember when “flipping” was something people did to pancakes, “move that bus” was something you said to get out of the school’s circle drive, and “staging” was…uh…something you did…on a…stage?.   About that time I had a brilliant idea: someone should start a company that prepares peoples’ homes for sale.  Brilliant idea, really poor timing.  A little like selling life jackets on the Titanic–before the iceberg.

As poor as the timing was, the techniques worked amazingly well.  Clients were able to sell their houses faster for more profit by applying some very simple principles.  We evolved over time to serve a broader client base, but I still get to help people prepare their homes for sale occasionally.  I still enjoy helping clients take a home they have lived in for years and enhancing it for a more profitable sale.

This week I want to share three of the mistakes many people make during this enhancement process.

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