Transcription

“Another thing that I’ve found recently, they say necessity is the mother of all invention is we were somewhere sitting up, didn’t have a bed skirt. And what I did was just flipped over a fitted sheet. Love it. And it just wraps really tightly around.”​

Intro

Well, hello, everyone, it’s Bernadette back and I’m here with Michelle Lewis yet again, and this episode is a result of a conversation that we had at the She Renovates Facebook group and we were talking about some sort of styling hacks. And I thought this would be a fantastic topic to get Michelle to talk about on the podcast because I think we both have a few really clever hacks to make the job a bit easier. And, of course, to meet the budget guidelines. So welcome Michelle!

Michelle: Hi, Bernadette. Great to be here. Thanks for having me again. I always love it.

Bernadette: And I am particularly mindful of the fact that you’re in the middle of a project. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the project?

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve bought a property in Adelaide in the Blackwood area, Hawthorndene. I’m going to a week full now and hoping to get it done in 6 weeks. See how we go. I’m going away next weekend to Perth. But basically it’s a buy, renovate and sell, pretty much paint inside and out floors. New second hand kitchen. My usual tricks. We have put a deck on this one, which is exciting. That’s the first time really we’ve popped a deck on. But it’s such a beautiful big block. I think it will really be a wonderful add value.

Bernadette: Great. That’s very exciting. Two weeks to market?

Michelle: Yeah. Well, we had a little issue. My husband rolled his ankle playing baseball and I said, “No! Not mid reno!”

Bernadette: Oh, dear. That’s not good.

Michelle: Nevermind. These challenges are here to make us stronger, Bernadette.

Bernadette: They are, Michelle. Well, I’m very happy to say I finally got Wynnum done. So that’s going to market this week.

Michelle: Yay!

Bernadette: We’ll have two on the market, which will be really nice. I’m having a bit of a clearer. So let’s get into the styling.

STYLING IS NON-NEGOTIABLE

Michelle: The other thing I have done before is put what I want on Gumtree at one time before I discovered blow-up mattresses, which I think we’re going to talk about later. I put an ad on wanted to 2 single bed mattresses, any condition, for styling not to be fit for use. And sure enough, in a couple of days, people are throwing their single beds at me. And that was a free styling tool that I could use to keep or give back. And share with someone else later on. So yeah, that’s a few of my tips.

BEDROOM

Bernadette: Yeah, that’s great. Actually, while we’re on mattresses, let’s move into the bedroom. When you were talking about a back-saving trick, I must admit I was on a slightly different tangent. I didn’t. So you actually have a bed and then you put a blow-up mattress on it?

Michelle: No, no, no. I used blow-up mattresses and put milk crates or boxes or whatever you want under it. Oh, yes. A friend of mine in Adelaide here. I helped her start a house and she taught me this trick. And people have said to. I helped her. I’ve coached her to sell that property. And people said to us, “Can we buy the beds with the property?” And we’re like their actually not beds, their actually blow-up mattresses. I think one of them had a Christmas tree box under it. I did send it through some photos, but it did. But they’re all blow-up mattresses and you just set them up at the height of a normal bed, a queen-sized blow-up mattress that cost $25 from Target. Badaboom! Badabing! and you’re done. You don’t have to carry heavy mattresses.

Michelle: People panic about the idea, but people don’t know.

Bernadette: That is brilliant because I must admit we have a renovator in our community who uses euro beds and she gets fantastic prices for renos. I always thought that the euro beds looked a bit odd because they were quite low, but I think yours is a much better idea.

Michelle: Yeah. So the other thing you can put under them, Bernadette is your typical IKEA box shelving those boxes that go into them. They’re almost the perfect height. So I took them from my son’s room sorry, Jordan, and took four of them underneath the blow-up mattress. And then by the time you put your bed skirt around, nobody knows.

Bernadette: That is absolutely brilliant.

Michelle: Just one word of caution.

Bernadette: What if someone sits on it?

Michelle: Well, there’s that, too. But I’ve never seen it happen. But if you get a hole in it, you’d need to have a plan B.

Bernadette: Well, I’m sure it’s not too much of an inconvenience to have a spare on hand. That’s absolutely brilliant because I tend to go for ensembles and I do the same as you. I just find them on that. Well, there’s a guy in Sydney. He says that he has overseas students and he sells off the beds when they go. But I actually think he trades in beds because he always has lots there. Yeah, but he’s. His name’s Donald. And I ring him up and he’ll have an ensemble. He brings it over and does it up the stairs and sets it up for me. Then when I finished I sell them and I often make a profit on them.

Michelle: Yeah. Great. One other place, Bernadette. You can get things from is a hire place. I helped a client do styling at least half of her furniture. We purchased half and we also hired some. Some things that I didn’t have. She wanted a proper bed, so she hired it from a hire place. You can search your local area for that. It could be cost-effective.

Michelle: Actually, a friend of mine did say to me the other day, Michelle, why don’t you get a wicker basket and turn it upside down? Free kitchen bench areas. And I think that gives a really good shadowy effect in the area.

Bernadette: Another thing that I’ve found recently, they say necessity is the mother of all invention is we were somewhere sitting up, didn’t have a bed skirt. And what I did was just flipped over a fitted sheet. Love it. And it just wraps really tightly around.

Bernadette: You can’t do it with IKEA fitted sheets because they’re not tighter enough. So that’s a great way to get a big bed skirt without actually going and borrowing one if you could.

Michelle: Absolutely. Well, I know what I’ve done. I’ve picked up a cheap king size, which obviously not as popular, and I’ve just adjusted it to fit a Queen, Bernadette. So that’s another happy neat trick. You just tuck it in a bit more and then it’s one size fits many.

Bernadette: Beautiful. Actually, do you get the sewing machine out?

Michelle: No.

Bernadette: I must admit, I do. I really love doing those little finishing touches. In the project we just finished, I actually went and bought because I couldn’t get cushions in the pattern that I wanted. I bought in a king-size coupe cover set and I cut the quilt up and made a tailored bed skirt for the bed, a beautiful blue paisley pattern. And the other thing I did, and I think this was the tip that I showed on the Facebook group was I turned the I got some cushions and I made the cover out of a pillowcase just by enveloping it. A nice way of getting a custom look without having to go out and get custom cushions.

Michelle: Yes. Absolutely. I’ll add to that if you’re not a sewer, things like Velcro or even masking tape for a short period of time work really well. When I was 18, Bernadette, I wasn’t very tall, so I would hem my jeans with masking tape and nobody knew.

THE KITCHEN

Bernadette: I’ve heard of people stapling them. What about the kitchen?

Michelle: I really believe that when people come into a house that you style the five senses or as many senses as possible. It’s important to cover. I remember once an agent had been around to 6 different homes, but when these people came into the house that I had styled and set up that everyone just went, wow, because I had in that particular home, I had the coffee on the table, the smells of the coffee. But the common one that I do. It’s just cinnamon on the stove from your spice mix and then I put it into little pots and put it around the house. Obviously, you need to be careful because it could be warm. It smells delicious. You could do it with nutmeg or any of those flavors that people love.

The other thing is to bake a cake or some bread and I leave it on the bench for people to eat. I love putting some nice pastries on a fancy tiered stand or putting out chocolates. I put a bowl of chocolates in every room. People love it. It gives them something to do. They hang around the house longer. There are lots of positives to it.

Bernadette: Yeah, I absolutely agree. Actually, a tip that I learned from one of my students when you are using fresh flowers is when the open is over to actually put them in the fridge. And just put them in some plastic bag or something and they can last ten times longer. Something about a house being shut up that it just kills off anything that’s living. Okay. Onto the next one. Artwork.

WALL ART

Michelle: Yes. I discovered a little place called Green Door Decor. And they’re in Mount Gambier in South Australia. And they will send out prints by Australian artists anywhere. And they have made them in sizes such that you can just go on to Ikea and even Kmart and get your own frames that that’s an option for people. I did that with a client. She actually put me on to this place and we just went through room by room and picked some prints. They came and she tried them and then we put them up together. So that’s a little tip there.

Bernadette: Yeah. That’s a great tip. Thank you for sending that site through to me, Michelle. Of course, there was that came out occasionally have some pieces that you can use. I must admit we’ve got a couple of wholesalers, wholesale sites that we go to for artwork, but it means that you’ve got to be organised and often. I’m doing this on the hot and I don’t have time to be.

But another trick that I have done in the past is framing wallpaper. And also fabric, like wrapping. You know those cheap wall art canvases. And actually getting a decorative, like a fabric that sometimes you can get something that looks hand painted. If you want a big piece, that’s often quite a good way to go.

I absolutely love that. I came out and bought a big circular mirror for about $30. It comes with either a black frame or a gold frame and I’ve been using that in every property because it’s such a nice statement piece.

Michelle: That’s awesome. I need a mirror like that, actually.

Michelle: Yes. Whenever I’m styling, I do this weird thing when I go to the corner of the room and I squint my eyes. And so I see that you want to try and make your room balanced in many ways. But one thing is with colours. So you don’t want to completely blend boring rooms, but you also don’t want it to be too busy. You might have a pop of colour with a rug, for example, or a picture or with cushions. You just want to sort of stand back and then balance it out. And also before your photographer comes, you want to take your own photos and have a look at them and see if the pictures balance. That’s just one thing I do.

OUTDOORS

Bernadette: That’s a clever idea. New one for me. What about outdoors?

Michelle: Outdoors is a tricky one. I had a reno flip that we did in Newcastle. I got to know the neighbor. And I don’t know how we got onto it. But I think it was short of a few dollars, I said to him, “Hey, how about I hire some of your furniture and use it for my styling? I give you a few dollars”. He goes, “Take whatever you want”. I basically went over the fence and picked what I wanted. He helped me carry it back. I borrowed all these outdoor settings, his umbrellas, these big outdoor umbrellas, some beautiful big pots. I bought a few things off him.

Get to know your neighbours. That might not work in every scenario, but it’s very easy to carry something across the fence for a few dollars rather than having to buy it. But otherwise, I go to Gumtree for my usual spots and pick stuff up there. Or of course, my favourite. The roadside. Always have your eyes out on the road, girls, and boys. There’s always something to be found, good recycling and environmentally friendly. The other thing, of course, is the salvage house has massive big pots. They might not be the right colour, but you can just grab some paint and paint it up, and that’ll save you lots of dollars, too.

Bernadette: Yes. And Rustoleum have a line called I think it’s called American accents. They have a stone look, which is really, a can of spray paint can really transform your pot. Picking up on that side of the road.

UPCYCLING

With every project, I always like to upcycle something. Lately, it’s been a wicker chair. I normally buy mine off Gumtree and I’ll show it in the show notes. The last two I did. I did one for Rennie St., which is black. And then I also did one for Bondi, I didn’t like that one so much, but it was David’s job and he really loved it. The Bondi one, we didn’t paint, we just did it with Penetrol to really bring out the natural sort of luster of the wicker. But of course, I re-upholstered the seats that’s where the sewing machine comes in and seriously they just come up a lot like new.