Whether you are selling your home or staying put, chances are you have (or will have) a small space on your hands. Most of us are not lucky enough to have walk-in closets the size of kitchens, so what’s a girl (or boy) to do? Below are my top 5 tricks to making any room feel more spacious!

1. Large artwork will make small rooms appear bigger, so skip the random hanging of small prints and go for one sofa-sized painting or blow up a photograph using a site like Photogonia.
2. Monochromatic color schemes can be your best friend, especially when staging a home to sell. Using many different colors causes the eye to jump around and can visually break up a room. A monochromatic scheme (the use of various shades of the same color) encourages an ebb and flow appearance and makes even dark, small rooms less claustrophobic. For example, a bedroom could be visually enlarged by using a khaki-colored carpet, beige bedding and a neutral paint on walls (try Sherwin Williams’ ‘Trusty Tan’ or ‘Macadamia’).
3. Speaking of paint, a ceiling that is painted lighter than the walls

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Unless you live under a rock (a well decorated one since you read Back Talk’s blog religiously!), you are no doubt being inundated with calls to make New Year’s Resolutions. Personally, I’ve never been a fan. Why make positive changes in your life just one time a year? But the call to action does have its benefits for homeowners who will be using January to kick off long-awaited projects. For my household, that means installing new trim and crown moulding. For you, the job may be much smaller or much more grand; either way, there has never been a better time to start creating a new look for your home. Why? Motivation is at an all-time high in January for everything from weight loss to quitting smoking. Why not use this universal momentum to get the master bedroom repainted? Additionally, prices on the items you will need for your home’s new look will be deliciously discounted as retailers try to make up for decreased profits during the holiday season. This is also the time of year when many home furnishings stores clearance out their inventory to make room for shipments that will soon arrive from market.

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With networks such as TLC  and HGTV shoving DIY projects down our throats every hour of every day, one may easily be swept into the apparent charm of it all: “We made this tiny bathroom a master suite in 2 days with $500!” Every time I hear such claims on TV I want to yell into the unresponsive appliance, “Deceit! Deceit!”

Here’s the thing. As a professional interior decorator, my calendar stays full because people do not want to do it themselves, so I can’t speak against the movement entirely. What I can say is that more often than not my new clients come to be because they tried to do it themselves and they weren’t armed before jumping in with both feet. What the cameras don’t show is the number of behind-the-scenes craftsmen working on the project long after the TV personalities have gone home. They don’t tell you that many of the products purchased were done so at a large dicount or even donated by sponsors. They often won’t tell viewers if any money and time was required at any point to fix a mistake (as often happens during any given project).

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Thanks to the first-time home buyer tax credit, first-timers everywhere are clamoring to get their closing date set before the November 30th deadline. As a first-time home buyer, the buying process was a big enough stressor for me, but actually filing for the credit can seem almost as confusing as understanding all those closing documents. Have no fear, It’s actually a pretty simple process and should only require about an hour of your time. You can choose to file for the tax credit on your 2009 taxes, or you can amend your 2008 taxes and get your refund a little faster, here’s how:

First, fill out form 5405.

Don’t let all the tax jargon and instructions fool you, read the instructions carefully. There’s not much clarity on what to send in with the 5405 Form, so I’ll break it down for you.

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No one can get your home ready for the masses quite like a professional home stager, but we realize that the term itself, let alone the concept, is still relatively new to many Oklahomans. If your Realtor is not purchasing the time of a Home Stager for you and it isn’t within your budget to hire a pro (although prices can start as low as $200!) here are five tips you can do on your own to achieve an atmosphere worthy of any potential buyer!

1. Declutter, declutter, declutter. That collection of Elvis plates- gone. Your endless supply of Tupperware- pack it up. Get down to the bare essentials. If you will be living in your home until closing, keep a reasonable supply of bath towels, dishes and other daily items on hand. Aside from that, everything else needs to be packed up, donated, tossed, etc.
2. Hang your draperies higher than they are right now. 90% of windows aren’t living up to their full potential and its an easy fix! Your drapery rod should be mounted about three inches below the ceiling line/crown molding. You want your draperies to come within an inch of the floor, so if you have 84″ high windows, buy 95″ long panels and in an instant you’ve added visual space to your rooms.
3. Pink is an artist, not a wall color. While bright colors are fun for the kids’ rooms this is not the time to show your family’s quirky personality to the world. Give the home a once (or twice) over with a nice neutral paint color, such as Sherwin Williams’ “Camelback”. (I’ve even painted my dining room fuschia but you can bet it all went white once the house hit the market.)
4. Your flooring could be turning people away. Have your carpets cleaned, mend any transition places where a flooring material is coming up, and polish the wood floors. Need a cheap replacement for flooring that is beyond cleaning? Linoleum has come a long way, baby. With so many attractive styles available, its definitely a good value for those smaller rooms, such as laundry rooms and bathrooms.
5. Do you smell that? Actually, you may not, but buyers do. When you have lived around a certain scent for an extended period of time, you become immune to it. This includes pet odors, cigarette smoke, strong-smelling foods and mildew in the laundry room. Have a friend or your Realtor walk through your home and point out any offensive smells they notice. Steps #3 and #4 will help with this immensely, but you can also add plug-in room fresheners (please stay away from the potpourri, I beg of you). Love to cook spicy food? During this time when you may be asked to leave your home suddenly for a showing, avoid cooking those foods that leave behind intense smells, or open windows while cooking.

And there you have it! Five secrets of a professional home stager that you can take to the bank!

Jennifer Hicks is a Certified Interior Designer and Owner of Designing Diva Interiors, LLC

I love home-improvement projects. There’s just something about improving an area or feature of your home and enjoying the benefits of it when you’re done. Saving a little money on it might be another reason to do it yourself

Our back yard is one of our favorite places, and our pergola is just one of the many things that help it feel like an extra living space. In fact, pergolas may be one of the things I suggest most often to my clients who’ve just bought a house that really has no flair outdoors.

Here’s a great little do-it-yourself guide to building a pergola of your own. Now get to work expanding your living space without the expense of adding square-footage to your home.

Just wanted to pass along some great information that was posted over on the Mile 103 blog earlier today.

As you may or may not know, Friday is the deadline to register as a voter.  Whether you recently moved here, or if you haven’t voted in a while, YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO VOTE IF YOU DON’T RE-REGISTER.

Click on the link to the Mile 103 blog for all the details of why, when & how.

When analyzing whether a home for sale is priced properly or not, there are several factors to evaluate. First, and most obviously, what’s been selling in the neighborhood, and for how much? I’ll use the Seminole Pointe addition of Edmond, located at NW 164th & May as an example:

As you can see here, the overall average price per square foot in Seminole Pointe over the past 90 days has been a little over $90, with the average sales price coming in at just under $138,000.

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Yes, it’s an age-old question, and one that’s debated often.  I like to just throw out the facts on certain situations and let you decide for yourself.

Case in point: Seller calls me a few months ago and asks me to provide them with a CMA (comparative market analysis).  I do so, and meet with them to go over my findings.  I showed them the analysis to back up my knowledge that their home will sell for around $230,600.  I can’t guarantee that number, but my track record backs up the fact that I’m usually within $1,000 of being correct.

So, a few months go by, and they sell their home FSBO for $221,500.  Sounds like they came out pretty well, right?  They sold the house for about 96% of what I could have/would have sold it for.

Now, consider this; they paid 3% to the agent who brought the buyer.  So, in essence, they got 99% of the amount they would have fared with my services.  They did all the work and took on all the expenses of marketing, phone calls, showings, etc, and likely paid more in fees than they would have with me, because of the volume I do.

So, the question is, did they come out ahead?  What do you think?

There’s one topic that always seems to be hot in the minds of anyone looking to move to Oklahoma.  Maybe it starts when we’re kids, watching the classic ‘Wizard of Oz‘ or maybe it’s the images on the news, and the unknown that fosters the fear.  Whatever the cause, it seems that almost every buyer I’ve ever worked with, who’s relocating here from out of state, has had a very healthy fear of tornadoes.

It’s actually the second thing out of their mouths many times.  “How are the schools here” is often followed with “Does this house have a tornado shelter?”  I can’t say I blame them.  It’s probably the same apprehension I’d be feeling if I were moving to LA, after seeing earthquakes and riots on the news for all these years.

Truth is though, tornadoes aren’t nearly as frequent here in Oklahoma as it may seem from the outside looking in.  Sure, every spring is ‘Tornado Season’ and we get the buzzing watches and warnings on the screen about every day or two, but more times than not, we get false warnings, or alerts from out in the sticks.  Let me put it this way; I’ve lived in the metro area my entire life.  Of that 29 years (OK, I lied, it’s 36 years), I’ve been in the crouching position during a tornado twice.  One other time, I got in the car and headed South, far from the path of the impending twister.

See, that’s the beauty of the whole thing.  While Oklahoma is known for severe weather, which includes tornadoes of course, our warning systems are the most advanced in the world.  Did you know that the National Weather Service is actually headquartered in Norman, Oklahoma?  This state is actually the crème de la crème when it comes to meteorologist work.  The weather guy you watch on TV each night probably dreams each night about landing the BIG job in Oklahoma.  Anyway, because of that, we have the best meteorologists, and the best actual tornado detection systems in the world, so we have plenty of warning almost every time.  From what I’ve seen, the more fatal twisters are usually in areas that have poor detection systems, so nobody has time to prepare.

So, here’s the deal; I’m not saying you shouldn’t fear tornadoes, and I’m in no way a weather expert of any kind, but based on my experience, I can tell you that if you live out of state, you probably have it built up much worse in your mind than it is in reality.  A healthy fear is good, but don’t let it scare you too much.

So, on to the fun part.  I love wikiHows.  I learn a lot from keeping up with them, and I stumbled across one today about how to prepare for a tornado.  I thought this would be a valuable thing to share with you, my readers, just in case you’re ever caught in one.  I hope you find it useful, but never actually have to use it, and I hope I’ve helped calm at least a few of your fears of twisters.