apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Wow. Just looks like they cleaned out all the clutter and didn't buy a darn thing to really present it at it's best. Just used what they had. You'd think anyone asking a million bucks would spend a few thousand on a spit shine.

Oh my - that house gives me a headache!

This is staged?? In my humble opinion the designer or agent got it ALL wrong. This could be a really neat space..

That's awful. These should be "before" photos!!

If that's staged, the owners skipped the all-important chapter on how to erase one's own personality so that the prospective buyer can imagine moving right in.

I bet there was soooooooooo much more than that in there, and that poor agent had to fight the client tooth and nail just to get it to THAT point.

Between the rafters in the bedroom was probably painted black instead of white, for instance, and they probably had to use wood putty over the holes where there were hooks and ropes in those beams. Heh heh heh hehhhhhh.

-really very not good-

Check out the old clunker of a tv in the bedroom (second to last photo). I just don't understand that dining room. Having a framed Nagel print is cool but to have a matching 80s rug? Blecch! And that chandelier is downright ornery.

Yikes! Where to begin? The microwave positioned about 5 inches away from a ratty carpeted staircase? The animal head hung on a mirrored wall? The tv sitting on a dresser right next to the head of the bed?

The bones of this house are problematic enough, but the decor varies from frightening to claustrophobic. Whoever staged this home has earned a scarlet 'S'.

hey, y'all - i just had to satisfy my curiosity... behold more articles about this place! thanks, AT, for introducing this blight to us! it's a poster child for how not to sell.

compelling slideshow showing you the whole house:
http://www.vizzvox.com/mls/9CR3DRZ6RXEJf01fmm?locale=en-US

one listing:
http://www.zephyr-re.com/listingdetail.cfm?ID=6228

heather leaf - thanks for those links! I wasn't sure it could get worse...but oh my..it did!

I think that people who can't appreciate the victorian style ought to just leave these homes to the people who do. This home is adorable on the outside. I would never expect it to look how it does inside. They have ruined it. I hope someone buys it and restores it to its former charm.

it makes me want to cry

I am inclined to agree with Ladybug5. I was sure the outside of the house would look like a cabin or something more primitive or rustic... was I surprised to see a "doll house" exterior. If I were house hunting, I would have been excited to stop by based on the curb appeal. But I would have had trouble imagining away the overpowering interior.

Alas, I don't have a million 099 - (or a million 098 for that matter), so all is moot.

It has a very pretty garden though.

what does the "karate-chopped-pillows way of staging" mean?

What I love about that slideshow is that the voiceover touts the ceiling heights which are typical of the Victorian age...and all you can see are the things that are SO SO not!

I don't understand the buyers out there who require a house to be "staged" anyway. It's not that difficult to see past someone else's belongings and wall color. All I'm interested in seeing is how tall the ceilings are, what type of flooring it has, if there's any structural damage, and what the neighbors and neighborhood are like.

Sorry I don't get what they've done wrong - this doens't look any different to some of the other interiors posted on AT - and anyway its going to be an empty hosue when the new owners move in!

I have to agree with Violetrose. While I would change a few things about the place, I dont see whats so offensive about it. Some of you are acting like there is a chalk outline in the floor.

i was sure someone would have noted the bottle of whiskey sitting on the tub next to the toilet by now, hee hee!

have a look again at the slideshow (link again below), that IS a whiskey bottle, isn't it? maybe that was the culprit... the designer simply went on a binge and put the house together before sobriety returned:

http://www.vizzvox.com/mls/9CR3DRZ6RXEJf01fmm?locale=en-US

yes, i am mean about this... but well... ok.

I guess I have no taste, but I don't really see the problem. It's not particularly my style, but it's quirky and interesting. What's the big deal?

how 'bout that glowing neon cactus light under the stairs in the slideshow? horrid!

and that weird couch and chair combo with the curlyque on the arm.

what's wrong? for starters they've chopped up (literally, half exposed walls?) a classic victorian and attempted to make it... well, something else. contemporary? modern? eclectic? i can't tell. and that's part of the problem. i've seen some wonderful redos of older places that contemporizes the space without killing the bones of the house. For example, a friend has an amazing colonial-era townhouse with a contemporary ikea-style kitchen, green roof, and clean lines were achieved by painting woodwork and walls white. They use art, furniture and accessories to punch it up, but the real drama is the place itself.

I'm not fond of the half destroyed wall- or the huge sofa. But I too have never understood the "staging" concept. I guess if people don't have any imagination of their own then staging can help- I would prefer to see an empty house- I want to see ALL of the floors, the walls, etc... I care WHERE a house is- the neighbors, the neighborhood. I don't care at all about a rug, or a light fixture, or a wierd sofa.

UGLY

A lot of people literally can't see past the decor to evaluate a house - those of us who can are fortunate.

Martha, 'karate-chopped pillows' is a reference to a styling trick that seems to be out of vogue now...putting pillows on a sofa or chair and karate-chopping the top center of each pillow, to create a dent or crease there.

This is a Victorian??!!! They've left enough of the dining room intact, if one can get past the horrible decor (that chandelier!), but I can't recognize 'Victorian' in any other room. Wow.

heather leaf - lol! It almost looks like it was placed there intentionally.

So I really like the bones of this house. That's what I noticed first. As someone who has been casually browsing the market for years in search of her first house, I guess I'm used to looking past all the Ugly to see something worthwhile. I'm not sure I've ever been in a professionally staged house--those seem to be out of my price bracket--and I agree that this place is definitely not decorated to my taste, but I don't view it as the most hideous thing ever.

The scale and choices are so quirky that I keep wondering if the photos are some weird hoax and it's actually a dollhouse interior... but Curbed usually gets their images from the SFARMLS...

Um, was it just time for an ATer bonding catty klatch? I think this place is more appealing than not. True, I might have put away the fire extinguisher and done some other tweaking, but I think the space itself it pretty terrific. And who would have guessed from the exterior that such spaces waited behind the door?

Someone help me out here. What's so offensive that this place was singled out for a yewwwww-gross session?

Staging can really help if your place would otherwise be completely empty. It is incredibly hard to visualise if a room can accomodate a queen sized bed, for instance, without a queen sized bed actually in it. Trust me. Otherwise you kind of just have to measure it out and a lot of people just don't do that.

in response to greer...

the post IS about the staging of the apartment, which is ugly. i do like the guts very, very much.

I adore staging for three reasons:

1. You know at a glance if certain furniture won't fit, without having to pace out the measurements. If the living room looks crowded with a loveseat and a single chair, plus one standard bookshelf, it's too small for us. (Very common w/ condo conversions here!)

2. You get a quicker sense of whether the space flow is something that you won't be able to live with.

3. It's a total hoot for seeing what mainstream style is this year!

That said, if you have a clear vision of exactly what you need in a space, you can choose perfectly fine off a floor plan, without even seeing the physical space.

i don't like staging as it will increase the number of interested buyers.

as greer mentioned... it's great for those of us who can see past the unfortunate decorating to the bones of the house or apartment and see it's true potential. many people will see the ugly decor and pass up a gem like this.

I guess I'd go broke as a realtor, because I like most of it. Except for the Nagel and rug combo, and the couch. They probably didn't tear out the victorian details on the interior; those may very well have been torn out years ago in one of those awful '60s/'70s remodels.

It's has got wonderful space, a good location and needs redecorating.That's pretty simple.
It's the owner's taste I don't like, staged or not, and I could certainly look past it...of course I do, now, feel completely confident that we could sell our house without removing some of the quirky crappe we have....

It looks like Charley Sheen's apartment after Daryl Hannah "decorated" it - all this place needs is an enourmous faux-copper bed with dinosaurs and Tizio lamps as finials...

I like it!
I've never see an apartment like that in my country. It is inspiring! thanks for posting this

This is perfect for a buyer who's interested in restoring or renovating the place to their own taste. The house is so in need of work that it drives down the price, making an otherwise unaffordable (if perfectly renovated) home within some people's budgets.

Because seriously, that "fireplace" has to knock off at least $40k.

Many people who have a lot of money (and who don't) in San Francisco are very eccentric. My guess is that these people made their money in the gaming business. They are obviously proud of their eccentricity, and are probably aiming for some other wealthy eccentrics to take over where they left off in their decorating scheme. It's not out of the question in this city.

One house we looked at in San Francisco has been done out like a medieval castle by the owner. She had actually done some sort of stucco on the walls and made fake stone walls, and patina-ed them to match. There were fake archways and even a crest or something as I remember. The whole effect reminded me of a room from a set at Disneyland. The house itself was a bland house in a bland neighborhood, and the realtor was asking around $150K more than a non castle house in the same neighborhood was going for. It was nice to have a humorous break in the usual open house nightmare of ugly overpriced houses.

Neujeramic --at $1.1 mil I don't think you would consider this a "fixer upper" even by SF standards. $40k doesn't make a dent. The stripped walls and exposed brick are apparently part of the charm of this place.

What's unclear to me is what items belong to the owner and what items came with the staging package. Typically a staging package has a very muted, neutral palette. I've seen many staged places for sale (and even helped my sister stage her SF condo a few years ago) and none of them included multiple dead animal heads with long flowing hair on the wall (see the listing that *heather leaf* provided). And the glowing cactus --don't get me started! These things are too personal. Staging typically gives the effect of a Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel store window: comfortable and clean but nothing too dramatic. So the question is: Is this place really staged or is this the owner's actual stuff?

Aside from the staging, the house itself bothers me b/c someone (current owner, past owner) chopped it up, particularly the kitchen. Has anyone noticed that the refridgerator is in a separate room than the sink and stove? The kitchen is a cooks nightmare --major flow problems.

The house reminds me of Beetlejuice. But I am glad that they put the toilet lid down.

I'm guessing the owners are ex-hippies who sold out in the 1980s.

The "bonus kitchen" and "bonus" living room make me think that this perhaps is an illegal duplex?

Well, I hope you're sitting down, but 1.1 mil is actually on the lower end of 3br. houses in this (my) neighborhood. If it didn't have all that ugly it would probably be priced higher. Crazy, I know.

the carpet on that staircase is "to' up" in every sense of the word...

Yikes. I live in an open loft, and even I'M appalled.

i don't get it. i like it. maybe that makes me one of the fashion illiterates but i think it's just the same as some other stuff i've seen on here that you guys have raved about... and you aren't buying the furniture or the paint... i really think i'm missing something here. you should see some of the open houses i have been to recently. MY GOD people slap (and i mean slap, no breaking in the edges or anything) a horrid 50c colour on one wall of each room and think it makes it look more buyable and in reality it makes me go argh they are idiots (even though i wouldn't buy for the paint, makes me wonder what else the sellers have done a half assed job on). at least this house looks finished.

if this is staged by a professional, I would have to guess he/she is a professional dumpster diver! What a mess, I got hives just looking a the video of the place. yuk!

hmmm. my wife & i bought the place. i am ... ... touched by all the comments.
perhaps we'll send some photos to AT to show what "after" looks like.