As young girls growing up in an Italian American household we would often hear the banter between our Mother and Grandma. It was mostly in Italian with a few English words thrown in. Grandma always had these great pearls of wisdom. One phrase we would hear over and over again, “troppo fa male” the English translation, “too much hurts”. What Grandma really was telling us was “less is more”. Little did we sisters know at the time that Grandma was teaching us the basics of staging!
Rule # 1 of Staging …. Less Is More
So naturally when we were asked to view a property requiring our staging services, Grandma’s words echoed in our minds. The property was located in a very prestigious condominium locality in Miami. Upon walking into the unit the first thing that hit us was wallpaper. There was wall paper on the walls, wall paper on the ceilings, even the switch plates were covered in wall paper. There wasn’t a room that escaped this massive covering! Now, don’t get us wrong…..we love the trends in beautiful wall coverings but in this case “troppo fa male”.
To add to this was the overkill in florals; floral bedspreads, floral headboards floral draperies and the overabundance of furniture everywhere.
It wasn’t that the home was unkempt or messy, it was just the proverbial can’t see the forest through the wallpaper & florals. It was time to put Grandma’s wisdom to task!
Since the wonderful owners gave us carte blanche to do our magic we put our plan in place
1. Donate furniture and unneeded items to local charities
2. Hire a crew to remove wall paper, paint and discard unneeded items
3. Schedule a Deep Cleaning
4. Do a little shopping for incidental décor
5. Put it all together
The final result
Beautiful – Clean – Simply Stated Elegance
Troppo fa male – Less Is More
