Dad’s workshop, mom’s prop-making launched Kimberly Easterbrook’s pursuit of tranquil spaces
Kimberly Easterbrook
Sun
A spectacularly presented residence provided the photographic component of a Westcoast Homes report in the summer on a new book about ‘West Coast style’ pioneer Fred Hollingsworth (‘B.C.’s other great architect finally in limelight,’ July 23). The arranger of the interior ‘look’ of the home as published is a local home stager. Her name is Kimberly Easterbrook (left) and, at The Vancouver Sun’s invitation, she wrote a commentary, not on what she did in that home, but rather on what a stager does and how. The tranquil space is, perhaps, the most important outcome of the staging effort, she writes.
A couple of months ago, my father met me at the Duke Point ferry terminal on Vancouver Island, very excited to tell me about his latest home renovation. At the house, still very excited, he hurried me downstairs.
There we entered a Greek/Roman bathroom, through mirrored doors between the “spa” and an adjoining oceanview bedroom.
Stone pillars enclosed a sunken tub, marble cloaked the perimeter and a copy of Falconet’s The Bather rested in a stone cave-like shelf.
The space has the kind of personality that encourages instant bonding and contemplation of long, happy relationships. I saw myself enjoying a long luxurious bath.
Romantized and merchandised to perfection, my dad’s new space was the work of a true stager!
Seeing it with him was also one of those moments of a lifetime when you realize who you are and why. I am my 71-year-old father, I realized. He not only designed and built our family homes, he staged them to sell! It was in my blood line!
My apprenticeship as a ”home stager,” I realized, started in my childhood when, on a typical Saturday, I would be helping either Dad in his workshop or Mom, a department-store display-artist, make props and move furniture around in our house. Outside the house, I was typically busy transforming the neighbourhood kids and animals with my parent’s clothes, and then putting on theatrical shows with my sister.
It is no coincidence that my first job was building props, merchandising and designing displays for a clothing store.
I then moved into managing several retail stores where I excelled as a ”visual presentation specialist” for my interior themes. This interest led to another job in which I designed, choreographed and staged fashion shows in golf courses, hotels and restaurants throughout the Lower Mainland.
Then a knee injury prevented me from working for more than a year. It was the best life changing experience that ever happened to me. I wanted to accomplish a lot before I turned 50. So, at 30 years old, I put an ad in the paper to clean houses … something easy to get my feet wet as a new entrepreneur.
This led to helping my clients decorate their homes. That lead to my first business, Display & Design.
Under this hat, I contracted myself out to stores like The Bay and Pearl Vision, in merchandising and window display, staged boats on the marina for resale, decorated and merchandised home offices, designed exclusive floral arrangements, staged scenes for magazine photo shoots as a photography stylist, designed trade show displays for Sears Health Food and Fitness Store and major health companies, designed weddings, and volunteered in staging scenes in several theatre plays.
As a freelancer, I also held a part time job on weekends as a sales presentation hostess. I helped staged show homes, learned market trends, toured and presented to buyers show homes on a variety of sites, and worked with a variety of realtors on different sites.
After staging a friend’s home for sale, and receiving inquiries from prospective buyers and agents asking if I did this for a living, I knew an apprenticeship of almost 30 years’ duration was probably coming to end. I had acquired the tools to transform over to the ”setting the stage” field.
Last year I renamed my business, calling it The Space Stager. That name leaves it open for me to stage a variety of spaces, yet focusing on the real-estate aspect of staging.
There have been many challenges along the way! Like any normal business, I started out doing everything by myself, de-cluttering, organizing, decorating and staging, cleaning, packing, landscaping, painting and washing windows. I even took my own furniture out of my home to stage my first house.
At the same time, it was important for me, as a small-business owner, to be fully capable of handling everything on my own if ever the need should arise.
I have been extremely busy this year with resale properties, attracting very large projects that needed a lot of work, from interior renovations to major landscaping.
Trying to find the right team of people, people who love what they do, was another challenge.
Someone I am so thankful for is Good Riddance Organizing Solutions. Susan Borax helps me take care of the de-cluttering, and packing and storage of client’s possessions, on each project. This can be such a vast area to cover when we have to prepare a house, occupied for 30 to 50 years by the same family, for sale in two to three weeks.
Known as a ”Burlap into Satin” gal when I was younger, I also know how to be frugal and thrifty with building props. This is a major part of how I help homeowners keep within their budgets.
I have a manageable amount of props to fill in where needed, and have a great seamstress, Inna Lookianova, who can create miracles from outdated furniture. Yet, more importantly, I use homeowner furniture as much as possible to save money.
As a part-time researcher on healthy environments, I try to incorporate in my home-staging jobs natural elements as much as possible, to introduce to prospective buyer the space that should naturally surround us, new home, old home, small home, large home
Preparing the Hollingsworth residence for sale has been the highlight of my home staging career. His geometric architecture made it very easy to stage a Japanese “drama.” Nature and the ocean framed throughout the house by generous glazing, I was able to compliment the inside architecture by staging with natural elements, capturing a Zen like sanctuary.
As an entrepreneur, specializing in transformation, I have to be open to constant change and transformation in myself and my business. The time has come for transformation once again in my business.
After witnessing so many of my clients’ health improve after I’ve staged their home for sale, after hearing so many of them say they didn’t want to move from the showcase sanctuary in which they now loved to live, I found myself travelling to their new homes, and some of them out of town, to organize and set up their new homes and offices into healthy, tranquil living environments.
Hence another business, an extension of my existing business. I’ve called it Tranquil Places Decor Group. My business tag line is ”Transforming your space into a tranquil place.”
Space is a part of all our lives. How we live and breathe in these spaces, how clean and organized we keep our spaces, how we place our furniture in them, is of utmost importance to the flow of energy in our home or workplace and, therefore, to our health.
Kimberly Easterbrook can be reached at www.thespacestager.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2005