How a stager spruced up a Distillery District condo on a shoestring budget

Address: 33 Mill Street Listed for: $450,000 Sold for: $459,900

The property

This two-bedroom condo is located on the eastern edge of the Distillery District, close to shops, restaurants, and one of the city’s fanciest Beer Stores. The owner enlisted realtors Melanie and Joanna Wilson to put the place on the market.

The stager

After completing George Brown’s interior decorating program in 2011, Casey Taylor-Panet started her company, 184 Decor, out of a 100-square-foot storage locker. She now works out of a 2,000-square-foot office and warehouse space.

The strategy

The realtors were covering the cost of the staging, but the place looked pretty great to begin with, so not much was needed. Taylor-Panet worked with the sellers’ existing furniture, adding new pieces sparingly. Her goal was to create as much space as possible by reconfiguring the furniture and decluttering.

“Even though the main room was open-concept, they had positioned the furniture to make the living room feel like a separate space,” Taylor-Panet says. By moving the TV against the wall, removing one of the seats, and shifting the remaining seating around, she was able to open up the room. She added a few accessories to brighten up the colour palette.

No new furniture was added to the dining room. All Taylor-Panet did was some decluttering and repositioning. The bright centrepiece matches the white accessories in the living room.

The master bedroom was one of the few areas where Taylor-Panet had control over the colour scheme. She added bright, modern bedding and cushions (“HomeSense is always my go-to store for bedding and pillows,” she says) and tied the room together with an art piece and a variety of candles in different shades of blue.

This space was being used as a storage room, but Taylor-Panet wanted to make sure buyers could envision it as a second bedroom, so she brought in a bed. She added some green and purple pillows and accessories to brighten things up a bit.