{ May 10th, 2010 }
A Note On Animal Heads
Before I get to the meat and potatoes of this post- a few disclaimers.
First off, though I have nothing against hunting, nor do I have a particular bone to pick with mounted animal heads, it’s definitely not my cup of tea (both the activity and the design motif). But to each his own. If you want to get all Teddy Roosevelt on designing your living room, be my guest. Tu casa es… tu casa.
Secondly, the purpose of this post isn’t to advocate staging your home. There are definitely pros and cons when it comes to staging, but whether or not you should turn your home into a Pottery Barn photoshoot in order to sell is another conversation for another day. Should you clear all of the Florida Gator paraphernalia out of your basement prior to selling your home? Probably. But it’s not the biggest crime I’ve seen when it comes to creating a “sellable environment”. So, what is?
The mounted animal head.
"We live in the house on the corner of Bad Taste and Creepy. You know, the blue house"
There really isn’t anything more jarring than walking in to a living room and seeing a huge moose head on the wall. It is without a doubt the best way to make an otherwise attractive room seem undesirable to a large percentage of home buyers.
Why’s that? Well, for starters, there are a good number of people that are turned off by hunting. I know, hard to believe! And then there are those that aren’t necessarily against hunting from an ethical standpoint, but they just don’t quite understand the art of taxidermy.
It’s a shame, because this is someone who otherwise was really considering buying your house. They’re in your home, which means that the price/location/general conditions of your home were enough to get them out of the car and inside. They liked the kitchen, thought the yard was cute, and they’ve already started to picture their flatscreen on the wall in the “den”. But now they’ve turned the corner in to the living room… and there it is….
The moral of the story: Once you’ve put your house on the market, keep your interests to yourself. The home is no longer yours, it belongs to “the market”. Put your animal head(s) in a box and store them somewhere deep in the recesses of your basement. Once you sell the house and move in to your new home, you can once again flaunt your capture, but for now, selling your house is far more important.
