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Even if you don’t pride yourself on your artistic flair, you probably have developed fairly firm ideas about what makes some Sebastopol homes come across better than others. Without even consciously thinking about it, you know as soon as you walk through a front door whether that immediate impression is strongly positive, just so-so, or sub-so-so.

A home’s agreeable first impression can usually be laid to a combination of pleasing architecture, diligent maintenance, and appealing décor. Not every home in Sebastopol has all that going for it, but there can also be a saving note: sometimes the most important impression comes from just a few minor touches—clever accents that just seem perfect.

Now that we’re wading deeper into the (very welcomed) rainy months when the weather causes us to stay indoors, we are more likely to find ourselves with some spare time—the commodity that was so hard to find when the sun was shining. That makes it an ideal time to browse through the web (or home decorating magazines, if any of those are around) to fire your creative decorating juices. There are websites galore that feature photos displaying imaginative design touches that other homeowners have come up with. Today, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel—when it’s being reinvented by thousands of others.

All by itself, Pinterest is a single source of boundless do-it-yourself design ideas. The virtual pin board site is the source of billions of images its users are proud enough to want to share with the world (and a surprisingly large percentage live up to that appraisal!). Since there are more than 100 million active users every month, the images and ideas are constantly changing. If you’re open to new ideas, this is boundlessly rich territory.

If you enter ‘decorating’ in the search bar at the top of the Pinterest screen, you’ll summon up dozens of tabs (they look like color swatches) that lead to all sorts of classifications. There are Apartment, Home, Bedroom, Cabin, DIY, Room, Fall, Rustic, Kitchen, Bathroom, Wall, Ideas, House, Vintage, Country, Table, Dorm, Cookies (this leads to dessert-type cookies—so here ‘decorating’ means ideas for icing them), On A Budget, Farmhouse, Cottage, Bohemian (a suitable alternate title for that one might be ‘clutter’ or ‘gypsy wagon’) Beach, Nautical, Modern…you get the idea: just about everything.

Alternatively, once you are in the greater ‘decorating’ section, you can also just key in a more specific description of the area you’re exploring. For instance, if you put in ‘spring,’ you’ll see hundreds (perhaps thousands—the pages just keep expanding) of colorful ideas for springtime everything: bunnies, door hangings (a great idea showed an umbrella hanging from a front door knocker with a terrifically colorful springtime floral display bursting up out of the inside of the umbrella)… Then, once you click on any image, you are taken to the creator’s page…and that’s likely to show hundreds of other ideas. A lot of them turn out to be commercial sites, but those have often cooked up some of the most creative ideas.

In case you’ve never visited Pinterest, We would like to apologize in advance to the amount of time it’s likely to devour. Still, when the weather turns foul, and you’re looking for ways to enhance your Sebastopol home, that’s probably a reasonable price to pay. We have a number of other resources if you are thinking of maximizing your property’s appeal for sale (or for you!). Give us a call anytime!   

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