Like you really think I’m going to say no? Of course, everyone should have an interior designer for their vacation rental. However, when I started, I wasn’t a designer, and I couldn’t afford one. What I had was a decent eye and a whole lot of enthusiasm. Is that enough? Do you need a professional to design an Airbnb?
What’s the Difference Between a Professional and Amateur Designed Vacation Rental?
I’m going to tell you. Follow along and revel in my early days.
Amateur Hour
I’ve been reluctant to tell this story because it involves some “before” pictures that I’ve been a little embarrassed to share. They do not tell the story of a professional interior designer because I wasn’t one at the time. Nor had I ever worked with one or known anyone who had. But we all start somewhere, and the truth is, my fledgling efforts still got us booked. Even after I “went pro,” earning my design degree and getting a fancy day job working on multi-billion dollar hotel projects, I wondered whether upping the design of my vacation rental would pay off. Did guests really care?
The Beginning
I started my vacation rental business like a lot of other people. With a big idea and a finite amount of money.
In 2011 my husband and I, like the rest of the country, had had a crappy couple of years. But we had some advantages: one stable job (my husband’s), some savings, and a lot of equity in our “starter-home-now-forever-home,” a Santa Monica, California condo. I had a love of interior design from back in the “Trading Spaces” days, a flexible schedule, and a lot of hours logged on DIY blogs.
We had been hearing about vacation rentals from friends of ours who owned them, and we thought we might have what it takes to build a successful rental business.
There were still a few bank-owned and short-sale properties in the Palm Springs area, a popular vacation destination about a two-hour drive from us. If we stretched, we might be able to make it happen. We found a real estate agent and started looking.
It was summer, and the daytime highs were well over 100°F. Every weekend, we drove to the desert to check out listings in our price range. They were all their own version of bad, but after a while, we noticed something most of them had in common. We would find a neat round hole in the corner of a living room window or the floor of a bedroom.
“Bullet hole!” Our agent would exclaim as if we had just found a golden ticket in a bar of chocolate and not evidence of a possible crime. “Not much to do in the desert.”
Great. Exactly the luxe experience we were hoping to create.
The One
Just about the time when I was ready to throw in the towel, our agent pulled up in front of a terrible-looking house in a fantastic neighborhood. “It wasn’t on your list,” he said, “but it’s bank-owned and $89 a square foot!” The average price of the dumps we had been looking at was $150-$160 a square foot. I thought this one must be particularly horrendous.
Thanks to Redfin, these photos still exist. That bedroom in the middle was featured because it was the only one with walls and a floor. Yes, it had a pool, but thanks to the concrete surrounding it, it looked like a space for aqua therapy at the asylum.
“No. No way” I said. I’d had enough of the crap shack tour. But our agent was so eager to take a look that it was obvious he was going in even if we stayed in the car.
We caved and went in. It was bad. No bullet holes that we could see, but also, in more than half of the house, no drywall, floors, or windows. It was a mid-century ranch house that had been irresponsibly enlarged, then abandoned mid-flip. It was a way bigger project that we planned to take on.
Of course, we bought it. We never could resist a bargain.
The renovation story is another tale for another day, but let’s just say the house needed a ridiculous amount of work, and the contractors we hired or attempted to hire, were not exactly reliable. It took a year and gallons of sweat equity and not a small number of tears, but we got it done.
At the end of all that, our furnishing budget was, um, not luxury level.
I cruised daily deal sites, combed Craigslist, and learned about liquidators. I stenciled walls, etched glass, and got it done the best I could. I was pretty proud of the results, but of course, I always wondered if we would end up ahead.
We did it! This was the first version of our living room. Not stellar, but good enough.. What would an interior designer do differently? Tune in to Part 2 to find out!
We opened in 2012, and it worked! We got renters and, over the years, a lot of returning guests. We got great reviews and, a few years in, started thinking about the next steps. In a move I can only compare to forgetting the pain of childbirth and planning for a second, I decided the remodeling part was my jam, and I enrolled in night classes in interior design. Why not be an interior designer? I had already proven that I was good at it! Right?
Right?
Did interior design school support my self-assessment? What do interior designers actually do, anyway? Tune in to Part Two to find out what changed after I went pro.
