Furnish Step-By-Step Walkthrough

What’s up guys, it’s James here and in today’s video, I’m gonna be walking you through the entire process from start to finish on how to successfully furnish a short term rental property, I’m going to walk you through one of my properties that I just purchased. And I’ve gone through the process of getting all furnished. And I’m gonna walk you through from start to finish how I do it in an incredibly detailed and organized way. A lot of people don’t think about the fact that to furnish a short term rental, there’s literally hundreds of items that you’re getting. And so you need to get system to be able to keep track of things and make sure you don’t skip over any of the details. Things like making sure there’s night tables beside every bed, make sure there’s lamps on those night tables, getting phone chargers getting all the right cutlery, the right kitchen appliances, absolutely everything you need. It’s all going to be in this video, I’m going to show you my system for keeping track of this keeping it organized and making the property obviously look really awesome and have some bonus amenities for guests. So that’s what we’re going to walk through in this video. Before we do that, I just want to remind you that if you want to learn more about how to invest successfully in short term rental properties, make sure you check out the link in the description down below, it’s going to walk you through exactly how to invest successfully into short term rental properties. It’s going to give you access to all kinds of tools just like the ones I’m going to be using in this video. So make sure you check it out. Again, the link is in the description down below. And one last thing before we jump into this video. One more shameless plug. If you liked this video, or like this channel, consider liking or subscribing this video, it helps me out tremendously with YouTube’s algorithm with growing the channel and with getting more of this content in front of you. So if you like this video, or if you like this content in this channel, make sure you hit that like button, take a quick second only take a second hit the subscribe button as well. All that said let’s jump in. So this is the property this is a property that I just purchased north of Toronto in an area kind of called Algonquin Park, right near there. And so this is the property as it was purchased. So this was the actual listing the that was on the MLS. And so this is how the previous owner had it furnished but obviously it’s being sold without the furniture in it. So we got all the furniture out of there, we did some renovation so that we redid this kitchen as you can see the kitchen needed some work you can see there kind of cupboards are falling apart quite a bit here. So we redid that new kitchen, repainted it all white redid the flooring, because as you can see in some of these photos here, the flooring was kind of pulling apart. But the flooring is pretty similar color to what’s in here. It’s like this wood color, got rid of some of the stipple ceiling that we could repainted got rid of these racing stripes and put nice flooring down in these rooms as well. So there’s nice, nice vinyl flooring in there as well. The bathroom was one of the one one areas that we kept just as it is really beautiful is nicely redone. It’s got heated floors in here, the whole nine yards. So that was all done. down in the basement, I decided that in here I was going to do a kind of movie and game room. So in this area over here, I’m playing a ping pong table and a Pac Man arcade game. And then this area over here, there’s gonna be a nice huge sectional couch that you can curl up watch movies layout, and then there’s going to be a projector that’s going to be mounted on the wall back here projecting onto the nice big flat wall there. We’re also going to have a surround sound system. So it’s like a little movie theater setup down here. And then we’ve got another bedroom down in the basement, which we’ve done some renovation work to just kind of like framing this window nicely. cleaned it up a bit. And then we’ve got this bathroom in the basement. So it is in total a four bedroom, two bathroom property. And then what we did is we actually added a big geodesic dome. So we added some stairs coming off the back here, added a big pad here for a hot tub and a sauna. And then in the back here, let me get to the picture. So right in around here in this area right here is where we added a geodesic dome. So that’s really cool. And then we furnish that geodesic dome as well. And so this property now with the geodesic dome is going to be a five bedroom, two bathroom, it’s gonna accommodate up to 10 people. So the first step in the design process is deciding what you’re going to do. And so for us that was just kind of brainstorming. Like what amenities we wanted to add, like the hot tub in the sauna, the geodesic dome. And then from there, it’s just a matter of mapping things out in terms of what furniture, what design, what kind of aesthetic you want to go with. Now the best way that I found to do this, as someone who’s not incredibly kind of design savvy, I don’t have a really fantastic eye for design, but other people do. And so it’s really easy to go on Pinterest, and go and look for places that inspire me that I think are really good. And so for this room here, I decided to go and look on Pinterest and I found this this photo right here and I decided just model the whole room the whole space off of this, this image from Pinterest. So I decided to find a chandelier like this. So a couch and some chairs, a nice rug like this a coffee table the lamp and so I just modeled it out in terms of the aesthetic that I was going for. And then you can see that I did that with each one of the different rooms so we can see this one. I don’t have the inspiration image here, but Just grab some different pieces, laid it out here. And this to me just really helps me envision what I’m actually going forward the room what I’m planning to have it look like. Because for me, I find it really difficult to, you know, think of things like these mirrors on the walls, or what style of lamp is going to look good with the bed frame, all that sort of stuff. And so having this inspiration, this kind of this photo for inspiration is really helpful. Now, if you are more design savvy, then you can probably do this on your own without these inspiration photos. But for me, I just found it super, super helpful to have those. So that’s what I like to do. And then I like to model things off of exactly this, then from there, it’s really just a matter of going through and figuring out exactly what you’re going to what pieces you’re actually going to put. So you can see that in all these photos, I’ve got the inspiration photo. And then I’ve got actual photos of the different things that I’ve sourced from, whether it’s Amazon or IKEA. And for me, I really like to try my best to keep things centralized to just a few main stores, IKEA and Amazon are my best friends. Now for this one being a larger property and he had some outdoor furniture as well, I ended up going to a few different places, in addition to IKEA and Amazon. And I do recommend that just so that you don’t have it look like Amazon or IKEA just threw up inside your apartment, you’re walking into sort of an Ikea showroom, you want to avoid that look as much as you can. So I like to mix in some struck tube, sometimes some Wayfair different stuff to just add different elements. So it doesn’t look like that one store. And it’s just you’re walking into a showroom, I’m sure a lot of us have walked into an Airbnb and felt that way at some point. So I’m mixing a few different things. But again, as much as possible, I do like to keep things centralized. Because when it comes to ordering all these items, you wouldn’t believe it literally takes hours just to have someone go and add all these things to the cart. And then you’re also going to be dealing with inventory issues, supply chain issues a lot of the time. And so as long as much as you can centralize it, and try to get things streamlined. That really does help quite a bit. Now, I don’t want anyone to be alarmed by me using Safari. If you use Safari, I feel sorry for you I do not. But right now, my Google Sheets is not working in Chrome. So that’s why we’re switching over here to Safari. And I want to show you through. This is sort of the next step. This is what I call our interior design organization spreadsheet, you can see that IT budgets it all out right here we’ve got rough budget and guidelines, and then the actual cost for everything that I’ve got that I’ve got inserted in this spreadsheet. So it’s really, really helpful to be able to keep track of what the budget is for each room, what the budget is overall. And make sure that from the initial analysis I did when purchasing this property that I stay within my budget, and if I’m going over budget, I know I need to dial things back, if I’m under budget, I know I can maybe splurge on something, and really, I’m trying to to hit that budget. So then we break it down into the bedrooms. So you can see we’ve got the master bedroom, what I’ve called the small bedroom, bedroom number two, the big room in bedroom number three, the basement room, bedroom number four, and then finally, the dome bedroom number five. And so that breaks it all down. And we can see the entire cost of it here including and excluding taxes. And you can see it’s broken down for every single item we need. Now once this is all done, we actually made a working copy of this so that we could go in and highlight these and check them off and keep track of what we have purchased, what we have actually gotten delivery of all that stuff. So we can further track it and make sure everything gets ordered. Make sure it gets delivered all goes properly. Because when you’re ordering in this kind of volume, you really need to keep track of that stuff. Because sometimes things just get lost in shipment or they don’t arrive they’re out of stock, they get held up for whatever reason. So you need to be able to keep really good diligent track of that. So you can see it’s broken down into every single item you need. Now this is just a matter of going through and really knowing exactly what you need for each room. So for a bedroom, you need a bed frame, you need a mattress, you need a mattress protector Sheet Set pillows, pillow protectors do Bay duvet cover night tables, you can see the list goes on and on. And you really want to make sure you’re diligent with this and know all the different items that you’ll need. Because a lot of times people are going to forget silly little things like they’re going to forget the pillow protectors or they’re going to forget the closet hangers or they’re going to forget to get decor for the walls. And so that’s why both a combination of having the inspiration photo for all the design elements and having your own list of all the different things that a bedroom might need. So that you can keep track of things like the pillow protractors and the mattress protector. That’s going to be super, super helpful and useful. Then we go into the other rooms. You can see we’ve got the dining room, the kitchen, the living room upstairs, and then the movie room in the basement broke it all down other in the basement. So this is going to be the game room and then outside in the backyard. So we’ve mapped all that out as well. Then we’ve got our miscellaneous so right like this is I think the one that a lot of people forget about and this is literally like you know probably over 100 items just in the miscellaneous category. This is things like the wine glasses, the can opener the cut To read everything down to like a French press sponges, soap dispenser, you know, jug, baking mat, outdoor blankets, all these different things. And so this is very much like a universal miscellaneous list that we use for all of our properties. So that’s super helpful so that we don’t miss anything. And then we also have a miscellaneous for that’s for IKEA, then we have another miscellaneous for Amazon so that we can’t get on on IKEA. So things like barbecue utensils, toaster, microwave, blender, kettle, hairdryer, plunger, toilet brush, feminine hygiene toilet, they were all the different stuff that you’re gonna need, right. And again, just imagine if you haven’t already done so. Just imagine trying to furnish up a property for Airbnb, and trying to remember all these different little things, it’s super helpful to have a tool like this, you don’t have to remember because otherwise, like the first few ones they did, I just forgot about a lot of things and then you end up delaying your start date, it’s going to cost you a lot of money and just time that you’ve wasted by having that property sit empty because it’s missing, you know, 20 different things that you forgot about. Then we’ve got another one for remaining gear. So I like to separate out like the gear the the different kind of add on amenities that we’re adding on. So things like a stand up paddleboard life jackets, a barbecue, the sauna, the hot tub, a couple of board games, and a couple of yard games like spike ball and bocce ball. And then we also have in case you do we didn’t on this one we didn’t, didn’t do any second hand hand because second hand like buying things off Facebook marketplace, Kijiji Craigslist, that ends up taking a lot more logistics. When we’ve done that, in the past, what I’ve ended up doing is basically gone and mapped out everything, figure out where I found it from Pickup Date Time provided. So we have this all mapped out so that we can map it out. And then what I like to do is like give everyone a big range of time when I’m going to show up, and then organize it all for one single day. And then just rent a U haul, go and do my around. And there’s software’s you can use online to put in a whole bunch of different addresses. And it’ll map out the most efficient route to get around them. And so that’s what I’ve done in the past is done that and then mapped it all out and done one big tour over the course of a day getting everything that I possibly can, some people aren’t gonna be flexible enough to accommodate you giving them a big time window when you’ll show up. And that’s okay, you just have to try to try your best to get as much as you can in that one day. And so our rule of thumb for this is that generally now again, on this project, we ended up doing everything firsthand, just because secondhand is just logistically a lot more challenging. But if you are doing secondhand, as a good rule of thumb, you’ll want to really only go secondhand for things that are going to be costing over 300 or over $500 to purchase because otherwise, the potential savings that you’re going to get from them probably just aren’t going to be worth your time. If you’re going and picking out something that would cost $50 Brand new, and you’re getting it for 30, it’s probably not worth the $20 that you’re that you’re saving to have to you know, actually go and bought, like go drive there spend money on gas, pick it up spend your time, it’s probably just not going to really be worth your while. So that’s our secondhand purchases. And then from there, it’s just a matter of having someone so we have someone on our team that goes in and then just basically goes through this entire list and orders it and as few orders as possible. And it’s kind of unavoidable at this point. Right now, with all the supply chain issues, we’re having to actually go through and order all this stuff and not have some of the out of stock not have some of that be, you know, unavailable. And so what we end up doing is we go through order as much as we can get everything we can and then we have a short list of things that were not available that were out of stock that we need to go in store somewhere else. And we go and find replacements for those get those orders as quickly as possible. Now in terms of taking delivery, if you’re doing a renovation project, like I was where we were doing quite a bit of renovation, redoing the flooring, storing it at the property might not be that convenient. And for us there wasn’t actually someone there at the property at all times. So storing it there taking receiving of it just challenging. So the best thing to do is find an offsite storage facility where you can ship it to, if you have a family member who can take delivery of it and has space in their garage or their basement, that’s even better. But if not then going to a storage unit, having them take delivery of everything and just storing it there is a really great way to be able to order everything in advance
so that it’s ready to go. Once your property is ready, then you just hire a moving company to move it from once from that storage unit over to the property. Yes, there’s some additional costs there. But the alternative is that you wait until the property is ready to go to order all the furniture and then you’re going to be delayed several more weeks waiting for stuff and you’re then going to be delayed. If anything ends up taking longer than expected being at a stock you have any delivery issues. You don’t have any buffer to be able to problem solve for that kind of stuff. So it really is going to end up costing you a lot more in the long run to not have that storage facility not pay that moving costs if you’re trying to order everything once the property is actually right to Go then from there. The next step once it’s all delivered is to have someone assemble it. So again, that’s something you can do yourself or you can hire a furniture builder. If you look on sites like Craigslist, Kijiji Facebook marketplace, oftentimes, you’ll be able to find a furniture builder or Ikea furniture builder in your area, and they’ll be able to typically just build it up really nice and quickly for you get it all set up. And then from there, just having the clean team team come in to those final touches to stage at all for photography, do a deep fan of the property, then your photographer, then you can list. So if you’re looking to do this as efficiently as possible, not be messing around like we’re talking about turning around a property from when we closed on it, when we list it is going to be about two months. And that’s including a renovation project, including building the platform for the dome, assembling the dome, getting all the furniture and furnishing it, decorating it, cleaning it photographing it everything, it’s going to be about six to eight weeks from start to finish. So if you want to do it that well you have to be really, really organized. So this is our system for it. Again, if you want to learn more about exactly how to invest successfully in short term rental properties and have access to access to tools like this one, then just checking out the link in the description down below. There’s a free training that’s going to walk you through everything step by step it’s gonna give you access to some really cool tools like this one, so make sure you check it out in the link down below in the description. And last but not least, if you liked this video, if you got value from it if it was helpful to you then please please let me know by hitting that like button, subscribe to the channel. And also let me know your thoughts, comments, questions, anything you want in the comment section down below. All that said thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.