Meet Heidi Gammarano | Interior Designer & Home Stager

We had the good fortune of connecting with Heidi Gammarano and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Heidi, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
It’s funny you ask, because I was just talking about this with my sister. We are both married to guys that have very solid careers and have been in their respective industries for very long times, and both come from families that all have worked jobs in pretty stable professions. Communications and Utilities, Medicine, Accounting, Education, Armed Forces, etc. On our side, our grandparents were like that too…Banking, Firefighting, and also Utilities and Armed Forces. But when it got to our parents, I don’t know if it was because we are both considered Xennial (part Gen X and part Millenial) and the era in which we were born, but our parents were very much into letting us choose our paths on our own and that path could be creative and entrepreneurial. I never felt pushed to do something “serious” by my parents, who also marched to the beat of their own drums and encouraged us to do that, too.

I think my Dad tried to “be serious”…he was a branch manager at a bank when I was little. I am sure he hated it. He quit one day and then started selling pianos. Selling a Piano is sort of like selling a House. When you’re selling something high dollar, you don’t have to sell one every day to make a good living. So he created a life where he loved what he did and had lots of flexibility with his schedule, and was immersed in creativity. Even though he sold pianos, I think he spent a lot of his work day playing piano and having a good time.

After I got out of design school, I got my first design job doing Model Home Design, and there was a project that didn’t compete with my employment that one of the builders approached me about. They wanted some creative design work, not in the models, and my boss said she didn’t care as long as it didn’t interfere with my work at the firm, so I did it. And they liked it. And it kept happening, and happening…until I realized I accidentally started my own business.

So to answer your question, I didn’t think about it at all. It happened totally organically for me. I was set on that path by my parents giving me the freedom to be ME, rather than try and force me to be a schoolteacher or a dentist or take a job in finance. None of that is interesting to me at all.

I was recently and randomly picked out of the crowd at a networking event for an on-the-spot interview in a room of 50 women, and one of the questions was “How many times have you changed careers?” and my answer was “None” and there was literally an audible gasp in the room. A couple people after the luncheon came to me and said they were impressed by my answer and how I explained it more, that I knew what I wanted to do at a young age, so I did it. And stayed with it.

I’ve done different things in design over the years, dependent on what was going on in the economy at the time. But never left the field. And at this point I don’t know if I could do anything else. But I wouldn’t want to anyway.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I currently have a little blend of Design & Staging (as the name implies) going on. Most stagers stage for real estate and keep it neutral and impersonal. Most designers don’t have inventory to stage a house for 2 months. I mix it up! I add some flair in my stagings to highlight the home’s best features and I am not afraid to use some color in my stagings. In my design work I love working with interesting materials and at the end I love to come through and stage it like I would for a real estate listing.

I am incredibly excited for a new project I have going in Carlsbad, the home was built in 1978 and has original stained glass windows that we are keeping and I am basing the design concepts around. We are updating the look in many ways, but paying homage to the 70’s with some of the design choices. We did demo a “conversation pit” – I tried to make it work but it was just too funky, and not in a good way. I staged this clients last home, which she sold to get into this home. She loved how I staged the home so much that she wanted to hire me to give the new place some style.

I pretty much overcome whatever challenges come my way through relying on straight-forward communication with everyone involved, putting all our ideas on the table and listening to people when they speak to me. Most issues can be solved in that manner.

I’d like people to know that interior design is within reach and that I want to help solve their design dilemmas, with understanding and creativity. And, I want people to know that staging works! Homes sell much faster when prospective buyers can envision themselves living there, which hard to do when it’s completely empty, or when it’s crammed with someone elses stuff.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
So I am in the North County, and I would definitely drag our boat over to the Oceanside Harbor and cruise around a bit and catch the sunset. I’d certainly want to have dinner at LTH and get the Seafood Stew. I would probably also see if they wanted to get a tattoo at The Arcade! Oysters & Espresso Martinis at Q&A. The next morning might be a little rough, so I’d drive through Senor Pancho’s in Downtown Oceanside and get a Breakfast Burrito, no potato, sub beans! Maybe a trip to The Belly Up depending who is on stage, and probably make the extra effort to take the boat to Mission Bay or The Big Bay. I love seeing San Diego County from the water! I have a 10 week old Dogue de Bordeaux puppy right now, so I can’t wait til he has all his shots and I can take him to Dog Beach in Del Mar, so that would be on the list. No visit to San Diego is complete without a trip to Old Town, and we’d take the Coaster of course. Then I also just saw that the Wild Animal Park has a new baby Tiger Cub that’s scampering around, and since I am also in love with kittens (of all sizes) I would take them out there too, and while out that way, head up to Ramona to see Mt Woodson Castle and get some (more) Mexican food at La Cocina in Ramona. Come down the hill and hit the Rancho Bernardo Inn which is so beautiful, hopefully get some wine tasting in. Now that we are just bouncing around all over the county, why not go to Rich’s in Hillcrest, and I mean if we are that far south let’s go to Mr. A’s because why not. I’d eventually have to get back up to Oceanside so I’d take the Coast the whole way, stop at Red Tracton’s and maybe head over to the track, keep heading north and (since we are assuming we are on the train) get off in Oceanside and go to Dija Mara for dinner and get the Charred Eggplant with Coconut Rice, and maybe one last stop at The Rooster.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I certainly would not have the success I enjoy without the amazing clients I have been lucky enough to work with. I am not a huge design firm, I am a small boutique design and staging company, and I am sure there were times, especially in the beginning, when deciding to work with me was possibly a risky choice in some people’s minds. Especially because I was only 20 when I accidentally started my first design business.

I cannot express enough how much gratitude I have for those people who gave me a chance when I was just starting out, the people who gave me a chance when I switched gears a time or two over the years, and the people that give me a chance even now! Every day is a new opportunity to earn a new client and I wouldn’t have this business without all of them.

Website: https://www.southerncaliforniadesignandstaging.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socal_design_and_staging/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-ingersoll-gammarano/

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/southern-california-design-and-staging-oceanside

Other: https://teamreferralnetwork.com/members/heidi-ingersoll-gammarano

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