About
Andrea Wetzel
Owner and principal designer. She came to staging from the selling side of real estate, which is the opposite of how most stagers get here.
Who runs Cricket on the Hearth?
Andrea Wetzel owns and runs Cricket on the Hearth Staging & Design. She spent years in the real estate industry, working as a realtor across Edwardsville and the Metro East, before founding the staging firm in Edwardsville in 2015. She is affiliated with the Real Estate Staging Association.
Cricket on the Hearth is not a design studio that took on staging as a sideline. It started from the other end of the transaction: years of showing houses to buyers, listening to what they said in the hallway, and watching which rooms lost them.
The other direction
From selling to staging
Most stagers come to real estate from interior design. They know how to make a room beautiful and then learn what a listing needs. Andrea came the other way. She worked as a realtor across Edwardsville and the Metro East first, and started staging in 2015 after years of watching buyers walk through other people’s houses.
That order matters more than it sounds. A stager who came from design is solving for how a room photographs. A stager who came from selling is solving for what loses a buyer in the doorway, which is usually not the thing that photographs badly. It is the sightline, the scale of the sofa, and the eleven objects on the console.
The result is a plan that says what to move and why, in the order a buyer will encounter it, whichever of the three staging routes the property needs.
Andrea Wetzel
Owner · Cricket on the Hearth
On the record
Founded in Edwardsville
Cricket on the Hearth Staging & Design has been staging homes in Edwardsville and the Metro East for ten years.
Real Estate Staging Association
Affiliated with the trade body for professional stagers, which is the industry’s own standard rather than a self-issued one.
Occupied and vacant
Two genuinely different jobs, and Cricket does both properly rather than treating one as a variation of the other. Plus new construction for builders including Superior Homes, Inc.
Edwardsville, not a franchise
Andrea has served on the Edwardsville Cool Cities Initiative Advisory Committee. The service area is a drive, not a territory map.
Common questions
About Andrea
Who runs Cricket on the Hearth?
Andrea Wetzel owns and runs Cricket on the Hearth Staging & Design. She spent years in the real estate industry, working as a realtor across Edwardsville and the Metro East, before founding the staging firm in Edwardsville in 2015. She is affiliated with the Real Estate Staging Association.
What does a real estate background have to do with staging?
Andrea Wetzel spent those years walking buyers through houses and watching what they reacted to. Most stagers arrive at real estate from design. Cricket on the Hearth came the other way, which means staging decisions get made against what buyers actually notice rather than what photographs well in isolation.
Want to talk it through?
Andrea walks the property, writes the plan, and quotes the work. Edwardsville, Granite City, Glen Carbon, Troy and the surrounding Metro East.
Talk to AndreaStaging since 2015 · RESA affiliated