Decorating Diaries - Bad News

Ouch, this is painful.  We've decided to let our bathroom contractor go off the project.  She was supposed to show up last night and never did and no phone call.  It's not the first time.  As Blair said, "Shame on us if we keep working with her when we've seen the writing on the wall."  Still, it's hard "firing" someone...

It really is nothing personal.  I think she is a very gifted designer with a ton of energy and ideas.  What I don't like is I don't feel listened to, the budget has gone wildly astray, and most importantly, the follow-up isn't there.  I'm a pretty forgiving person.  I can get over you not showing up if you just call and tell me you'll be late or that you won't be there.  But this whole no-show thing gets under my skin.  I arranged my schedule to meet with her - no phone call shows a lack of respect for my time.

So I'm to be the one to do it.  Yuck.  For all my big talk, I really don't like confrontations.  Not that I think it will be bad.  She's a very nice person and I expect she'll be gracious and apologetic.  I just don't like hurting people's feelings.

We are painting this weekend.  The tape issue has yet to be resolved but I think we've both lost steam over it.

Just offer a prayer that we like the bedroom color. Otherwise Saturday and Sunday have LONG WEEKEND written all over them.

Decorating Diaries - To Tape or Not to Tape

Oh, oh.  First rumble between Blair and myself about the decorating and we haven't even finished selecting colors.  The "rumble" is about whether to tape off the copious amount of trim in our bedroom before we paint the walls this weekend.  Blair is in favor of it, I am against.

I have my reasons all lined up like the good little Vulcan I am.  They are:

• Taping creates more work than it alleviates. 
• Blair wants to tape to protect the trim from spatters but the trim is already lightly spattered from where I painted before so that's not buying us anything.  If anything, we'll just touch up the trim after we're done painting the walls.
• I have yet to find a painter's tape that doesn't rip, to some extent, the paint off whatever it's taped over
• When we've used tape in the past, we've ripped off chunks of the wall color when we removed the tape

I got worked up into a pretty good huff about it this morning while Blair, as always, was patient.  We agreed to a "we'll discuss it more tonight" settlement. 

Regardless, we will be painting this weekend which should make for some entertaining blog entries on Monday. Cheers.

Decorating Diary - A New Quote for the Bathroom

We met last night with the bathroom contractor.  Poor woman.  She had such beautiful ideas for our master bath and I unmercifully slashed the budget.  Soon it will be no more of an upgrade than designer Dixie cups and a new cover for the toilet.

The quote she gave us for countertops was just under $5000.  FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  Are you kidding me?  Admittedly, that included custom work and inlays and the whole shebang but give me a break...not even an option.

She got a great deal, she informed me, on the high-end cabinets.  "Absolutely stunner of a deal," she said.  "I've never seen prices like this for this quality."

Fine and dandy but guess what?  I don't need high-end cabinets, killer price or not.  I just need a place to store my lipstick and Oil of Olay.

So I'm essentially making her redo the whole thing.  She seems to think we can still add in a lot of the extras but I'm not sure.  She keeps saying things like, "That's only another $250 dollars" or "We can easily get that done for under $300."  All reasonable prices, but those numbers add up.

Tuck in.  I have a feeling the Decorating Diaries saga will be with us for months to come.

Decorating Diaries - Rooms on Film

My decorator is coming tonight with a friend to take the "Before" pictures of our bedroom.  The good thing about before pictures is you want them to look as poor as possible so my motivation to clean before they arrive is pretty much nil...

Running into what may or may not turn out to be a problem with the bathroom contractor.  As noted earlier, the quoted cost for redoing our bedroom and bath was over double what we had allotted.  So both our decorator and bathroom contractor have been hard at work, redoing figures and finding replacement features (i.e., on/off faucets under $1000, thank you very much). The decorator has kept on top of it, calling me every few days of updates.  Can't say the same for the contractor.

No word from her.  In her defense, she is friends with the decorator who has acted as a go-between.  But even she (the decorator) was commenting that the contractor needed to be better about keeping customers apprised of the situation.

"I even offered to give you the figures myself if she would give them to me," said our decorator.

I appreciate the extra effort, but I don't think so.  I'm not working with anyone who can't manage to dial a phone and call me.  And as I said, it's certainly not to that point yet.  She's coming along tonight as well to lay out her new plan for our bath and I'm pretty certain she's put in some long hours on it.  We'll see.

I was outlining all this for Blair last night and he was shaking his head and grinning.  "Women's communication dynamics," he said.  He made a claw and slashed through the air.  "Rowr!  Meow!"

That's it.  He's banished from making any color choices for the bathroom.