Remember when you were a kid watching your Mom making your favorite cake or cookies? Remember how sometimes you could hardly stand still until it came out of the oven smelling wonderful — and you still had to wait until they cooled off?
If you are thinking about an Interior Design project, are getting close to selecting your team, are impatient to get all the “ingredients” lined up and want the finished product now … Well it is not greatly unlike watching your Mom plan, shop, assemble the ingredients, find the time, get started and then deal with your impatience for the delectable finished product.
If you wonder (even for a minute) what kinds of things could drive your design team off the rails and stark-raving-crazy, your impatience with “the time it takes” would be at the top of the list.
However, the close second, the next choice for driving your team over the edge? You, making snap judgments before the whole plan and all elements are pulled together in final form and coordinated into appropriate harmony and balance.
(Don’t know about you, but if my brother or I tried to get a finger-full of cookie dough before Mom was done mixing, we took the chance of getting our knuckles rapped. But, if we were patient, we would get the spoon and bowl to lick when she was done.)
Comfort food analogies aside, think carefully about the choices and decisions you make as your Interior design project plan develops. When the flooring is being laid and the trucks begin to arrive with components for installation, is not the time to suddenly decide you want circles instead of squares or red instead of orange.
Can changes happen right up until ten days before your grand opening? Of course — with a lot of trouble, a lot of confusion and usually with a lot more cost.
So, what’s the point I am trying to make using references to Mom for leverage, and pity for your Interior design team as a little guilt trip: It’s important to make sound choices and decisions that you can and will stand by.
That brings me to an important consideration that helps complex plans run smoothly and produce the end result everyone wants. Your Interior design team is familiar with the very difficult problems that can come up late in the game if a client made shaky, cautionary decisions at the front end and wants to about-face at the last minute.
If your professional designer notices that you frequently want to backpedal and change your mind, or you say yes when it feels like you are still unsure, they may decide to slow things down and present more options — just when you want to speed things up. That is one of those junctures where you should probably trust the experience and insight of your professional team.
Last stages and installation of an Interior design project can resemble a bowl of spaghetti — and it’s surely not the moment to have second thoughts about the trim in the bathrooms! Work with your Interior design specialists for firm, dependable decisions that will survive when it’s time to add the sauce and grated cheese. (Fresh baked cookies for dessert!)
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer (CID) in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Facebook at Business Design Services.
