The Armoire Episode : a lesson to be learned

“You suck at your job.” This is exactly the words my client said to me. Can you believe it? I’m completely serious! I was working “hands-on” with a client yesterday and she said, “you suck at your job.” And then she followed up with a question. “Has anyone ever told you that before?” My response was thankfully, “No”. Now you are wondering what my response was in that seemingly uncomfortable situation, right? Let me back up and give you some context. This client purchased the 10-hour package to gain my help with her living room and dining room transformation (and shade selection for her bathroom). She lives in a beautiful, historic home in Johnson City, TN. Her transformation is requiring a minimal amount of new purchases (rug, curtains, coffee table and a few accessories). If you have been connected with me very long, you know that am a huge fan of using what you have first because the last thing most of us need in our home is more stuff. Can you relate? She had purchased a sectional recently and also had a huge, heavy armoire that housed the TV and it needed to stay. This leads me to her seemingly unpleasant comment. We had been working hard moving around this huge sectional and enormous, heavy armoire. We literally had moved that armoire to every corner of the room. As we pushed it together (thank goodness it was on moving pads), back across the room where we started, that’s when she said, “you suck at your job”. It was actually some good comic relief in the midst of a several hour moving event.

Here’s my point. Room transformations require trial and error. You just have to get in there and start doing something to make it better, even if you don’t know exactly what the right answer is. We tried several arrangements until landed on the best option for the furniture she had. She realized that when you are using what you have, the furniture dictates the design and it can be tricky figuring it out. However, you can work to find the very best option that your furniture will allow. That’s exactly what we did! We had fun doing it and I love working with this client.

Here’s a view of the journey of this 3 hour arranging event. You’ll see that we also moved the sectional and the clock as we went along. We finally landed on the “best possible arrangement” based on the room and the furnishings. This IS NOT the finished design. We have a few more things to add for the final transformation. Stay tuned!

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