17 November 2008

On the importance of a contract




I spent a couple of hours on Friday evening presenting this design to a client. It looks pretty Spartan and it's supposed to. What you can't see in this black and white line art is the colors and textures of the finishes going into this baby. Bold contrasts! Vibrant colors! Simple, big shapes!

Here's the wall tile that's going to cover every square inch of exposed wall in here.



Here's a shot of it in a bathroom.



Both of these photos and the tile itself are from Mirage Glass Tile in Brooklyn.

My clients liked it for the most part and the scope of this job involves a lot more than the kitchen. The kitchen rendering here is part of a major renovation to be done to an older, waterfront, block ranch house out at the beach. As is usually the case with these older homes, we're adding onto it and removing many of the interior walls. This is a major job and it calls for a capable, specialized contractor to pull it off.

My clients came to me with a contractor already in mind and he's someone I don't know. I can draw pretty pictures and dream big dreams for people all day long, but none of it means anything if it can't be made real by a good contractor.

There's a regular column in the New York Times' Home and Garden section called The Fix. The Home and Garden section is in the Thursday Times every week and the guy who writes it is always spot on. That guy is Jay Romano and he dispenses clear and calm renovation advice week after week and his column is ample reason to pick up the Thursday paper. As luck would have it, he wrote about contracts and change orders last week and I printed out a copy for my new clients. In lieu of doing that for you, I'm going to post a link to his piece from last week. Add it to your bookmarks. You'll thank me later. Maybe.

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