Friday, December 10, 2010

Starting Over Before Your Begin

 via Cottage Living

I've been thinking a lot about starting over recently.  A client came to me last week just as we were putting the finishing touches on the design plan and getting ready to move into the construction phase for their new sunroom/screened porch/deck to say that after "living" with the plan for a while they have now decided that they want to start over and go in a different direction with their project.  This is not what we wanted to hear obviously, but it was the best thing the client could say.  Construction hadn't started.  We weren't ripping down walls and building them back again, yet!  It is much easier for me to move walls on paper than it is to re-design a project in the middle of construction or for the client to realize AFTER the project is complete that it isn't what they really wanted. 

via Coastal Living

The client did a brave thing coming forward.  They admitted that their inital requests for the project, after some reflection, weren't what they really wanted.  By choosing to mentally live in the new space over several weeks they came to realize that the existing room we were working with wasn't big enough for how they planned to use it; that they would rather increase the size of the existing room and move the new screened porch to a different location.   Had they not thought about it in those terms they would have had a finished space that wasn't big enough to use they way they want.  All of that time and money would have been spent and they wouldn't have gotten what they wanted. 

 via Cottage Living

The trap to avoid in situations like this is to not just be second-guessing yourself though.  If you want to make a big change to your home at some point you have to say yes and make the change.  It's good to re-evaluate your choices but at some point you need to make a decision and actually do the work. 

In your own life and home do you feel like you are good at making decisions or do you always second guess yourself and hold up progress by your unsure feelings?   

Sorry no great project photos, but obviously we haven't built anything yet!

1 comment:

  1. Building new spaces is fun but being happy with the ones we already have is joyful!
    MWS

    ReplyDelete

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