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If you don't have the money yet to hire the professional maybe that's one of the things you put a little bit farther down the list price it see how much it's going to cost to hire a professional wallpaper hanger or someone else and then and then you know and you can plan for it and bring it okay? So let's look at some things out on the web a little bit of expert versace dior why somebody here because robert shop is saying I will never be able to retire because I just want to buy all of this cool stuff it's just a feeling I know is that I'll never be able to retire either for a number of reasons but I completely understand that as well yeah okay, so just looking at things as we've mentioned like hiring professionals for a kitchen so we've even seen some projects that we've looked at some of the problems spaces that have come to us probably maybe some of them may have been done by professional but maybe they were a professional contractor but the design professional was missing there and...

so we've seen people have islands that are really too small scale um things that really don't fit the space right and again you waste your money when you met when you build cabinetry that's too small and wish that it was bigger it's almost more miserable to me to get something wrong and have that constant reminder that it's not right then just not have it at all yet you know, because there's that place if you want go really wish I could remodel my kitchen, but if you did remodel the kitchen and you made mistakes, I think that's the most frustrating place too, because you're probably not going to rip it back out you're just gonna hate the kitchen forever and wish that why didn't I use professional? So again, lots of things that are really important what I love about this is the size of the island there, so most people when they're either doing something a kitchen like this on their own or just working with the builder or contractor, I find that a lot of times people are saying, oh, you could never have an island that big in this kitchen that would never work for you. You and I had that exact experience in my last time I came in and put a really large island in the center and I'm gonna do it again, but I knew as an expert a designer in a kitchen experience with a lot of kitchen design, I knew exactly how much space I needed to move around in the kitchen to open all the different appliance doors so I could get a really large island in the space and maximize the use of that space in every single day I came to my house during the renovation of our last house one of the contractors would say ma'am, are you sure you want this island this big? I mean at that I answered that question fifteen, twenty different times and I would say yes I wanted to speak ok if you say so you're paying for it and afterwards they were so surprised that wow, I had no idea I just thought it would be to overscaled but I wanted to maximize all the space and have room to put other appliances in the island and we saw some earlier and yesterday that looked really skimpy little islands right? And just changing the design of it or the panels on the side toe hide the bar stools and other things would have made it really have a bigger presence a lot better scale and really been a better fit. So this is where I think a kitchen designer interior designer can make a huge huge difference it's really confusing often for clients and people doing it themselves to because I find that a lot of times all in a construction site, a lot of other people working on the job site will start giving you their opinion and it's funny because I'll have clients call me freaking out there like, oh my gosh, I don't know about this paint color it's going on the wall when like why did you really get upset about it last week? You were in love with that, we were talking about it, she has. Well, the plumber said that he thinks it's really, really bright, and I'm like, okay, but the plumber hasn't seen all of the design selection's so it's it's really stressful? Because if you get different people working on the job and you don't have somebody driving the project and really guiding, you could get really, really freaked out listening to your husband are partner comes in and says, I don't know and then other people on the job start giving their opinion, and it gets really overwhelming. So another place that having a lead person on the job like a design professional can really hold your hand and help you move through some of those stressful decisions. Laying tile, of course, can't is not an easy thing to do, and a lot of the tile that we are using these days are really beautiful and decorative, and it could be really expensive now there's always an exception, there's people who are really savvy with some of these things in the world, but again, not a place I would try. If I was going to make a decision, I would certainly paint myself way before I would lay the tile myself. But just being careful thinking that way we can do that surely it's not that hard those are famous last words surely it's not that hard right when I helped him with it and my mother and I did the tiling and we actually thought we didn't amazing job, we were pretty priest of ourselves until there's one but we just couldn't do so she had a professional do it it was so embarrassing when you saw how well he did this one wall on what we've done but we thought we could children right until his was perfect and then yours had all these different samson didn't let barton didn't last very long for that reason they looked awful yeah and say eventually she just said never do it again I mean famous last words so surely it's not that hard if you hear yourself say that that is the first indication that he should hire a professional to help with that uh times look misleading, isn't it because it's no all that little individual now it's on the screams on a mesh backing and it easily comes in twelve by twelve sheets but you know, so it's no easy now it's not easy at all in fact, I had a professional it's a professional person that didn't have experience with this kind of glass tile do an entire shower at my parents like house it looks really bad I didn't realize how hard it is to line up the sheets and it is it's very, very four tile job even for someone so that's again where you want to get references or go see some of their work make sure that they've actually worked with the actual product you're using too because someone is very comfortable with ceramic tile might be not comfortable using mosaic glass tile so ask a lot of questions it's not just the professional either it's getting the right professional and that could be tricky so that's a referral situation for me um window treatments again I've covered this but just to say all window treatment professionals are not the same I had a situation where the person I've used for fifteen years now that does every job for maize based in little rock I fly him all over the country he's worked in l a with me in new york with me in charleston, south carolina and just everywhere and a couple of years ago he couldn't go with me to do the project with the striped ceiling in the hamptons and I took the job anyway for the show house and I thought was surely it's the hamptons it's a luxury community surely there's really good drapery work rooms there and I even got a referral from a friend of mine who's a designer there and I had a really poor result and it was very, very expensive, and I didn't get what I paid for. So the next time I did a project which was in new york city in a show house the next year, I called my drapery installer before I said I would do the job, and I said, are you gonna be available to go to my window treatments? Because if not, I'm not going to do this project because it was cheaper for me to fly him from arkansas with his rights putting up, put him up in a hotel with his wife for three days and have him installed the project. Another amazing story about him on that particular project to one that you've seen the pink, the black and white wallpaper with the pink room. If we see it again, I'll pointed out that we've used it before in a lot of these, I got to the job site, and it was the only time I've ever designed to project without going to the project before I installed it. So I was really tight schedule, and I trusted other people to measure for me, and everything worked out perfectly, except no one ever took a pic actor from a certain angle of the windows for me to see that there were two gigantic. Window unit air conditioners in the tops of the windows and I just had these plain drapery panels on either side there were beautiful that it bordered the edge of them and because I had my window treatment professional they're with me on a sunday when a lot of stores were closed he said if you will go to a fabric store in new york you can find one that's open so I immediately was thinking ok project runway there's that one called mood they were closed I got a referral from someone found a fabric store he said if you could just buy black outlining that you put in the drapery he said it's kind of this white color I think it might match so he is so experienced he can even read color he said if you'll get me two yards per window I can make roman shades for you at least to get us through a day or two because the show was opening the next day and the press was coming through the wall street journal the new york times architectural digest all these big people were coming through my space and he sat on the floor with the glue gun and a stapler and made faux roman shades out of black outlining and hung them up and they look so good I never took them down and they actually ended up being published in traditional home magazine and no one knows so that's another reason to work with professionals because they really really know what they're doing, so he saved me many, many times really important in the drapery category. So um so adding on a room to your home, a lot of people that I know try not to hire architects if they can help it and they just want to work with a builder, a contractor, and I think surely I just get the right builder we can handle this additional how many of us have seen additions that look like editions and they stick out like a forthem, so this is where I really, really value architects toe work with me is a designer to help us get additions, right? There's so much that goes into the roof lines and the windows and and just the proportions of the exterior and just the way sally was saying, she said, I'm an architect more than designer and she's amazed by the things I could do as a interior designer. I am not an architect, and I'm so so amazed by the things that they can do when it comes to the structure. So definitely if you're adding on to your home, I think it's worth hiring an architect, I have that question a lot can't I just hire a good builder and not an architect? And I think you should hire both if it's a significant project I do lots of things with custom cabinetry like this somebody was asking yesterday how we made those patterns in the cabinetry, and sometimes I order them from that source called pine crest that I talked about, but most of the time I'm working with a custom cabinet maker that's making these on a router in their workshop and they know how to do all of the fittings make they have things that you could make, the drawers have soft closures on them so they don't mash people's fingers that can order all the perfect inserts that been in there for organ organizing and just the finishing that they do to make it look like a piece of furniture in some instances like this one is remarkable, so definitely someone for that design on the glass I don't not necessarily it sort of looks like a kind of that was something bethany was asking on a previous cabinet is worth more than a diamond shape use it's really like to sir it's really like to semicircle, so when they're making it, you would make that with the part so they are ovals because across the whole cabinets they create overlapping ovals um was that the night for the diamond image you showed a marquis or diamond? Yeah, thank you so just again some of the things that I think are really important for using professionals on a lot of these scenarios so let me see if there's um this is when I love this too have I was working with another designer to help her style her work for photography recently and she had created an island in the kitchen that floated like a piece of furniture and she had hidden heart of outlets just like this with the pull down door that's exactly what I created in the table I was describing yesterday for the client where he just pulled down the drawer and plugged in his laptop from a table and all the chords ran through the middle, but a lot of times people just don't think about things like this, and when you work with great cabinet makers, they remind you something that a lot of people make a mistake in doing is they pay a lot of money for expensive backsplash tile and they don't think tohave an electrician's move all the outlets to underneath the cabinet so well either use um power strips to put cat the outlets all underneath the cabinets or will even make the cabinet so have a little bit longer vallance at the bottom a piece of wood so you can hide entire junction boxes underneath that because if you pay a lot of money for beautiful tile work, you don't want every twelve inches tohave an outlet that really takes away from that and so that's another thing that hiring a professional can really help you think about let's look at some of these ab bet there's some down here that are um dia y think about some of these so all the things we've been looking at over the last few days with the organization piece there are great professional organizer's if you don't have time to do this but I think these are some of the areas if you happen to be interested in doing your own organizing that you khun certainly do a lot of these things yourself in purchase all the containers and some people don't want to and they're overwhelmed with clutter and that's when it's great to even bring in a professional organizer to help you I know lots of people that I enjoy doing that myself but a lot of people a lot of my clients love tto have professional organizer's come in some small furniture projects like we talked about like this I think can be things that you could potentially tackle yourself and especially if it's not a super expensive piece of furniture so maybe practice on some less expensive pieces for sure but I see a lot of people having great look doing things with d I y projects on small pieces of furniture so that's different than painting an entire room our entire house I'm not necessarily saying you should hire an expert to do all kinds of pieces like this, I still do, particularly for my clients, that most the time we want the job to be such a great job that we go ahead and hire experts for that. Any of these look interesting for you, this one's about making your own pillow covers, and if you if you're comfortable with a selling machine at all, if you I want to make a really simple pillow like that that's just called a knife edge, so it doesn't have welter cord or trimmings of any kind is to say simplest kind of pillow, but it's also one that I prefer to use a lot just because it's really clean. Um, do you call these cushions instead of pillows? Um, so cushions or pillows, but it's a knife edge, meaning it's just a simple straight edge. Those were those were pretty easy to do on your own. You can even do some of these with the feasible tate, as opposed to having to put zippers and things in, but I prefer to have the maid was zippers, and if you're handy on a sewing machine, those would be some of the easiest projects to do something small. How many of you attempted that, do any of you, so I've done a little sewing and you know, even with the knife edge to get a nice clean line when after you fill it you know, because you have to leave an opening like it is there could be a little bit of a challenge there but well it's so satisfying to do something fun to do it yourself and if you enjoy that I agree if it makes you happy certainly try it but one of the things to think about is the price I pay my work room to make pillows each is thirty five dollars so you think about the pain and labor that you go through to make a pillow for thirty five dollars you could have a professional do it perfectly and have the zipper put in and all of those things and then of course you still have to buy the parts and pieces, but you're gonna have to do that anyway it's you so just sometimes comparing comparing the price and they're just getting a quote is okay because you can ask people to price things if they're willing and just compare and see if it's worth your time something like this is I think interesting from a d I y perspective so I said I'm comfortable just, um painting it blank canvas a solid color and it's fun for kids rooms this is someone who was comfortable at least just while pro papering a single panel for artwork and the great thing about this is you're not trying to match up any seams anywhere and you could buy a remnant a roll of wall covering and you could create artwork out of it so you may need to match them up each each one to get the repeat right you would want to but it's not quite as tedious is trying to hang it on the wall right? So this would be a great option for doing a d I y project any other exciting d I y projects that any of you want to share anybody on the on the web that they've either had go awry and they hired a professional or that they really have had great luck doing this's one way or the other but curious one is very interested in painting over wood floors I don't know if it's something that they tried and it just didn't work so the one that I did earlier like I showed that striped wood floor again that's something that I definitely wanted to hire a professional there I had had just my handyman that I use a lot help me paint concrete at a previous home and even getting the right materials toe work what was an issue tohave it really stay on well and then we picked the wrong seal it like a shellac or a varnish and it was supposed to be big black and white um checks because the concrete was already scored in these giant squares and thought how hard can that be? I could just get my handy man we could do this together it's no big deal and then we didn't use the right ceiling and every single square that was white turned as yellow as you could possibly imagine we're like uh rip it all I mean that was one of the final times that I said no more doing my own crotch it just really wasn't worth it but the same thing happened with the striped floors we had a couple of issues and thank goodness we had used a professional and they even had the sand down a couple of places in and fix it themselves is and it was really great peace of mind to be working with someone who was going to going to work until they got it right we had an issue I think also with the varnish on it and making sure it didn't change the color it's really really tricky to get some of this planet depends on I mean obviously if that's an indoor space and you're you on a beautiful harder for a painter full that's obviously something you want to call the professional but perhaps if it's a beach house or something then you're not so worried you will you perhaps wanted to look a little bit rusty right and there's breaking what is your end goal exactly right so there's some great painted floors that I've seen in cottages that are adorable and the pain is all flicking off and you want it that way it looks like it's been there for fifty years and that's a completely different scenario plus as we've talked about several times knowing your personality or your client's personality because the client that I did the strike floors for is a very, very structured organized and really they would probably even call themselves a little o c d they like things really really perfect and in mint condition they're not ok with things being rustic or lose sor having character that's not their style they wanted it just really really in perfect condition so I knew this was a client that we didn't really take chances with we were trying something daring but we had to bring in the absolute best to do the project picture this just in the bottom of the screen would like the twig I guess you called I don't know the yeah let's look at that so that's fun now personally that's really is decorative you can't actually pull those drops those air just yeah those I mean I guess you could untie them cause they're just tie on and on and them but isn't that cute? So I like that and depending on the if it's a kid's room or if it's a mountain house or depending on the location, I think something like that is fun and if these are the kinds of things that it is fun to feel like, you did those yourself, right when you get some so I think it's a it's, a matter of picking and choosing, which was what this whole part was really about, okay, let's, look let's, go back out any anything else you wanted to really think about her talk about here, I'll talk about I've had so many, it was hilarious to hear you talking about painting because I've had so many painting projects go arrive from painting floors, you thinking that I have the right materials just flocking right up. Um, the painting of bathroom and I had a friend who has a lot of experience painting I bought the paint she came, we painted immediately started bubbling, you know? I mean, we just didn't probably didn't properly prepared the surface. We didn't, you know. So even though all the details were right where materials weren't right, yes and so what a relief to have someone else come in. I know and even professionals have things go wrong even designers miss measure the sofa and can't get it through the door, but then it's my problem, not yours because you paid for it and I have to make it writes its so nice to have someone else be responsible sometimes that if it all bubbles up they're the ones who have to remove it and do the job again and it's gonna happen sometimes even even for professionals but just removing that liability. I do love this little cabinet here in this idea we have been talking about a lot of inexpensive storage pieces, so the idea of either even putting wallpaper or the temporary wallpaper in the back of the cabinet is a great little d I y project and just free for your information. You might not think this, but looking at this drapery here and adding trim to the drapes a lot of times my window treatment professional and my upholsterer hot glue thes trims onto the bottom of a sofa or the edge of the drapes so it's even a trick that they really use it so you would think that they're all sewn on not always so most of the time for mei I've seen them just add them at the end so if you mean course, she would still need to know the right kind of glue and the what right? Uh, procedure but some of these things you could add trimmings to your own lampshades and other things, possibly even the base of the sofa and make it work for you so it just depends on the level of of expertise were going for and what your skills that is. Ah, lot of people that I know using stencil instead of wallpaper. So this is a stencil pattern, and I have seen some people have some good luck doing stencil ing themselves with very labor intensive eso, something that you might want to try.