Thursday, we are all ready for my clients visit. The furniture commissioned is all present . One Burr American Walnut dining table inlaid with Macasser Ebony and Pearwood and eight upholstered Walnut chairs. Two sunburst Macasser Ebony trays with brass rims, two Sycamore cabinets with ebony inlay lined in Cedar ofLlebanon one Burr American Walnut dining table inlaid with Macasser Ebony and Pearwood and eight upholstered Walnut chairs. So, you guess, this is important.
We have all the main pieces in Darens bench room yesterday we did the photographs. If you don’t take photographs of your work, good ones, or you might as well not do the job. The client has promised us photographs of the piece on site and that would be much better but I have a funny feeling we wont get those photos.
In this game there are interior designers who usually work with architects and will have a degree needing four years training or there are interior decorators who are usually the wives of bankers “doing something” after the kids have grown up. They are known in the biz as “cushion chuckers” I would never dream of suggesting that my dear client was anything but totally competent but i dont think she would call herself an interior designer.
Anyway in she comes driving up from town in a Porsche, she got lost as sat nav dumps people in a nearby field. I have to give a nearby farmer a bottle of good scotch each year to redirect them back to Rowden. We have no signage here to help lost clients. We make it really hard for people to find us. One of my early advisers said don’t do it, don’t do signage, keep your head down, avoid burglars as all these tools could so easily end up in the local car boot sale.
So in she rocks annoying my mate Paul by parking he Porsche in front of his house, and not readily responding when he asked her to move it. That is until he warns her“ If you don’t, I have some powerful equipment in that garage that will move it for you” and he wasn’t joking. So she arrives with us “in a bit of a state’.
Fortunately a cup of green tea calmed nerves for both of us. The furniture was inspected the only comments made were that the cabinet stays were a little noisy and the green baize pads we put on the base of the trays were the wrong colour. Not that a colour had been specified, but she now wanted “Cartier Red”
All signed off and the fun begins with shipping . We have a day to get these pieces into crates that had been pre ordered and delivered. At this stage I am greatly concerned that the table top is crated in a manner that is safe. Safe if its stacked on edge , safe put at the bottom of the hold and ten crates piled on top of it, or put wobbling on top of the pile . This is a three metre long very thin crate. I want to strengthen this crate I tell the client it will cost more but we must protect this table top and WE don’t want that table top damaged on route “Do whatever you have to” she says . That will come back to haunt me when she gets the bill and doesn’t understand that getting cabinetmakers to make crates is not cheap.
Daren is going out to Dubai and overseeing the install so all is right in the world.