Perhaps the following is less of a “how to” and more of a “listen to my story!”

But for those people like me, this story will be helpful.  I promise.

Who are those people like me?  What am I like?

I’m a lot of things.  At 40-years-old, I know who I am.

I’m cynical.  I’m sarcastic.  I can be quick to judge, although in fairness, my judgments are usually correct.  I’m honest to a fault, and for some, that’s a little too honest when they’re hoping to hear what they wanted to hear.

But as I’ve written about as recently as last month, I’m logical, rational, and I believe in function over form.

So when it came time to pick an interior designer to help my wife and I with our new home, I was destined for a let-down.

My wife and I purchased a home in May of 2018 and moved in August that summer.

I didn’t write about this experience until more than a year later, but if you missed it, I poured my heart out during a 3-part blog series, which started from our first failed offer in the mayhem of 2017 and culminated with the purchase of a house in an area we had never considered, more than one year later:

“We Bought A House!”
“We Bought A House! (Pt2)”
“We Bought A House! (Pt3)”

Knowing that this would be our true “forever home,” and also being aware that I am far from an expert in design, my wife and I agreed that hiring an interior designer to help us furnish the house would be prudent.

There are just so many reasons why it makes sense to hire a designer, for right home-owner.

As somebody who works six days per week, and just about every night, I’m happy to pay for somebody else’s time so that my time can be spent elsewhere, especially when that somebody is an expert.

I also don’t know where, what, when, and how to obtain certain furnishings in the house.  Like window coverings, for example.  What’s the lead-time on these?  Other than “Blinds to Go,” who in the hell is going to help me?  What’s the difference between drapes and curtains?  When do I need curtains overtop of a roller-shade?

Yeesh.  And this is merely one feature of the house…

Moving from a 2-bedroom condo to a 4-bedroom house means you’re going to need a lot more stuff!  And the stuff that you do have likely won’t make the move with you.

Our 8-year-old, cream-coloured sectional couch from the condo?  Why we picked cream, I don’t know.  But this was great value through eight years, and now it’s found a permanent home in my buddy’s basement in Kingston, Ontario.

That six-seat dining room table?  The one we refer to as “condo-size?”  That’s not going to the new house.  Actually, that’s also in my buddy’s home in Kingston.  He still has some furniture from my first condo at 230 King Street.  Walking into his house must be like walking into my mind…

But you get the picture.  Condo-sized furniture, of a certain style, and pushing a decade-old, isn’t necessarily going to work in your new home.

Aside from the time commitment and the need for not only newer furnishings, but ones that match the style and size of the house, there’s also the fact that most interior designers get a twenty percent discount at every furniture store in the city.  That alone can be worth the hiring.

So where do you find a designer?

Word-of-mouth is where most people start, and that’s exactly what we did.

The first designer that we contacted epitomizes all that I dislike about designers.

We emailed her with a lengthy list of questions and asked if we could set up a phone call.

She wrote back with one line: “What is your address?”

We provided our address, and she wrote back, “Our services start at $50,000.  Let us know if you’d like to proceed.”

There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t know where to begin.

The fact that she answered none of our questions was a problem.  But the idea that she would quote a “starting” price based on our neighbourhood just shows how a lot of these folks work.  And what’s the breakdown of that $50,000?  Is this based on the idea that she charges $250 per hour and it’s going to take 200 hours’ worth of work to furnish our house?  She didn’t even ask what we wanted, so how did she know it would require 200 hours?

That first experience was bizarre, but it would serve as ground zero for the entire process.

The next interior designer we spoke to was also a referral from a friend.  She was relatively new in the business, which I thought would be exactly what we needed.  Somebody that’s new, looking to cut their teeth, work hard and receive referrals from there, would be perfect!

The young woman came to our home during one of our “buyer visits” and said some nice things, and some of the right things.  I was digging the vibe.

She did, however, make a lot of comments about how “people will be impressed,” or “your friends will love this,” but I let it all go.

About the seventh mention, however, I finally mused, “We’re not really furnishing this house for other people, you know.”

She just stared at me with a blank look.

She then turned to my wife and said, “He’s a challenge, isn’t he?”

I wasn’t insulted.  I didn’t really care, to be honest.

But the fact that she didn’t reply to my comment told me that she wasn’t really getting us.  I wanted a house that was about us.  I don’t care, in the slightest, what other people think, and I don’t have friends that are impressed by a designer couch or some bullshit like it.

She didn’t understand that, however, and continued through the house, explaining how things will look in Instagram photos, and used the term “showing off” a couple of times.

I was undecided about her.  I would ultimately defer to my wife in the event of a tie.

But she left us on a Wednesday and said, “I”ll send you a report on Friday and we’ll take it from there,” and then we didn’t hear back from her until we reached out to her the next Tuesday.

She wrote us back: “Sorry for the delay, I just had the most amazing weekend at my family’s cottage in Muskoka….”

That was it for me.  My wife too.

The next designer was also a referral, and this one seemed to understand us a bit better.

She listened intently.  She nodded along as we spoke, and responded with examples that followed what we had described.

She asked us questions!  Lots of them!  She even said, “I want to understand you.  I want to know how you think, and how you see this space.  I want to know how you see yourself living in this home.”

She came more prepared, unlike the first two designers.  She showed us photos of some of the houses she had worked on, and she explained the different styles of each home as well as the tastes of the home-owners and their goals.

Everything seemed perfect!

But when we got to the process, and it made absolutely zero sense to me.

She explained how there would be a big “reveal” when everything was complete, and I stood there in complete confusion.  She talked about it in words that sounded like utter fantasy to me.

“We’re not on a reality-tv show,” I told her.

“But this is the way we do it,” she simply explained.

Her idea was for her team to acquire all of the furnishings in the home, move them in, set them up, and then have us show up one day – weeks or months down the line, for the reveal.

Complete fantasy.

“But we live here,” I told her.  “I mean, we’re in the condo now, but we’re moving here in five weeks,” I explained.

And that’s when, to my absolute amazement, she said, “Do you have another place you could stay for a short period while we set up and prepare?”

All for what?

So she could work towards her reveal?

We didn’t need a reveal.  We didn’t want a reveal.

A reveal made zero sense, outside of a television show!

It would be unrealistic and inconvenient, to say the least.  And it would offer absolutely zero value-add to our lives.

And what was this business about “having another place to stay?”  Why?  For what?

The whole idea made little sense to me.  Life would get in the way of this, for starters.  We wanted to buy a couch here, a chair there, a rug at this date, and an end-table thereafter.  We would slowly work toward furnishing the house, while living our lives, raising our child, and working at our jobs.  We might move into the house with half of it furnished, or more.  Or less.  Who knew?

There was no rush!  And we didn’t want somebody to do it for us, but rather we wanted somebody to do it with us!

The idea that this designer would pick everything on her own, set it up in our house (while we’re living at the Motel-8, apparently…) and then show it to us for the first time during a “reveal” was absolute lunacy.

What if we didn’t like it?

What if it wasn’t our style?

What if we wanted a bigger couch, or for the couch to go THERE instead of there?

Imagine having zero knowledge about your home and your furnishings until it’s all finished?

I was absolutely disillusioned at this point.

We just wanted somebody to help us furnish our house, not tell us what other people might be impressed by, or keep us in the dark for months until they show it to us all at once, or base their services on where we live, without ever having spoken to us.

We were 0-for-3 at this point, and I was ready to pack it in.

Then we received a referral from a colleague of mine at the office, and he described the designer as “a bit kooky.”

Great.  I’m a bit kooky.  Maybe we’d hit it off?

We’ll call her “Shirley,” just because I don’t want to turn this into an advertorial for her…

The first time we met Shirley, she pulled up in front of our house, on the curb, and dropped her keys as she walked up the driveway.

It couldn’t have been a better start!

She was a proud mother, as evidenced by her bumper stickers from her boys’ universities, and she just seemed “real” from the start.

Having little time for nonsense, after our first three experiences, I just started ranting to her.

“Let me tell you what I think about art,” I told her.

“If you show me a painting by Jean-Paul-Carl-Whogivesafuck, I won’t know it, nor be impressed by it, nor value it at twenty grand,” I said.

I explained that some of my favourite pieces were purchased from random street vendors in places like Tanzania or Mexico.  They cost ten bucks at the time, and I might have spent $150 to frame them, but they were original pieces, and I met the artists, and they had meaning.

Shirley smiled and said, “That’s wonderful!”  Then she asked me all about my travels, my art, where I got it, what it meant to me, and more.

I told Shirley that my wife and I weren’t showy individuals and didn’t care what “people” would think of this, or that.  Shirley said, “I work with clients who want something from a magazine, and I work with clients who want couches that their kids can spill spaghetti on.  I get it.  I know people are different.”

Shirley did get it.  She got us.

I meet a lot of people in the course of my work, and I’m pretty good at judging people from our first interaction.  Shirley was sincere.  She was real.  And she was damn good at her job.

During one of our first trips out and about, we found ourselves at the much famed ELTE.  We were sitting on this massive, beautiful couch, and Shirley took out her measuring tape and started jotting down notes.

“Shirley, this is nice,” I told her.  “But I’m not really in the market for a twenty-five thousand dollar couch.”

“Nor should you be,” Shirley said.  “I have a guy that can build this couch, with better material, for about one-third of the price.”

The salesperson came by and asked if we needed help, and Shirley said, with a smile, “No dear, I think we’ve got everything we need.”

True to her word, Shirley’s couch guy, “Jimmy,” built us two couches, one for the main floor family room and one for the basement.  My wife and I laze on the massive basement couch every single night, about ten feet apart, and the pillows are still true to their original form after two years.

Shirley called me one day after we had moved in and said, “Hey David!  What do you think about rugs?”

I asked, “Like, in general?  What do you mean?”

She said she was at a massive closeout sale by the airport and she had a few options for us.

“Designers are stuffing their SUV’s full of rugs!” she said.  “I got my hands on six, I’m gonna come by tonight!”

Shirley came by that night and all by herself, she lugged six massive area rugs into our house and rolled them out, one by one.  She selected two that she liked for our space, one for the family room and one for the living room.  Then she put the other four in her car.  She didn’t try to force all of them on us; just the ones she liked for us.

That’s my gal.  Buying rugs on spec.  Love it.

The bedroom in our basement isn’t huge, but I wanted a Queen-sized bed for my brother and his wife to sleep in when they come to visit from England.  So we got one, but that left very small spaces on each side of the bed for end tables.  I sent Shirley on a mission: find us round end-tables that are no more than 12-inches in diameter.

I sure as hell couldn’t’ find any!  But sure enough, Shirley found these beautiful, round, matte black end tables with a diameter of 10 1/2 inches.  Just enough for your iPhone and a glass of water.

One of the last things on my list as we prepared to move into the house was a desk for my home office.  But I just couldn’t find anything that I liked.  This was where I would work about twenty-five hours per week, and I wanted it to be perfect.

One night, I was out walking my dog and I looked in the front window of a furniture store that was in the base of my condo at 112 George Street, called “Bo Concept.”  In the window was this beautiful, slim, modern desk, with no price, of course!

I went in the next day and found that the desk was prohibitively expensive.  They said there weren’t any sales, they didn’t work with designers, and so I decided to pass.

Days later, I got to talking with Shirley and she asked about it.  I told her I would never spend that kind of money on a desk.

She called me the following day and said, “I spoke to the manager and they sold it to me for a forty percent discount.”

Oh, Shirley!

When it came to our living room table, we wanted something really specific.  No rectangle, no square, no circle – it had to be an oval.  We found this one table at West Elm, but it was sold out.

Shirley found a broken version of the table at a West Elm warehouse and bought the stand.  Seriously – she bought the stand for fifty bucks!  She then had her “marble guy” make a slab exactly like the one West Elm sold, and he glued it to the stand.  So we get our hands on a sold-out table, at a discount too!

Shirley wasn’t afraid to call me out though.

We were at ELTE Market one day early on in our search and I was sitting on this really deep couch that you just sort of sunk into.

“That’s really schleppy,” Shirley said, demonstrating her knowledge of Yiddish.

“I know you don’t care about looks,” Shirley said, “But after about fifteen sits on that couch, you’re going to hate how saggy and awful it’ll look.”

She was right, of course, as evidenced by my satisfaction with our two custom couches.  “The Jimmy Couches,” as we refer to them.

Shirley knew what was important to us, and we never had to tell her.

Our window coverings weren’t going to be ready for move-in day, but Shirley made damn sure that there was one set that would be installed the day before we pulled up with the moving van: the ones in my daughter’s bedroom.  She knew we had a 2-year-old girl and that the first night in the new house would be tough enough at bedtime without the sun shining through, full-blast.

I think Shirley’s experience as a mother helped in many areas, in fact.

We were looking at chairs for the kitchen table one day and Shirley said, “These are all wrong, trust me.”

My wife was really smitten with them, however.  But Shirley picked the chair up and put it on a table, right in the middle of the damn store!  She pulled out her water bottle and poured 4-5 drops of water onto the seat of the chair.

“See that?” she asked, as the water absorbed right into the seat.  “Soaks it up like a sponge!  You’re going to be raising two young children and this is your breakfast table!  You’ll get food and drinks all over whichever chairs you pick, so get something that cleans well.”

Damn, she was right!

Shirley sought out the perfect blend of aesthetics and style while keeping functionality in mind, and that is what made her perfect for us.  That, and she loved a deal.  She spent other people’s money for a living, but she was frugal.

Our house was new, never lived-in, and thus there were no toilet-paper holders or towel racks in any bathrooms.  I asked Shirley what we do, and where we go.

“Home Depot,” she said, to my surprise.

“Go online and shop,” she advised.  “Moen makes a really great line and they look fabulous!  Get something in chrome, something round, and get the same hardware for all the bathrooms in the house.  They’ll last you twenty years!”

Any interior designer who’s concerned with her billable hours wouldn’t give out this kind of information for free, but that’s what I loved about Shirley.  She had the ingredients to the secret sauce, and she just handed it over!

It was instances like this that earned her my trust.

And since we worked with her, I’ve referred her to two of my best friends, and a couple of clients.

Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe I’m the problem.

But I can’t be alone in this.

We can all share horror stories of renovations gone wrong and how much we despise the contractor we fired, but when it comes to picking an interior designer, it’s actually a lot tougher than you might think.

I learned that, first-hand.

So while this story started off a bit cynical, I’d like to think that it ended with a smile!

Happy cold and rainy Monday, folks!