Renovation Rookie Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

When you've been in the design world as long as I have, you see some mistakes.  And I've seen more than my fair share.  Some were my own fault and some weren't.  Anyone can screw up on a design project; designers, contractors even the owners.  But it's not the mistake that can break you, but not learning from them.  That and not knowing how to handle them when they happen.

So take a break from whatever you're currently doing and read on to hopefully learn from some of these design blunders that I've witnessed in my own projects.

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THE ANIMAL CHAIR DEBACLE

I worked on a Library renovation once that had a super limited budget.  So we were scraping pennies every little place we could.  One major source of pain for this Library was the furniture.  As many of you are probably aware, older Library furniture can often be really sturdy (especially wooden chairs) but after a few decades of use, they appear extremely outdated.  Our solution to this was actually a good one, if it had only gone according to plan.

We utilized the resources of our local correctional institute that was partnered with a fabrics company to refinish chairs.  All we had to do was make our fabric selections and they would come pick up the chairs, recover them and return them to us.  Good as new . . . technically.  Our failure to launch happened when we had to select two different fabrics for chairs to go in two different areas of the Library.  We selected a nice neutral fabric for the adult chairs and a fun brightly-colored animal print for the children's area.  

Any guesses as to what happened next??

Yep.  All those adult chairs came delivered fresh on a sunny Monday morning in fabulous fun brightly-colored animal print.  The solution was of course to send them back and have them refinished in the correct color.  Fortunately the children's chairs were correct.  The manufacturer made a mistake by missing the more neutral fabric and it had to be fixed.  The frustration was a delay in chair delivery, but it was corrected as quickly as possible and we all moved on with our lives.

THE FIX

You can go over your order many times and still discover a mistake.  But it's a lot less likely if you walk through the final order (either in person or over the phone at the very least) with your furniture dealer/supplier.  My favorite preventative measure these days is to run through the entire final order line-by-line with the manufacturer, designer and owner.  And with virtual calls at our fingertips these days, this process is so much easier than ever before.  So there's no excuses to not do all the due diligence.

CARPET MISTAKE OF NIGHTMARES

My worst experience ever with a project mistake was a huge one.  We had specified a carpet tile to be installed and midway through the installation, the client visited the site and decided it wasn't what he wanted.  It just so happened that the woman who owned the installation company was on site as well and did note the owner's concern.  Unfortunately the installation was not halted and once it was completely down, the owner refused it.  

Needless to say this caused major heartburn for everyone involved.  And while I won't go into the behind-the-scene details, I can say that it was eventually resolved satisfactorily and the client was happy.

THE FIX

Here's the rule.  If you notice a major discrepancy with anything being installed, insist that everything stop at once.  Have your contractor respond to your concerns to everyone's satisfaction as quickly as possible.  The longer you wait, the more money it will cost.  And what you don't want on your hands is a nasty lawsuit.  So make regular site visits if you're not in the building and be persistent and diligent about your selections and making sure everything is going in correctly.

SPELL CHECK GOES A LONG WAY IN DESIGN

The carpet mistake put us in quite a tizzy and to this day, the memory of it is still raw.  But the funniest screw up we ever had was actually a pretty simple one; and technically an impossible one coming from people who work with words on a daily basis.

We were working on the signage for the study rooms and were trying to decide on what we wanted to call them.  For the most part, patrons often used them for homeschool and studying.  So the Library director decided to label them as "Tutor Rooms".  

It seemed harmless enough.

We sent the spreadsheet with room numbers and room names off to the signage company and they retyped everything in a formal pricing proposal and sent it to us for review.  I waited for my brilliant Library director (if she's reading this, she knows who she is, and she knows I love her so no hard feelings - plus she laughed about it as well) to review it and send it to me for my own review, which was to be a bit more technical and design-oriented.

After reading over it, I noticed that both she AND the signage project manager misspelled the word "Tutor".  We were soon-to-be the proud owners of four beautiful "Tudor" rooms.  Once we caught it, we got a big kick out of it and honestly it made the carpet mess a bit easier to bear.

THE FIX

This one's a no-brainer.  Triple check your spelling.  Know that people are busy!!  It pays to have at least two sets of eyes on something before it goes out to print.  Remove yourself, take a break and look at it once more.

A $17,000 LESSON I LEARNED THE HARD WAY

Here's one more, although I have so many more I could share.  Perhaps if you've enjoyed reading these horrors, I can compose another one of these in the future.  But for now I'll share one that was all on me.  No one to blame, or pay for it, but myself.  

Last winter I put together a furniture spreadsheet for a client and the color of the three executive desks and all 60 bookcases were listed as the wrong color.  I knew it.  I even made notes to change it.  But in my defense, I was down with Covid when the final spreadsheet went out to the purchaser.  And I had never gotten around to making that one color change.  So out it went.  

Fast forward several months later to a balmy day in June when I get a call from the furniture dealer while at the install with the client and they are telling me the color is all wrong.  Everywhere.  In every single office.  Immediately the adrenaline burst that made it's way through my entire body consumed my every thought.  I checked all my documents and emails and to my utter horror, I had in fact never made that color change.

And on a much more horrifying note, for some reason, the dealer changed all the standard office desks to the same wrong color (fortunately I DID get that color right on the spreadsheet) and everything was all wrong.  The client was not happy.  At all.  But we got it fixed.  It was a very costly mistake that taught me a super painful (and expensive) lesson.

THE FIX

For starters.  Don't order furniture when you have Covid!  Secondly, as I said before with the spell-check fiasco, have someone else put their eyes on it.  I also stated earlier with the animal print chairs that I now go through these furniture proposals with a fine tooth comb and with the dealer as well as the owner.  This takes a little extra time, but forces us all to slow down and break it all down line by line to eliminate as many errors as possible.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Mistakes happen.  I've never had a project that was completely perfect.  It just doesn't happen.  But it helps to know we all make them and there really is always a solution.  It may not be one you love, but there is one.  So do the hard work on the front end and double check everything.  Stop work when you see something that doesn't feel right to you and make sure someone confirms your concern.  It's almost always cheaper to fix it up front than to wait.

And be patient with all people involved.  It's going to be better for everyone if you keep your cool and just get to the solution as quickly as possible.