Two Magic Words to Move Your Design Project Forward

Artwork by Liza Lambertini Source

This post is written by my fabulous Design Associate Irene Hill:

For about the past year I’ve been telling people my husband and I are in the middle of a renovation project. That’s not really accurate.

Three years ago we purchased this little 1,000 square foot rancher in a nice neighbourhood.

As Kevin and I are both self-employed and have been for years, we are our own pension fund. Apart from the little pension the government gives you for breathing and making it to 65, we’re on our own for having enough money to retire. And while that time’s not right around the corner, it is getting closer every year and it’s up to us to make sure we’re ready.

And of course, everyone knows that real estate is a great way to increase your wealth, so, along with our full-time jobs, we dabble in the renovation end of real estate. What that looks like is that in the past nine years that we’ve been married, we’ve lived through three renovation projects.

We got possession of our first townhouse a month before our wedding and Kevin moved right in. We ripped out the unnecessary walls that first weekend. Luckily for us it never entered our minds that, as our townhouse is part of a bossy strata, we were not allowed to remove any walls until we had asked for and received permission from the strata council. We did not tumble to that fact until the secretary of the strata, who lived next door, came to see what the loud noise of banging was about and to welcome us to the complex.

Fortunately, amidst the rubble of our newly torn-down walls, she loved what we were doing so much she extended forgiveness and went home to get her husband to come and see what we’d done so he could do the same thing in their house. Did I mention I’m a designer and the daughter of a career house builder? It helps when you really, really know which walls can safely be taken down and which can’t.

But I digress. Fast-forward through the townhouse renovation, the 60-year-old farmhouse renovation and we’re at the bungalow renovation.

So, the inaccuracy lies in the term “renovation.” When you take the roof completely off and add 2,300 square feet including a second story to accommodate a two-bedroom suite, the term is no longer “renovation.” The term is “rebuild.” That actually fits much better with how tired we are. It’s coming along but it certainly is slow when you do 90% of the actual hammering and nailing yourselves.

And let me say right here and now that I adore my husband. Not only is he sweet, loving and great to me, my parents, five siblings and their spouses, 22 nieces and nephews and seven great-nieces and –nephews, he’s also handsome and handy. Hence the hammering and nailing. And plumbing. And almost everything else that you need when you’re rebuilding your house.

But he’s also got a strong design opinion. He’s not one of those guys who couldn’t care less what our house looks like as long as he’s got a sandwich and a warm, loving spot to fall into.

He must have been a designer in a past life because he cares about all the little details. Like, all the little details. And needless to say, we don’t always have the same ideas so there’s a lot of negotiating in our house. Once in a while that’s code for “arguing.”

You can imagine how many design decisions need to happen when you tackle a project of this size. So, it’s been a Godsend to have the language I’ve learned from Maria’s training and from hanging around her for the past two and a half years. Because I can usually communicate why what I want is the right choice for our house.

Kevin and I managed beautifully until it came to making a decision on the colour of the siding. For weeks we went back and forth on choices that could work and that both of us could live with. We settled on a colour only to find that it was a custom colour and would blow our carefully planned budget. Back to the drawing board.

Then came the day when we absolutely had to make a choice. Winter is coming and the siding had to go on the face of our poor, naked house. Decision time.

Again we scrutinized the Gentek siding specifier and Kevin pointed to a medium gray and said, “That’s the one I want. Every colour you want is too light. I want a colour.” And because we have a black roof and will be painting all our trim the right white, I gave in. “Okay honey, you can have your way.”

I went to the office the next morning and Maria asked, “How’s the siding decision coming?” I had to confess I was winning with so many of the design decisions that I gave him what he wanted for the siding of our house. “But that’s battleship gray!” Maria said, “You can’t do that colour, it’s fine on a beach house with lots of white railings and trim but not on YOUR house!”

So we sat down and she prepped me with the best answer to every question/concern under the sun and I went home ready to stand up for the right colour for our house.

And you know what it came down to? Siding specifier in hand, I looked at my life-partner and said, “Honey, please.” He started to bring out one of the counter-arguments I’d heard many times before and I just said it again, “Honey, please.” And my wonderful husband looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Okay.”

The next day I walked in the studio door and the first thing Maria asked me was, “How did it go?” I told her Kevin agreed to go with Canyon Clay and I had ordered the boxes on my way in to the office.

“What did you say?” she asked, wondering which of the compelling arguments had won the day.

“Honey, please.” (Sometimes it helps if your eyes get big like the kitty-cat from the movie Shrek.)

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LbumSMoQK8″ modestbranding=”1″ fs=”1″ rel=”0″]

She said, “OMG, I would never do that. I would just list all the reasons why I’m right and how, as the professional, my opinion should win, it wouldn’t even occur to me to say, ‘honey, please.’ You’re brilliant. My nephew Markus does that to me all the time and I just give him anything he wants, haha.”

I can’t tell you how helpful it is to have the right language to communicate with design clients. The right language can communicate the why of how decisions get made and give you confidence in your decisions and the power to explain them to your contractor, your neighbour, your friends, and anyone and everyone who will have an opinion about the choices you make.

But when it’s your husband, sometimes two little words can be more powerful than all the compelling and right arguments. And as I sit here writing this, my darling husband is outside nailing the last of the siding to the house. It’s beautiful and we are both so happy every time we drive up to our house. I’ll show you a picture when it’s finished.

What are your best tips for getting your husband to decorate the way you want?

Related posts:

An Open Letter to my Lover on Decorating

The Best Reason to Paint Old Furniture (or Convincing your Husband to Decorate Your Way)

Why Does Comfortable have to be Ugly?

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