We Landed the Job... Reality Check Please!

I have yet to mention how we even landed this fantastic job. Coincidentally, my aunt was showing her co-worker our wedding pictures on her computer. Her co-worker happened to ask what we did for a living and ended up getting in touch with us once she found out we were designers. You never know how these things connect but somehow they do and it makes for such an interesting experience.

Landing a job was easier than actually getting started. We found the clients to be absolutely dreamy, a family of 4 who value their community and the place that they have created in it and wanting to make their home more suitable to their developing needs as the children grow and the family expands. They wanted designers who weren't stuck in their ways, free thinking and open minded. That we are!!! We don't even have"ways" yet. But we do have a considerable amount of experience. We aren't total newbies at this...with interning and full time experience combined we have about 12 years worth of real work under our belts. Not too shabby I suppose. In any case, by some miracle the clients enthusiastically started discussing scope and the needs that they were hoping to address.

The drive back home to So Cal gave us some time to get over the excitement of the success of the meeting! Yay! We landed the job!!!! But then the reality of "ok wait, this is real! This is serious! This is some one's home that they are trusting us with and we need to do an excellent job." Doing and ok job is not going to cut it. And the question of when we were going to do this work also came to mind and who was going to do what- Chris was able to spend more time on this at the front end than I was. Working long hours plus the 45 minute commute in traffic home did little for motivating me to start working on this project when I walked in the door. I'd much rather take a long shower, cook something with lots of melted cheese and enjoy a few re-runs of Sex in the City instead. We knew off the bat that Chris is more experienced with the exterior and the structural abilities of the design and I am more concerned with how the spaces function within the home and aesthetically how they measure up.

So he does most of the researching on codes and construction details as well as revising the contracts. I do the space planning and the sketching.

So far it has worked out nicely... our biggest problem right now is time management and work space. Our original bistro table and chairs in our dining area got nixed a few weeks ago as it wasn't holding up as a make-shift office space... with a laptop, drafting tools and countless design magazines, stacks of trace paper, print outs, books and product samples our apartment was starting to look like the visual equivalent of an nervous breakdown. So we opted for an rectangular table that we thought would be much better and more comfortable but of course the table can't organize itself and thus it remains to be another mini disaster. I wish I would have had the foresight to register for an office space when we got married. That would have been nice.

Oh well. Out of chaos comes _____ (something) right? Hopefully a successful project, happy clients and a referral for more work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.