How to love the process more than you hate it

Damn, those people up there are happy! Someone just said the funniest thing AND there are presents?! I want to be them.

But, you know, we can’t always be having our best day. Sadly, life’s little pendulum of emotions has to keep swinging and can’t just hover over the manic joy area. So, let’s face it: it’s inevitable that any home project, on nearly any scale, is going to have good moments and bad moments. The good news is that you have more control over that than you may think. (Spoiler: this is 90% about attitude.)

Here are some tips for controlling the outcome so that you get more good moments than bad ones during your home update project:

Step 1: Hire good help (including a good designer)

If you aren’t going to do this thing alone, you need to have a team around you that is making a positive impact on the project. Whether that’s your partner, your friend, or an industry professional, only engage people who you trust and respect. These projects require a lot of collaboration, so it matters that you’re starting from a good place. (More on how to choose your designer here.)

Step 2: Communicate well

Communicate frequently and honestly with your designer. Obviously, interior designers are super-humans with boundless intuition and mind-reading skills. So, clearly, no need to speak your thoughts to them. Duh.

…that was lies.

The truth is: we won’t know what you want, like, don’t want, don’t like, or maybe aren’t sure about if you don’t tell us. And, you might have to repeat those comments more than once, because sometimes we misunderstood what you meant, or because sometimes you don’t like something until you see it more and it grows on you. Suddenly a thing that was out of bounds for our search is now back in the game. (That’s me with 3D tile. I used to think it was stupid and ugly. Now it’s on my bathroom wall. Opinions change sometimes.)

So, keep us in the loop with frequent and useful feedback, and if we’re missing the mark, tell us that (nicely, we can still get our feelings hurt). Small adjustments made frequently keep the project from going too far off course, which will prevent breakdowns and panic attacks, and you’ll enjoy the process so much more, having confidence that your team understands what you want.

Communicate respectfully and with kindness— to everyone. This includes the people you’ve hired directly, and the people you haven’t. If a problem arises with something someone did, respectfully and calmly bring it to the attention of the person in charge, and then let them handle it. Your designer is there as your advocate and mediator, so use them. Why raise your blood pressure when you can instead walk away, pour yourself some malbec, and wait for your rep to resolve it? And if you’ve stayed kind to the team, you’ll benefit tons, because everyone wants to try their best to give nice people good results.

Step 3: Trust your team

The time for interviewing and qualifying your team is before you hire them. Get as thorough as you need to BEFORE the project starts. Ask questions about your team’s qualifications, design philosophy, and anything else you may need to know. It’s important to building a foundation of trust and respect for the people you’re considering working with.

But, once you’ve passed “Go”, you need to give them space and trust that you’ve chosen competent people who will do a good job and be responsible with your resources.

(The same goes for any subs your pros bring in. Professionals aren’t trying to risk their reputation letting any ole schmuck come work for them, so you can expect their team is solid, too.)

Even this week it happened to me. New guy shows up on the job site to mud the drywall and blend what was once a doorway into the newly-filled-in wall. Step 1: he starts chipping off chunks of the new drywall pieces all along the clean-cut edges. I don’t think I was the only one who saw it and thought “Omg! What is he doing?!” The team lead comes around the corner and like… 20? 30? minutes of fast and loud Spanish follows as they seem to be arguing. (My Spanish skills are pitifully rudimentary, so I had no chance at catching more than a couple words.) So I’m off to the side, keeping to myself, thinking, “Okay, Jose has it under control. He’s going to call his boss and get a new guy over here because this man does not know what he’s doing and is about to ruin the wall!”

Well…. a little while later, I got nervous when I saw our drywall-chipping maniac back at the wall. But I trust my contractor, and I trust his supervisor, and I trust his lead, so I figured if Jose let this guy keep going, he must trust him too.

A few hours later, I kid you not- I have never, ever seen drywall repair as perfect as that. By the time I walked in with lunch, this guy was plastering like a master artisan. Smooth as a sheet of paper. Unbelievable. A few days later, with texturing done, there is ZERO indication that a doorway was removed. It looks 100% like the original floorplan had a continuous wall there.

The moral of the story is: vet your team well at the start and then trust them to be competent at the thing you’ve hired them for.

Step 4: Be flexible and keep your expectations reasonable

I promise you, things will arrive damaged, things will get damaged, there will be changes to the plan, and there will be delays. Sometimes it will be because someone was stupid (so, freaking stupid!!). A lot of times, though, it will be more innocent than that. You will stay a lot happier through the process if you have grace and try to roll with the setbacks, because they’re inevitable.

Things don’t have to be perfect to be worthy of love and belonging. (I see you, Brené Brown.) We’re all going to do our best, but there are going to be times when the fight for perfection isn’t a good use of resources, and sometimes it’s not even a fair expectation for what we bought.

For instance, if there’s a scratch on the back of your nightstand, which will forever be against the wall, with nary an eye to look upon its sorry existence, then can we agree to let that be? Pick our battles?

I’m not trying to get out of holding companies and people accountable for making quality products, and handling them carefully, but there are degrees here, and expecting perfection at every turn leads to a lot of disappointment.

Adjust your standards to meet the investment you’ve made. If you paid $30 for a sofa from craigslist, you would overlook some issues, right? Now, if you paid $30,000 for that sofa and special ordered it from a custom furniture manufacturer who boasts the best quality sofas on the market, and we waited 9 months for it to arrive, then you best believe I’ll fight your battles about every little nick in the finish and snag in the fabric. Let’s just keep a fair perspective about getting what we paid for. That’s all I’m asking.

Don’t expect anything to be free– especially not shipping. You’ve heard it before, right? Nothing in life is free. I mean… it’s true… if it isn’t costing you, it’s costing someone. So, when you give Jeff Bezos all of your money (I do it, too- don’t be ashamed!), don’t forget that you ARE paying for shipping– it’s just buried in the cost of your products.

Hopefully this won’t be a huge shock, but………………. UPS charges for their services.

“WHAT?!?!?!!! That can’t be!!! I get UPS deliveries all the time and I don’t have to pay for it!!!”

Yeah…. about that…

You see, except for the mega conglomerate retailers, most companies charge separately for shipping. That’s because most companies don’t have hundreds of finance analysts working up the mathmagicianry required to accurately estimate their projected shipping costs and distribute that proportionately across their product pricing in advance. (See? It even sounds complicated just saying it!) The reality is that it costs a fair amount of money to move a dining table from Thailand to Nevada. There’s a lot of people, vehicles, tools, and communication necessary to make that relocation happen, and it’s not all being donated. That means that whether it’s listed separately, or it’s bundled into the sale price, you’ll be paying for a share of the shipping costs.

Further, white glove delivery is extra. If you want to keep your costs down, you’ll want threshold delivery (meaning the package will be left at the door, or just inside the door), and your delivery driver isn’t going to unpack and inspect and assemble your furniture for you and take away the old stuff. Sometimes, depending on the company, they CAN do those things, but that costs more money. And, really, sometimes it’s totally worth the extra cost!! But that’s a value choice that you need to make, understanding that white glove service is extra.

Ultimately, how much fun you have during this process will be determined by how easily you can adapt to little changes and recover from disappointments. I wish they didn’t happen, but they do, and as long as you have realistic expectations, you’ll be able to roll along without an increase in blood pressure when the tile gets cracked, or you see the shipping costs separated on an invoice. Let’s put on some Bob Marley and take it easy.