Tile Terrors

Tile Terrors...kind of like night terrors. It may sound funny but of all parts of my business the tile store seems to be the place where clients are the most confused and overwhelmed.

Fabric stores, most people have been in one or at least are been in enough clothing stores that they are used to sorting through fabric. Bath and kitchen faucets and fixtures seem to produce an immediate reaction. People have clearer preferences on whether they long deep sinks, knobs or levers, hand held showers etc. I find that it's easier for people to "connect" to a design but tile confounds people.

When a client walks in a tile store, they are bombarded with all kinds of colors and patterns and materials. Do I want stone? porcelain? ceramic? Does this tile have all the pieces I need? What kind of pieces do I need? There's a ton of questions before you even get to the color. How easy is it to clean, what kind of texture do you want? Do you want a solid color or stone look, glass or metal strips? What kind of pattern do you want? Do you want something that you can make a pattern or have it already set on mesh for you? The list goes on and on.

Then there's the issue of budget. You may fall in love with a trim but the cost is scary. Even your regular tile at $5/sq ft may seem innocuous. Most people aren't used to thinking in terms of sq ft and when doing bathrooms and kitchens you are often dealing with more than one surface. So while your floor may only be 60 sq ft, your bath surround is probably that as well when you add in countertops, backsplashes etc., it all adds up.

A good salesperson is a great asset in a tile place and a designer can help you even more. First you should outline what surfaces you need to cover. Find out if you need bullnose or quarter round. Some companies don't have all the pieces but you can often mix and match. If you want it to all be the same you need to make sure that the line you get has all the different pieces. I am not opposed to mixing and matching and sometimes you can actually get a more interesting design that way.

Once you know what you need now you can look at the rest of the decisions. I like to make good use of accent tiles. They are like jewelry. Just like the perfect necklace can make your outfit, the perfect accent tile will have the same affect. I find the accent tiles are easier to fall in or out of love with as well. It's ok to do a more expensive tile for accent. Like your jewelry, it may cost a little more but the impact is huge. You will also be looking at this every day so make sure you love it. Once you have the accent tile, you will find it a much easier job to get a tile to go with it. Remember to keep the tile thicknesses the same as it is difficult to install otherwise. Sometimes the pattern is the thing you fall in love with, which will dictate how you use accents. But if you fall in love a pattern, it will narrow your choices tremendously.

If you are going in a tile store yourself and experience the overwhelm, try to find the accent tiles first and start looking. Ask for a sales person to tell you the best place to look for what you want or better yet, ask a designer to go with you or save yourself some angst and just have them bring you a few selections. This can take a lot of the stress out of the process.

hiring a contractor

Found this article on hiring a contractor. I have heard horror stories about the contractor that took a ton of cash and then never did the job. I personally had an electrician who blew out my oven in my brand new kitchen and then said he didn't have the money to replace it. Of course, he presumed I did. Fortunately the contractor who hired him was responsible and found one for me. However, I have heard many stories where people weren't so lucky.

http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-109992-5811-2-tall-tales-your-contractor-tells?ywaad=ad0035

The article has some good points. But it missed a few. Ultimately, go with your gut.
If you don't feel like you can trust the person, you probably can't. Do some research, ask for references and see some of their work. I was recently called in on a job to select paint and help with the remaining decisions on the job. There were endless problems on this job and as the kitchen was almost in completion, the contractor admitted that it was the prettiest kitchen he had ever done. Now this is a lovely kitchen and a huge improvement to the client, however, it shouldn't have been his best. Look at the portfolio, ask questions about the pictures, what kind of budget did you have? Did you work within the client's budget? How long did the job take?

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A CONTRACT! ohhh but it's a bother, doesn't matter. It protects you. A hint that you can put in your contracat is a bonus for the contractor if he finishes the job ahead of schedule.

One thing I don't like about this article is that it says you shouldn't have to pay for product up front. While many trades do offer credit, many do not. Some contractors may be trying to pay past bills and if you suspect that, then offer to pay the resource directly. The problem is that credit is hard to come by today as well and many contractors don't have the capital built up to front the money for you. I have seen contractors do exactly as this article says though so it is something to beware of, I just don't see it as a sure sign of a bad contractor. The contractors are cautious as well, they can't do a $10,000 job for $1,000 and then have the client suddenly not be happy at the end and refuse to pay it all. It is important to work WITH your contractor. Be clear on the decisions made and when they will be implemented.

The sound of color

Yes, I am talking about color again. Several things have happened this week that really intrigued me.

I was driving the other day to the airport - had about an hour on the road. Sometimes I listen to a lesson, sometimes I just listen to the radio, and other times I find an old CD, an old friend, and sing along to songs that inspire me.

So anyway, driving down the freeway and suddenly there's a Pier One commercial. Now if you know me, ads are wasted on me, I can tune them out very easily, and most don't get any attention. For an ad to grab me, it had to really stand out. Pier One did an ad that was the sound of color...they said the word pink and then played the music to go with it, and it instantly brought to mind a pink room. Then Green, then Blue. It was interesting that each piece of music not only brought up a color but even a shade of color. I could see the color they were talking about. Very brave to do that on a commercial I thought, and very effective. It really made me think, not so much about Pier One but about the effects that colors have on us and the fact that you could hear it. I began thinking of how music would describe other shades and how I would communicate it. It reminded me of a class in college on the study of imagination and creativity. We had to make up some music for it, if I could go back, this would be my song, my rainbow song. Create a rainbow of music. Doesn't that sound enticing? It intrigues 2 senses instead of one.

As I was thinking all this, Spandau Ballet's "True" came on the radio. There's a line that just isn't sung, it's sung from the bottom of the heart. "This is the SOOOOOOOOOOUNNNNNNND of my soul". With that one word I connect to my own soul and feel it's uncaged depths. I see a rainbow with that song - the rainbow of my soul.
And while we are singing "it's red and gold and green and" ok, but humor is good right? For this musician, sound is his art form and how he connects to the world so this is very powerful for him. Music is powerful for me but I have not been blessed in that area, music may speak to me, but my communication to the world is through color and design. Creating a story with a home, making it YOUR story and making it a story that has all the exciting things you need, a great hero or heroine, a challenge and the great reveal which makes it all make sense. It's a story that discovers a deeper part of who you are and helps propel you to who you want to be.

Do you know how you communicate to the world? What colors are in your rainbow? What speaks to you, music, the written word, a picture - a little bit of all? How do you show your colors?

Here's a fun exercise, choose the colors and it will tell you a bit about your career path. Don't think a color could say that much about you - give it a try, a color speaks volumes. http://www.careerpath.com/career-tests/color-test/