Self-Satisfied Pride
The adventure of the Hotheaded Client continues without delay. Or maybe I should say it continues, yet with absolute delay. For you see, the HOA President did not react well to the insults directed his way on Tuesday [see previous blogpost], so he sicced the attorneys on us all, manifested in the form of a Cease and Desist Letter sent to my client, but also copied to the Architect (the hero of this bloggy tale of woe) and the Contractor (a very competent and sweet man who has my total respect). We, the Hotheaded Client and I, have scrambled to answer the concerns of the Cease and Desist Letter, but the HOA board cannot meet again for about ten days. So the Hotheaded Client gets to cool his heels while I hopefully get to focus my energies on other projects and other clients who are most wonderful and deserving of my time.
For example, above is a [night-time] photo of a wonderful project that was just finished a few weeks ago. The photo is of a significant kitchen/pantry/dining room remodel that cost only $10,000 to complete. Kitchen remodels usually start at $25,000 and go up up UP. You wouldn't even recognize this new kitchen if you had seen the before photos, it was that bad. The house was a modest Victorian that had gone to seed in a wonderful neighborhood. Nothing but promise. The client wisely hired me two years ago, spent $75,000 (not counting design fees) to remodel, piece by piece, just about every room in the house and add on over 300 sq. ft. to the back for a new family room -- also in the Contemporary Arts & Crafts style you see above (the addition is barely visible beyond the kitchen). The house appraised yesterday for about $175,000 more than it did when we started. How did we remodel the kitchen, open it up to the dining room, and install new granite countertops, three new cabinets, high-end light fixtures, new appliances, new sink and faucet, porcelain tile floor, and ceramic tile backsplashes with accents... all for only $10,000? Genius, sheer genius. And the builder who did the kitchen work for the client even came away with spending money in his pocket and a smile of self-satisfied pride on his face. I will be using him again and again, that's a certainty. I already have him locked up for a second $100,000 facelift project in the nearby foothills.
Yes, it can be done.
That's the message for today, young pups -- it can be done.
posted by Howard at 10:09 PM
2 Comments:
Hi HRLaughed, what an entertaining and refreshingly cynical architecture blog you have here!
I am just wondering what you think about the architect and the faucet tv commercial.
http://www.us.kohler.com
/craftsmanship/television.jsp#
It is the third video from the right labelled "Architect".
What's your opinion of this commercial?
Is it turning American consumers looking to hire architects into hellish clients, resembling your AH client, who demand the impossible? Or is it just a faucet commercial which pushes the architect stereotype of artsy dressed-in-tight-black-spandex-wearing guys?
-J
I liked the commercial because there truly are a lot of architects and architecture firms like the one depicted.
The punchline in the commercial is actually an old joke among architecture students -- that the entire house or project is designed around some small usually insignificant object. I imagine lots of design projects in architecture schools are based on this concept, though my own school did not put us through that.
If HRlaughed was ever a college professor, he would make sure that his students had this opportunity, of course. His students would hate him but good.
As for the artsy dressed-in-tight-black-spandex-wearing guy, HRlaughed is one of those guys. He makes it a point to wear tight black spandex at least once each day.
I'm not kidding and you know that if you know HRlaughed.
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