Project Scheduling, Challenges, and What can go wrong.
Interior Design is work, so please don’t be misled into believing it is easy. A natural proficiency for style and taste is only the bare beginning. Talent does not trump education and experience. Every project has a specific set of challenges. The numbers of potential solutions are limited by things like building codes, budget, style preference, and time line. Even with the help of a seasoned design professional, there are a multitude of things that can go awry. As a designer, any given project can be overwhelmingly stressful as I do my best to manage a plethora of details for which I plan but over which I have little to zero actual control. Even the best designers are limited by what the various schedules of manufacturers, distributors, and inspectors and the impact those things (just to name a few) have on the process at large.

What can go wrong with a project? Anything and everything. It’s a game of planning and prayer. At all times, maintain your sense of humor, breathe deep, and don’t take it personally. Be ready to make changes when required.

Imagine the following scenario:
You’ve moved into a new home. It’s bigger than anything you or your new spouse has ever lived in before. It has great “bones,” but the natural lighting is limited, challenging at best. The previous owners had a style that didn’t match that of you or your spouse, so you allowed them to take the lighting fixtures from the entry foyer, dining room, and kitchen as part of the sale agreement. The paint color that seemed agreeable when their furniture was in the house is now something that makes you feel dirty and depressed. You don’t have nearly enough furniture to furnish the home; you don’t care to go into debt; and your tastes and values far exceed your limited budget. You’ve been all over town, and you haven’t found anything that you really like anyway. No rush. Right? Wrong.

It is September 4th, Labor Day weekend, and you’ve just found out that in addition to your Mom’s first visit to the house for Thanksgiving, her parents, sister and nieces will all be coming as well. Your project deadline is the Monday before Thanksgiving; family arrives Tuesday, cocktail party for thirty people on Wednesday, and Thanksgiving dinner is Thursday. At minimum (and minimum is barely budget achievable), you need furniture for the dining room and living room, new paint, and lighting fixtures. You have ten weeks to make the house livable for more than two people.

For months you’ve searched for a sofa that suits the needs and comforts of both you and your spouse, and you’ve finally found it. You’ll pay almost twice the price you originally had in mind, but it’s perfect. Great! Order it. Average furniture delivery is 6-8 weeks, right? Not this time. “8-10 weeks” the salesman tells you, and a rush fee is not an option. Will it be here in time? You hope so. But it HAS to be. Forget it. Control is not in your hands.

You’ve been hunting for Dining Room furniture for months as well, dragged your spouse all over the city to sit in chairs and look at tables. Nothing you’ve found has been worthy of purchase. But NOW you NEED something. Find it quick! The compromise comes into play, neither of you will have what you really want – custom furniture. You’ll both have something that will look nice and work well for a few years. You find a compromise on a website and find a dealer to give you a really good price. But, you can’t sit in the chairs because they don’t have any, nor does anyone else in town. You’ll have to order it without sitting in the chairs. The salesman tells you by phone “4-5 weeks delivery.” Two days later you drag your spouse to look at the fabric samples at the dealer. You both agree, survey says…”Yuk.” But you choose the best of them and decide you’ll have the chairs recovered sometime after Thanksgiving, in fact sometime next year. At least you like the set. So, you place the order for the furniture and the dealer now says “6-8 weeks.” What happened to 4-5 weeks? You request a delivery date from the manufacturer and you hope it comes in on time.

All that’s left is lighting, paint, and rugs. The lighting is in stock, and paint is easy to come by. You’d refer to add paneling below the chair rail and wall covering above, but you can’t afford it right now. For that matter, you may not get rugs either.

So, this is a very small project in the grand scheme of things. You have every reason to believe that you will have your furniture on time. But what can go wrong? Here are some plausible possibilities.

• The dining room chair manufacturer doesn’t have enough fabric to complete your order, and the mill they do business with doesn’t have a scheduled production run for that fabric for 3 weeks.
• The machine for the wood stain at the factory breaks and gets the stain mixture wrong. The factory realizes that the stain is not curing on the items already manufactured for other orders. They need to repair the problem and re-manufacture the other orders that were in line before yours.
• The dining room furniture group that you selected is brand new to the market. The manufacturer didn’t expect it to become so popular so quickly. Demand is greater than supply. They get the chair frames from China, and the container ship is stuck in a backlog at customs due to an increased terror alert. Production times for the items you chose are estimated to be 3-4 weeks behind schedule.
• A few weeks after you placed your order, there was a natural disaster that devastated the part of the country where the factory is located, it ruined everything.
• Your furniture would have been delivered on Monday, the deadline, but the truck broke down.
• The drivers went on strike.
• The factory in Mexico that produces the sofa you ordered burned to the ground.

What can go wrong with a project? Anything and everything. It’s a game of planning and prayer. At all times, maintain your sense of humor, breathe deep, and don’t take it personally.