We love what we do.  It is so satisfying to start a project with just a idea in our heads, draw up a few plans, select the hard goods and watch it all come together on reveal day.  The majority of our work is custom and comes from our many sources. Our list of sources has taken us years to accumulate.  We’ve gone through alot..some have stayed with us since the beginning, like our favorite seamstress, and some we’ve just gotten to know better.

The age of the internet has allowed people access to information in seconds.  It is a great thing..It helps us tremendously. We don’t have to take multiple trips to the dark long halls of the merchandise mart….all our fabric companies have their inventory on line. It’s wonderful.  Many of our clients also take advantage of the vast information and use it to find the best prices available.  Budget is always a top priority with us.  And in this age of the internet it’s a great tool.  But the one thing you cannot get from on-line companies is SERVICE.

In the past week we have had 2 problems with jobs.  We often say, with custom jobs there is always the chance of something not going just right.  It’s not like you go to the store pick something up and take it back if you don’t like it… With custom it needs to be perfect, you picked it, agreed to it, it’s yours. So it needs to be right, right? So this past week we installed some woven wood blinds in a home in Lincoln Park…They were beautiful but there was a flaw in one of 12 shades…The flaw was not huge and woven woods are a natural product so you have to expect some flaws…but this one was bordering on not up to our tolerances.  So, we made a phone call, and the new shade is on it’s way.  It was that easy…no boxing up, no struggling to get  the extra long box into the car and eventually to the UPS store, just a phone call and a new one is on it’s way.

The other problem was a bit more difficult…we had a beautiful stand alone tub going into our  beautiful new bathroom. Long story short it had a chip in it.  No problem, the company sent out a repair guy to fix the chip…uh-oh…the chip is in a spot that can’t be hidden 100% with the repair.  The repair guy also wouldn’t commit to the chip being a manufacturers defect…uh oh again…At one point the client was talking about getting this tub from a warehouse-direct site on-line.  Can you imagine trying to box up a defective tub, getting it into the car and getting it to the UPS store 🙂  But seriously, we have a new tub on the way, the local supplier returned the tub, with the chip, and is sending us a new one.  We call that great service…They will be using the tub as a display in their showroom.  Thank God for our good relationships and small local businesses that put service ON TOP.