Are you willing to do THE WORK?

“Your ankle is healing nicely,” said my doctor as he swirled my foot around, pushing and pulling. He said, “It’s healing because you’re “doing the work”….  

When he said that, it occurred to me that if you’re my client I’m giving you work to do, too. In the same way you doing “the work” facilitates a better outcome in your home, my commitment to my ankle exercises helps ensure I’ll heal successfully. My doctor went from being cautiously optimistic to optimistic about my recovery because he knew I was dedicated to doing the work.

Do you want to live in a home you love?

We take a collaborative approach to working with our clients. We get to know each other, discuss goals and dreams for their spaces and explain to them how it is going to go. And then it is time to DO THE WORK. 

Here are four things you can do to get started.

Find and save inspiration. Set yourself up for success by creating a place to save your inspiration. You can use Houzz or Pinterest or even Dropbox to gather images and keep them organized. I still love going through a magazine and ripping out the page. I have baskets with folders of images from the 1990’s titled “Bedding” “Window Treatments” “Flooring idea” “Chairs,” etc.

When you see something that catches your eye, save it.

Be discerning. Now that you have some things in your inspiration folder or basket of magazine pages, or both, go through them again and consider why you like this image and make a quick note, for instance; Color / Chair / Fabric / Lamp / Vibe / Finish Commit to communication. The point of being engaged in the process is to be committed to communicating how you want your newly transformed space to feel. Sharing images of things that catch your eye will help communicate ideas but also as you go along you’ll find your stride and you’ll see that a continuity is forming. Don’t worry if you don’t see that, we will.

Be clear about function. The function of a kitchen seems obvious but if you really like baking, you may want to create a baking station where the countertop is intentionally lower than the standard countertops. That’s a really important thing to communicate early on in the process because cabinetry would be made shorter for this -function-.  Or consider a home office, if you want it to also serve as a guest room, this would be an important function to convey. If you want to be able to take a bath, fitting a soaking tub into a bathroom could be a challenge since it is not a small item to fit in. And if you do not care about a tub at all, you’ve suddenly allowed yourself more room for something else.

I encourage clients to be engaged in the process and feel good about doing this work. Every morning I wake up and think to myself - DO THE WORK- and I exercise my little ankle that I cracked seven months ago, sliding down a snowy hill walking Coco. I couldn’t walk for weeks and now, I’m walking and every day it’s a little easier. 

When you feel good you’ll make better choices. 

Feel Good At Home

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Need some professional guidance? Please contact us, we'd love to help.

Gretchen Reinheimer Design

Creating extraordinary spaces together

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