Finishing up...

I can finally say the townhouse we've been working on for the last three years is complete...well lets just say 99 percent complete, which on the grand scale of things means DONE. Apart from a couple of pieces here and there that my client and I have decided are needed, I can pretty much say we are done.

It is still astounding to me how long it can take to build a house in NYC, but thats just the thing about NYC - every tiny thing is more complicated here.

Our last phase of the project was the move in and, believe me, this takes time. For us, it meant about six weeks of being on site. For the first three weeks, we were there all day long receiving deliveries, installing installations, placing furniture, and organizing where things needed to be stored. After three weeks, we would make periodic visits to monitor deliveries or work happening in the house. And, of course, we don't live in a perfect world, so unfortunately not all deliveries turned out quite as planned and when something gets delivered broken or incorrect we are back on the phones or emailing vendors trying to rectify things.

Then there are punchlists and just as they are getting shorter, there's another walk through and the punchlist gets longer as we notice more items that needs finishing, readjusting, or touching up.

Working with my client, Paige, and her husband JC, is fun as always, and we pretty much have working together down. (They get an A++++ client rating). As any designer knows, repeat clients are a dream, so I feel blessed to have a couple of these. Paige and I have gotten so good at working together that we finish each other's sentences, bring identical magazine cut-outs to meetings and usually see eye to eye on most things. The way that I design for Paige is very specific to her, and I like that I can look at her homes and see both the homeowner and the designer in interiors. It's always team work with her. The other great thing about her is that she is bold both in the way she thinks about the interiors of her home and also for her use of color. While others are painfully discussing what shade of beige to use, Paige is agreeing that sulphur yellow is perfect for the kitchen counter. God, I love this girl!

And all of this would have been not nearly as much fun and would not have run nearly as smoothly without my colleague Vané Broussard, who knows me so well she allows me to stop talking mid sentence and has a 99 percent chance of being right on how I might have finished it. She decifers my cryptic notes, and is incredibly organized. But beyond all of this, she is a super-talented designer with great ideas and an incredible sense of style.

WE ARE DONE. Thank you Paige and JC, and thank you Vané...onward!!