My latest endeavor has been an exhausting task to say the least. I plan to add a new phase to my business. The Dexter Room was the first step in creating a space to spray paint cabinet doors. Purchasing an HVLP 9.5 paint sprayer was the second and expensive part of this mission. The learning curve came next. I am a very experienced painter using a brush or a roller; I paint walls, cabinets, shutters and furniture.
I have spray painted small projects successfully, using cans, but I do not consider such painting a practical way to tackle kitchen cabinet doors. I needed to develop a new skill; and while I knew I needed new techniques that would develop with experience, and I even expected a slow learning curve, I did not expect to regress.
I have talked with my paint representative, paint technical support and spray machine representative, but none have given me a definitive answer for my problem. I have watched countless U-Tube videos on-line and read blog after blog hoping for more insight. I am not sure it is my skill level that is at fault or even the weather, which can affect the way paint lays on a surface. My next move is to talk-face-to-face with a professional (again) about the spray gun, which has been suggested to me as the culprit.
My personal story is to remind you that there are reasons to pay a professional to do tasks at which you are not proficient. We all have gifts or skills that are valuable, but it is wise to recognize when your life will be improved by hiring a professional as opposed to doing a project yourself.
I am grateful to my CPA every tax season; doing taxes is 180 degrees from my area of expertise. I know that hiring an interior designer is not in everyone’s budget, and many people feel that they can do as well. After all, it is not rocket science, right? However, it is a particular skill that not everyone possesses though it can be learned to some extent; but having a natural ability goes a long way, just like working with numbers.
It is an unfortunate time when you are faced with an electrical problem in your home, but you know well enough not to tackle it yourself unless you are proficient working with electricity; the results could be deadly.
Fortunately, that danger is not the case with decorating and design, but a bad job is sometimes much more costly in the end. People who hire an interior designer usually have reached a point in their lives when they recognize that their home is not the comfortable retreat they have been trying to achieve on their own. Many people can decorate a room using catalog pictures and recreating spaces that appear in magazines; and there is nothing wrong with doing so. However, this type of decorating does not reflect a homeowner’s personality, which is what a designer can achieve to make family members comfortable in their home.
A good designer can create a comfortable living space, using your actual room to bring scale, color and balance into play for a pleasing room. Just like learning about electricity, there is a plan to design; and there are reasons for the choices a designer makes. We need electricity in our homes, but we do not get too excited about wires in the walls or paying for it. We prefer to get to the end product, the visual; so it is with design.
The next time you hire a professional, be it an electrician, a tax attorney or a designer, please remember that there are good reasons for their recommendations, and the reasons all have to do with the end product. Sometimes the beauty is in not what you can see, as in the internal wiring that gives your family the heating and lighting needed for comfortable living; a good designer can bring visual comfort to a room with careful and sometimes clever choices. Hiring an interior designer even for an hour or two consultation, can save you and your budget in the long run from making costly mistakes.
