Hemorrhaging money for decorator"s billable hours

14 days ago

Hi,

My husband and I hired a decorator to help us redo our den and a few other misc. small projects (carpet runner for stairs, window treatments and area rug for guest bedroom..). It's now been over 2 months and the stair runner which the designer selected and said was not very expensive ended up being quoted at $6,000 for one flight of stairs!! We have already spent over $1,000 for the decorators time sourcing the carpet and for the carpet store to come to the house and take measurements. She also billed us hours for a bedside table and area rug in our guest bedroom which again ended up coming in at several thousands of dollars. Needless to say, I have now payed her A LOT of money for her time but have had to turndown her suggestions due to the estimates coming in way beyond our budget. Prior to starting our project we agreed upon a price for the total cost of our project, but at the rate we are going I'm not going to have very much money to spend on items for our den since I've been spending thousands of dollars for the decorator sourcing things that in the end I can't afford. Furthermore, I'm at the point that I don't want her to spend any additional time to source other products since that will just be additional money going towards her time and nothing tangible.

I'm at a loss as what to do now since I have only selected some furniture pieces and lighting for our den. I'm tempted to just tell her that we would like to stop at this point since I'm afraid we will just continue paying more for her hourly rate ($250) and either continue getting extremely costly quotes and then her having to spend additional time and money sourcing for a less expensive item.

Any advise would be appreciated.

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Comments (3)

freedomplace1
14 days ago
The heading/title of your post is very dramatic. And I have no idea what has gone on - in terms of all of your dealings with this decorator...

But from what you are saying - it seems as though this decorator is mostly presenting you with options that are way out of your budget - and you are paying her $250 an hour for this.

Based upon what you have described, it would seem prudent to terminate the contract at this point.
chispa
13 days ago
End it, quickly!

I have been in your same exact situation. We finally parted ways, but I should have done it much sooner. I would get monthly bills for her hours that had no breakdown/itemizing at all, so I had no idea what she was spending time on.

One time I made a comment about wanting to update the living room fireplace at some later date and next thing I know I got billed for several hours of her looking for fireplace ideas, which I never saw! After that, I was very careful not to mention any other item or room in the house!

After we parted ways, I found someone else through a friend, that acted more as a consultant for me. I'm good at design and trust my choices, so all I needed was someone who could bill me for consulting, second set of eyes on my ideas, and ordering any custom pieces. This one was great and she broke her bills down into individual projects and activities, so I knew where the money was going. We had similar tastes and enjoyed working together.
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Patricia Colwell Consulting
13 days ago
I do not understand the contract . I have clients who pay by the hour they come with me when choosing items they pay for the items and I charge for my time to go shopping . This is a simple contract of pure hourly rate and every hourbilled . So why did they choose the items unless you gave them free rein to do so. Any help from us really would need to see the contract but really you shoyld be making the choices and they should guide you to stay within the budget .I think the contract is not understandable IMO without seeing it . My clients who have a buget make thta known to me som when we shop that is always a consideration