After the mess that my carpenter got me into with his forgetfulness to fabricate a few items that I had clearly asked him to do, now my window supplier also managed to screw things up for me.
The good thing is all the problems that I am currently facing so far are issues that can be solved, but at the expense of my already dwindling commission, my clients for that particular project are now entering the "defect spotting" mode, which is the part of the renovation that I hate the most because it usually means I will be getting a shitload of messages at one go.
Actually getting all of them at one go is better, I would rather clients do that then take the whole day to slowly stream in the messages because that just feeds into my anxiety. The ones who are updating me while they are doing the defect checks are the worst because it could be a whole day affair, that means I am feeling stressed out the whole day waiting for my phone to stop fucking "ding"-ing.
Anyways, for this current project, I have been helping the clients absorb a lot of additional costs because in the beginning, I thought since it was such a huge project, biggest one I have ever gotten, I would be making a lot of money, so covering certain items for them wouldn't be an issue for me. These are the items I have covered for them so far...
Insurance - $350
Door Frames - $500
Soft Closing Door Stopper - $120
Permit Extension Fee - $500
Fiber Cable Install - $150
Replacing Existing Windows - $100
... and then of course there is the fuck ups...
Carpenter - $3000
Windows - $1200
Which brings the total amount I have loss to a staggering $5,920, that's $2,400 from my own personal profit taking a hit, this is not including the $3000 goodwill discount I gave them from the start, which means I am actually making about $3,500 loss in my personal commission.
I also helped them absorbed a few more items out of goodwill without telling them, like giving them the option to choose any door handle they wanted for their new doors, and they chose the most expensive one which they are now sharing with me is too dark and not the color they wanted. I offered to change the knobs for them though because it honestly wouldn't cost too much, I mean I am already bleeding $3500, what's another $50 gonna do? But thankfully they were nice enough and told me it wasn't necessary.
Currently I am estimating to earn only a measly $4500 from this project, calculate what I lost in personal profit, my actual commission should have been at least $7,900.
The amount might sound big for a single project, but if I were to take into account how long it has taken me to actually clinch this project and how long it has taken me to do this project, the amount is honestly not a justifiable amount.
I met this couple in early 2018, they only engaged me at the start of 2019, so a whole year of back and forth, literally met them over a span of about 10 design meetings before they finally decided to engage me, a normal client would only meet 3 times on average before they decide to engage an Interior Designer.
Once everything was confirmed and the contract was signed, it took about another 6 months to get to the stage I am right now, so if I were to exclude that whole year of back and forth, dividing $4,500 across the 6 months I have had to work with my current clients, that is only $750 per month, 6 months is until right now, I am anticipating the renovation to drag on until possibly late February to early March if nothing messes up, so I am estimating about 7 months in total.
The last 2 projects that I did which were running simultaneously took me 6 weeks to complete, and during that 6 weeks, I have managed to earn close to $3000, even though it was 2 projects, the scope of those 2 projects were so much easier to handle, I hardly had to be on site for one of them. That's $2000 per month for those 2 projects, so if I split that into 2, I was earning about $1000 a month per project.
In fact, I would go so far as to say this current one is even worst than J&J's because with J&J's project, even though they did a lot of things, it was so much less complexity involved, there were less details I had to take care of, it was very straightforward so I didn't have to do as much coordination work. The commission I am getting from it is still pure shit, that is a fact, and it is still comparatively less that what I am getting from this current one, but just simply based on the complexity of the work, the amount of money I got from J&J's project is still much more worthy of my time than this current one, and by a STRETCH!
With J&J's Project, when it started, I could at least see the end, and it pretty much only lasted about 1.5 months before everything was done and I was done with them, with this current one, I had originally anticipated it to end mid December, then more works were requested last minute, so it ended up dragging to end December to early January, right now it is already mid January and sure, it is coming to an end soon, but it still feels like it has a long way to go.
So far, the clients for my current project have been very nice, very patient and just in general very appreciative of everything I have done for them, so it kinda balances things out a little.
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