k9arlene ~ in response to your above post: It is not "the 2 posters" who have advertised the OP's payment history, nor somehow covertly discovered it and are telling tales out of school. It is public knowledge, advertised by the OP herself on numerous occasions. She has previously posted about how she hasn't been able to pay the rent in the houses she's occupied, therefore necessitating the need for her to constantly look for other housing, which is again the case. When someone is in such a difficult financial situation sometimes it's not a good thing to overlook the obvious in favor of focusing on frivolities. I would think that at this point the last thing to focus on is decorating and the repair of cosmetic items, but rather the imminent need to find a safe, clean and reasonable place to live. As a landlord who depends on our rental income to pay our bills it chaps my hide when people have little regard for their financial obligations, citing in no uncertain terms that because a landlord collects rent they probably have more than enough money and therefore don't really "need" the rental income. I would hope that reality would set in and the person would realize what a tenuouis position they are in.

Its great to hear that the project is moving forward! Just a few thoughts.......... I think putting the retail shelf by the workstation crowds things too much and does not give the client time to browse. Put the display in the seating area. I would not put a shelf up by the seating area to display retail items. They might get pilfered by clients who think they are "samples". Plus they could get knocked over all the time with clients bumping the shelves. They would get dusty on a shelf too. You want the products to looks fresh. I would put them in a small curio cabinet. One that is wide and not too deep, and has lots of glass, preferably on three sides, with minimal framing so as not to block the view of products. You can pick them up for a song on CL. Paint it black or a color to go with your wall color. Get it in a moderate size so as not to crowd the space with the two chairs. Angle chairs. I would use floating shelves by the work station. The brackets crowd the area. The chandy you chose looks great but maybe a bit heavy for the space being wrought iron or what ever metal it is. Maybe add a few more crystals? You can buy them at craft stores. If you Google 'mini chandelier' or 'kids room chandelier' you can see inexpensive ones that are lightweight in feel and a bit more sparkley. Maybe there is something else out there? Target? I would not do a mirror on the wall behind the workstation next to the bathroom door. Having two mirrors reflect into each other would give it that 'Cream of Wheat' effect. It would be too cluttery and give a tunnel look to the area. I know that mirrors are important to a salon but I have never seen a salon where this is done with mirrors. I would not use wicker baskets. Too Country. Metal would be noisy and plastic looks cheap. How about faux leather baskets? They come in many colors. Or ones covered in fabric that they sell? I've picked them up real cheap for my use at both Ikea and Homegoods. You can use them with or without the lids. Picture it without the newspaper. It comes in white, pink, other colors: I know I had said upholstery is probably out due to hair and dust and you agreed but what about slipcovered chairs? Upholstered chairs would be more comfortable and wouldn't be noisy like metal ones. You can get those dining room parsons chairs for a song on CL and a slipcover for $14.99. They even have 'shortie' ones that show some of the chair leg. You could change them out with the seasons and they can be washed anytime for freshening. Here is a link that might be useful: Slipcovers for Chairs

Foxes Pad, I don't go to home stores often (usually antique stores) but when I dare to step inside one everything is greige or beige. I. Am. So. Tired. Of. That. Look. Please, for the love of everything decorating-holy, move on! My father was a designer and had furniture stores since before I was born until 1980ish, and his father before him had a furniture factory until it burned down. The stores were set up as Pal described, but changed often (with the exception of draperies). People could buy off the floor (all floors) or custom order. He went to market twice a year and ordered whatever whenever in between to keep inventory. The last store carried a high price point, but also a variety of price points below so almost anyone could find something. He retired after discovering he could rent the building to another furniture store and make the same money without having to put on a suit daily. So he went from retail to commercial real estate overnight and never looked back. Now, one locally owned furniture store in our area is mostly full of gaudy ornate pieces that look like they belong in Vegas or a bordello. Sad times for those looking to buy modern or traditional pieces. The other carries the greige phase. Actually a new store opened about six months ago and I finally went in at DH's insistence - more greige! Even the accessories in the last two stores are monochromatic with no appeal to me whatsoever. None of my friends buy this and neither do our three adult children, so I'm not sure what age group is buying the bulk of it. The internet has changed the way we shop --> seek, compare, order. Granted you're taking chances if ordering a sofa you haven't sat upon before clicking the button. But isn't it easier to explore the 15,000 lighting options from the comfort of your chain while wearing pajamas and no make-up?! I don't really read blogs. I do look at one a friend writes now and then (she's currently remodeling a house) and I like to read Atticmag, which is really not a blog. I also avoid Apartment Therapy (nothing new there) and recently unfollowed House Beautiful on Facebook (articles I clicked through to read taught me nothing). As someone raised in a furniture store, it is quite depressing.

For my husband and I we started looking at older homes in the area last Sept., took only a few weeks to realize we wanted to build new, another few months to figure out that we're not the type that can just go with the typical spec home. We chose a design-build firm in November, met with an architect in December to modify a plan that we sort of liked, and closed on a lot in Jan. Then we made all our tentative selections for allowance items and had them priced out, which added about $30k to the contract price.It took about 3 months to get enough of an idea of allowances that we felt comfortable signing our contract (during this time I also redesigned the front elevation and the kitchen layout). That said, I probably spent 40 hrs a week doing research and planning our house during that time. Most of this was finding the things we had in our heads, trying to find/draw pictures for subs, and doing historical research, as we wanted to give the house a fairly authentic early 1800's feel, while not losing all of the things we love about new builds, and keeping the project remotely affordable. I've done pretty much all the design work since we just went with a design/build firm. They're one of the more detail-oriented in the area, but not enough so for us. Next time we would probably just hire an architect to manage the entire project. It would be a lot less stressful. We've also changed quite a bit as the build has progressed, and we get a more coherent vision of the house, and a better idea of standard specs in the midwest (we're not from around here and that has made things interesting). That added another $30k or so to the project, but we easily could have added another $100+. Most of these changes were on non-allowance items, like mouldings...actually pretty much all of them were architectural details. That seems to be the expensive stuff: detail and anything not made of plastic or mdf. Combine a love of well-proportioned details and natural material, and costs jump up pretty quickly. Be prepared. I found that a lot of our subs didn't want to get into much detail with us until there was a hole in the ground. And I think with good reason. There are some things you just can't fully plan until you're almost ready for them to go in. And some things, no matter how much planning you do, won't go the way you want. Word of advice: don't feel bad about changing your mind! After all, you're the one funding the project. One of the most helpful questions for our subs was "If we do it this way, how hard is it to change it to another way in the future, and how will doing it this way limit our choices?" We were really surprised sometimes at how easy some things were to add or change later, and what things really needed to happen at build time for them to be worth doing. We're in the home stretch now as flooring is in and cabinets are being installed. Just picked out our slabs of marble for our countertops today. We don't really expect anything new from here on out. We also are leaving a few things to do later on, like finishing landscaping and closet shelving, so we have a better idea of what we want. Now I stop by the house a few times a week, just to see how things are going, but mostly to just jump up and down and be excited. All this being said, I'm the kind of monster that will spend an entire day drafting 15 scale drawings of potential kitchen cabinet layouts so my husband and I can choose one when he gets home from work and send it to our carpenter. We're also really decisive people who already had a pretty clear idea of what we like, how we live, and our priorities. The hardest part was finding what we wanted given our resources. I think for most people, if you really want to be able to specify all the little details and don't have an architect that can do that for you, you'll want to give yourself a lot of time and really think hard about how you live, and how you want your home to feel. On the other hand, if you don't really care about the little things, you might not need much time to plan things out at all. Like your friend, you could make all your choices for finishings in a week and be done with it. It took us over a month just to find tile that we liked. Either way, do go into it having thought about your home enough that you know where you fall on that spectrum.