Suzy and Jill Chapter 35: Renovations

Filed: Suzy and Jill @ 5:45am on July 2, 2014 No comments yet! :(   Word Count: 766
This entry is part 35 of 39 in the series Suzy and Jill

And so, I went to work alone at the office, while Jill stayed home to wait for the contractor.

Had I planned my cards right, I could have stayed home too, but I had to attend to a video conference that morning that I could have scheduled any other day of the week, but it was now too late to reschedule.

The video conference went well, but I quickly realized how much I had begun to rely on Jill’s design experience to help me during discussions with the clients. She had a really deep understanding of how design work from the designer point of view where I rather had a good understanding of how to do business.

She could normally wow the client with buzzwords and hints about what the design would be while I would mentally prepare a quote in my mind to match their excitement. Without her, it was back to how it was before the business failed: me, trying to interest the client with numbers instead of with ideas.

Still, it rather convinced me that Jill was right: driving to the office was no longer necessary, especially with video conferencing!

I still had to accept a product mock-up from one of our suppliers which was ordered by Jill via UPS around noon before I could leave, so I decided to do a quick inventory of our office.

I had downsized, seriously. There was more than half a dozen work stations unused and several computers that had not been turned on for weeks. Jill had cannibalized a few, stealing their monitors to add to her own station, but that still left a lot of furniture for a 2 employees company.

But I was a designer too. I closed my eyes and visualized our basement and mentally moved furniture around, figuring where to place what. I quickly realized that if my measurements were right, we could setup a small closed office for Suzy to work in silence, two workstations side by side for Jill and I to work, a new work table to work on printed plans and still have enough room for our plotter and printers.

Hum, I might even be able to make a bigger office for Suzy, near the side of the house, so that she could eventually receive clients she trusted in private, without bothering us.

I mentally made an inventory of the rest of the furniture and realized that there was still more than enough to prepare a small office with our conference room table and chairs to receive clients, with actual workstations that could convince our clients that this was our actual place of business!

While waiting for the delivery, I called the landlord. He was ready to take break our lease for only 3 months penalty, but might waive it if we rented one of his smaller offices. I made a note to setup an appointment with him about that.

Finally, once we got the package, I ran home and found the contractor’s van in my parking lot, forcing me to park down the street. What can’t I do for my ladies?

Work was progressing quite well: the frame was already cut in the wall between Jill’s bedroom and our private bathroom and the contractor’s employees were preparing the door frame.

After kissing Jill and inquiring about her day, we both went downstairs with  the contractor to look at the basement.

I shared my ideas, we argued a little about how to proceed, and ended up having to turn my idea almost upside down because of the load bearing beam in the middle of the basement I had actually forgotten about.

The contractor confirmed he could build a new set of stairs to provide with an external door, but it was a much more complicated process than I had anticipated, in part because he couldn’t cut more than the width of a door into the foundations, and in part because that meant that the new stairs would have to be built with basically a new foundation surrounding them.

I was profoundly discouraged but Jill was positive about it and confirmed we’d do it. “Three salaries, remember?”

Still, it meant a lot of money spent in a short period of time. Granted, we’d save money from the office lease, but it’s still worrisome…

By the time we got back upstairs, the door frame was installed and the door followed in the next few minutes.

They still had to paint the whole thing, but things were looking up, and the work was done much faster than I anticipated (and a little faster than quoted) and, more importantly, ended costing exactly what was quoted, something that brought me some peace of mind.

Series Navigation«Suzy and Jill Chapter 34: Pillow talkSuzy and Jill Chapter 36: Another scene»

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